In vitro fertilization in French and Indian laboratories: A somatotechnique?

This article shows that cells bear both biological and substantive qualities through an ethnographic analysis of oocyte and sperm cell preparation in laboratories based in India and France. These qualities connect an international approach to life as cellular mechanics with an approach to life as an embodiment of personal identities that creates kinship through locally embedded logics. By highlighting different institutional choices in the use of donated sperm, this article suggests that the prefix “bio” in reproductive biotechnologies should be reframed. The article supports this argument through the notion of “somatotechniques,” which is implicitly at work in the treatment of biomedicalized bodies of kinship that are not reducible to what international bioscience says and does, here and there.