Biological Relatives

"A model of what interdisciplinary intelligence can accomplish. Across several fields Biological Relatives shows how specific platforms or tools in the history of reproduction, kinship, and gender have provided discursive liftoff for further sites of knowledge and exploration. One of the strengths of this gripping account lies in that specificity, beginning with the iconic IVF and its epistemic work: a brilliant and exhilarating reprise of what we thought we knew, but now know differently."—Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge
"Hurtled with eggs, sperm, embryos, technicians, scientists, photographers, and critters of many species, including humans, we are all redone by the histories and practices of IVF. Sarah Franklin makes vivid how IVF is a kin-making, person-making, and world-making engine, one that refabricates the facts of life into bundles of kin and bundles of kin into facts of life. No wonder I read Biological Relatives as a fabulous work of SF in all its tones—string figures, speculative fabulation, science fact. Because Franklin's multigeneric gifts are generous, my debts are large."—Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz
"[A] well-researched, conceptually rigorous, and thoroughly interdisciplinary discussion of new reproductive technologies. . . . This cutting-edge volume is essential for scholars and practitioners interested in the ethics of reproductive technologies, technology theory case studies, sex/gender reinforcing and challenging practices, and medical humanities in general. . . . Highly recommended. Upper division undergraduates and above." -- S. M. Weiss * Choice *
“Being well informed about these areas of contemporary biology requires familiarity with both natural and social sciences. Sarah Franklin’s Biological Relatives provides a much-needed account of one such area…. Her range is wide, but her examples are precise and disciplined. Reading the book illuminates ways to see across divides, and there are some striking images along the way.”  -- Charis Thompson * Science Magazine *
“Biological Relatives presents a complex examination of a topic that has been too often simplified or fragmented and provides feminist scholars of science with a new framework through which to analyze the relationship between biology and technology in a post-IVF age. . . . The book’s willingness to dwell with the many ambiguities of IVF—what Franklin refers to as its ‘curious’ elements—thus makes an important contribution to our understanding of what it means to live in a post-IVF age.”  -- Sara DiCaglio * Configurations *
“Biological Relatives goes far beyond earlier studies to provide new and valuable insight into the history of IVF. These include new perspectives on both complex evolutionary processes of biology and the overall historical descriptions about feminist debates over IVF in connection with the notion of kinship and women’s actual voices. Finally, Franklin successfully cultivates a novel and constructive account of the dynamics, complexity and hybridity in the history of IVF in connection with related science fields and social and cultural areas.” -- Kaori Sasak * Medical History *
“Franklin’s rigorously researched and exhaustive look at ‘the normalization of I.V.F.’ grounds the procedure firmly in technology and science, not to mention philosophy, anthropology, agriculture, feminism, and history.” -- Sarah Erdreich * Lilith *
"Biological Relatives would fit well in advanced undergraduate courses in medical anthropology and sociology, gender and reproduction, feminist theory, and social theories of technology. It will also be invaluable in graduate coursework across a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, feminist studies, and science and technology studies, as well as for researchers and clinicians who work at the perpetually unstable frontiers of reproduction, bioinnovation, and kinship." -- Crista Craven & Thomas Tierney * American Ethnologist *
“Not since Donna J. Haraway’s 1997 book, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_OncoMouse™ have I read such a major contribution to theorizing technoscience. … The book leaves us with a cultural rendering and an archeology of a technology, from the ambivalent relations with its form as a reproductive technology to the many ways that IVF is also a tool itself in the coevolving biotech industries. IVF is not only biologically reproductive, but also technologically reproductive. This book should be read by anyone interested in theorizing biotechnology and the future of social relations.” -- Laura Mamo * American Journal of Sociology *
“Biological Relatives amounts to an impressive and important exploration of the curious world, effects, and various 'lives' of IVF. It is a book that dares to be multidimensional and non-reductionist, and which shows the complexity of relationships, biological and technological as well as familial. … [A] much-needed, important, and sensitive analysis of IVF and the changed relationships it introduces to biology, technology, and kinship.” -- Petra Nordqvist * Technology and Culture *
[T]his exciting book delivers a powerful theory of biology and technology that challenges scholars of Science and Technology Studies, the anthropology of kinship, and gender and feminist theory to consider and respond. It will be a must-read for any scholar of IVF,synthetic biology, the anthropology of science and nature, or gender studies.”  -- Ian Vincent McGonigle * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *