Introduction: Gender and Reproductive Technologies in East Asia

Abstract

This special issue of EASTS examines reproductive technoscience, gender, and the formation of East Asian modernities across the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. We begin our introduction with a brief overview of social science scholarship to date on reproductive topics. We then turn to emergent trends: going to and coming from beyond the West, complicating the issues, and intensive localizing and comparative research. Next, we discuss themes that cut across considerations of gender, reproductive technologies, and related issues in East Asia: issues of imperialisms and colonialisms as roots and contexts, postcolonial and nationalist forms of embeddedness, feminist theories of gender and transnationalism, and relations of gender and reproductive technologies to biological citizenship. Last is an introduction to the articles in this special issue.

Imagining Alternative and Better Worlds: Isabel Fletcher Talks with Adele E. Clarke

“…Precisely because the6 For example, Anne Saetnan, Nelly Oudshoorn and Marta Kirejczyk (2000) co-edited Bodies of Technology based on such sessions. Similarly, Chia-Ling Wu, Azumi Tsuge and I co-edited a Special Issue on Reproductive Technologies and Gender in East Asia for East Asian Science, Technology and Society(Clarke 2008;Wu et al 2008). I also had the privilege of participating in the exciting and innovative transdisciplinary /www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/).…”