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Page content: On Thursday, 6 October 2011, anthropologist Aihwa Ong (University of California, Berkeley, USA) will be keynote speaker for the Lolle Nauta Forum. Co-speaker: Annemarie Mol, Professor of Anthropology of the Body, University of Amsterdam. Passport Babies, Donor Babies:
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 Aihwa Ong: Passport Babies and Donor Babies
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Our possibilities in the field of biotechnology seem to be boundless. The unthinkable becomes within reach. See the various applications of DNA-techniques and stem cell research. But also in a more literary sense we increasingly cross boundaries. Foreign surrogate mothers, overseas babies, a worldwide system of organ donation, international genetic databanks – biomedical practices more and more take place on a global scale.
Wealthy tycoons and gay couples can order an overseas baby who overcomes hurdles of family formation and citizenship in one go. Thus, babies perform as passports.What are the consequences of these developments for family- and kinship relations – for our cultural and aesthetic norms of belonging at home? And for legal rules about (national) citizenship?
On the other hand, biomedical techniques are deployed to fuel an imagination of “communities of fate” – on regional or national level. Affluent Asian nations, for example, promote the banking of cord blood and other organs in order to ameliorate the “flawed Asian body.”The newborn’s blood helps to withstand alleged dangers to community and nation. Thus, donor babies perform as links in an ongoing process of vitalization of citizenship.
Biotechnologies transform our politics and ethics of belonging. Both on an individual and on a more collective level various elements are assembled and continuously re-assembled – nations, territoria, bodies, rights, obligations, documents, etc. In a globalizing world novel forms of life generate different notions of citizenship. Aihwa Ong analyses and discusses these developments at the crossroads of biotechnology, citizenship and globalization.
Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Her approach is inter-disciplinary and her ideas are featured in debates on globalization and modernity. Her most recent publications are: Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate (2010) and Worlding Cities: Asian experiments and the Art of Being Global (2011).
View the official website of Aihwa Ong
Annemarie Mol is Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the University of Amsterdam. In her book The Body Multiple (2002) she presents a detailed ethnographic description of hospital practices. In The Logic of Care (2008) she discusses the process of knowing and intervening in bodies. Mol is a member of the national Social Sciences Council.
Date, time and place
Thursday, 6 October
20.00 - 21.30 hrs
Academy Building (Aula)
Tickets and information
Studium Generale Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 13, Groningen, tel. 050-363 5463
Faculteit Wijsbegeerte (secretariat), Oude Boteringestraat 52, Groningen, tel. 050-363 6161
Admission € 2,50
For students and Studium Generale subscribers, tickets are free on presentation of their student or SGG card.
| Last modified: | October 17, 2011 17:22 |
