基本説明
Illuminates the wondrous yet disquieting medical realm of organ transplantation by drawing on the voices of those most deeply involved: transplant recipients, clinical specialists, and the surviving kin of deceased organ donors.
Full Description
Strange Harvest illuminates the wondrous yet disquieting medical realm of organ transplantation by drawing on the voices of those most deeply involved: transplant recipients, clinical specialists, and the surviving kin of deceased organ donors. In this rich and deeply engaging ethnographic study, anthropologist Lesley Sharp explores how these parties think about death, loss, and mourning, especially in light of medical taboos surrounding donor anonymity. As Sharp argues, new forms of embodied intimacy arise in response, and the riveting insights gleaned from her interviews, observations, and descriptions of donor memorials and other transplant events expose how patients and donor families make sense of the transfer of body parts from the dead to the living. For instance, all must grapple with complex yet contradictory clinical assertions of death as easily detectable and absolute; nevertheless, transplants are regularly celebrated as forms of rebirth, and donors as living on in others' bodies. New forms of sociality arise, too: recipients and donors' relatives may defy sanctions against communication, and through personal encounters strangers are transformed into kin.
Sharp also considers current experimental research efforts to develop alternative sources for human parts, with prototypes ranging from genetically altered animals to sophisticated mechanical devices. These future trajectories generate intriguing responses among both scientists and transplant recipients as they consider how such alternatives might reshape established--yet unusual--forms of embodied intimacy.
Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION: STRANGE HARVEST The Ideological Underpinnings of Organ Transfer Studying Transplantation in American Contexts 1. WE ARE THE DEAD MEN: MIND OVER MATTER A Most Peculiar Death Reconstructing Donor Histories Body Economies 2. MEMORY WORK: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REPRESENTATIONS OF SUFFERING, LOSS, AND REDEMPTION Recipient Suffering and Renewal Honoring the Dead in Safe, Public Places The Private Lives of Donor Kin 3. PUBLIC ENCOUNTERS AS SUBVERSIVE ACTS Bureaucratic Constraints on Social Desire The Ties That Bind Claiming the Donor Body 4. HUMAN HYBRIDITY: SCIENTIFIC LONGING AND THE DANGERS OF DIFFERENCE Dangerous Miracles Professional Desires to Cultivate Nature Denatured Bodies and Transformed Selves Nature's Body EPILOGUE Notes Glossary References Index
