Medically Assisted Reproduction and Infertility in a Globalizing World (Pretoria, Ouagadougou, Paris) – AMP

Medically Assisted Reproduction and Infertility in a Globalizing World (Pretoria, Ouagadougou, Paris)

The use of biotechnology in the case of medically assisted procreation is becoming an increasingly globalized practice (its actors are mobile, as are the gametes…). It is inscribed in a context where the use of new communication technologies allows for an access to medical information. Nowadays, in a growing number of African cities, private hospitals (in which doctors from the public sector intervene) are taking care of infertile couples. Some of them come from neighboring countries which are lacking services dealing with such issue, other fly to Europe to benefit from these techniques. This situation has to be understood with the lack of social recognition of infertility in sub-Saharan Africa as well as with the political unwillingness to turn it into a Public Health issue while medical doctors and demographers do affirm that the fight against infertility has to do with the demographic transition. Infertility do also poses the question of gender relation in a context of social change. In this regard, it is an empirical entry into the issue of women’s vulnerability (abuse, divorce, social downgrading, suicide…) in a context where the «valence différentielle des sexes» (differential valency of sexes) leads men to hardly recognize their own infertility. The project aims to assess the increasing penetration of these techniques in Africa looking at two countries inscribed in contrasting social and economic realities as well as falling under different laws (Pretoria in South Africa and Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso). A third fieldwork site is located in Paris to assess specific situation of migrant couples or of couples engaged in logic of therapeutic mobility. The project also aims to study, among couples who had children using medically assisted procreation, the effects of these techniques on their theories of procreation, on the way they see filiation (especially with regards to the lineage model), and on their parental models.
With the aim of understanding medically assisted procreation in the context of globalization, our project will look at health clinic web sites which are offering medically assisted procreation services, at blogs, forums and other kind of materials available on the web. This choice is grounded on observations made during preceding research projects in anthropology of health (Aids, Genetic disease…) in which members of the present team have witness how the web has become an important source of information for health professional and some patients on the African continent.