Introduction

Kroløkke, Charlotte; Petersen, Thomas Søbirk; Herrmann, Janne Rothmar; Bach, Anna Sofie; Adrian, Stine Willum; Klingenberg, Rune; Petersen, Michael Nebeling

doi:10.1108/978-1-83867-042-920191002

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There is a growing field of study on cryotechnologies and cryopolitics exploring the transformations of life, power, time, space, and subjectivity that have accompanied the contemporary extension of technologies of artificial cold (Landecker 2005; Radin and Kowal 2017; Schönach 2018; Lemke et al 2020; Kroløkke et al 2020; and see also the introduction to this special issue). Research on cryotechnologies has stressed that cold preserves life forms by generating a temporal lapse of “suspense” (Hoeyer 2017), a pause on death and decay (Lemke 2019), and by opening a state between “latent life” and “incomplete death” (Radin and Kowal 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cryopolitics of Human Milk: Thermal Assemblages of Breast Milk in Donation, Banking, and Bioindustrial Research

Bachiller

Domingo

2022

Science, Technology, & Human Values

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cold is indispensable when preserving breast milk for later use in ordinary breastfeeding practices and, in addition to other devices such as the breast pump, fridges and freezers have been essential in making human milk a mobile biosubstance. Cryotechnologies become even more important when donated milk has to be preserved for the feeding of hospitalized babies or when, in the form of milk probiotics, it enters the realms of scientific research and industrial production. However, attention to cold only offers one side of the picture, as thawing and heating are essential processes in human milk circulation too. Drawing on research on milk banking practices in Spain, we present three instances where technologies of cold and heat are applied to human milk or its components: hospital banks that collect milk from donors; the practices of lactating women who donate part of their milk to hospital banks, share it informally with other women, or participate in clinical research; and biopharmaceutical companies developing cutting-edge nutritional products employing microbial strains obtained from breast milk. Each of these scenarios resorts to different technological manipulations of cold and heat, generating distinct thermal assemblages where technical questions and sociocultural logics are simultaneously at stake.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%