(Routledge, forthcoming Spring 1998)
From fetuses scanned ultrasonically to computer hackers in daycare, contemporary children are increasingly rendered cyborg by their immersion in technoculture. As we are faced with reproductive choices connected directly with technologies, we often have trouble gaining perspective on our own cultural co-dependency with these very same technologies. Our notions of fetal health, maternal risk and child IQ are inseparable from them. Cyborg Babies tracks the process of reproducing children in symbiosis with pervasive technology and offers a range of perspectives, from resistance to ethnographic analysis to science fiction. Cultural anthropologists and social critics offer cutting-edge ethnographies, critiques, and personal narratives of cyborg conceptions (sperm banks, IVF, surrogacy) and prenatal (mis)diagnosis (DES, ultrasound, amniocentesis); the technological de- and reconstruction of birth in the hospital (electronic fetal monitors, epidurals); and the effects of computer simulation games and cyborg toys and stories on children's emergent consciousness. Contributors include Janet Isaacs Ashford, Elizabeth Cartwright, Monica Casper, David Chamberlain, Charis M. Cussins, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Irene Diamond, Joseph Dumit, Eugenia Georges, Donna Haraway, Anne Hill, Mizuko Ito, Emily Martin, Steven Daniel Mentor, Janneli F. Miller, Lisa Mitchell, Lisa Jean Moore, Rayna Rapp, Matthew A. Schmidt, Elizabeth Roberts and Sherry Turkle. Examining the increasing cyborgification of the American child, from conception through birth and beyond, Cyborg Babies considers its implications for human cultural and psychological evolution.
Donna Haraway
Foreword
Joseph Dumit and Robbie Davis-Floyd
Introduction, Cyborg Babies: Children of the Third Millenium
Matthew A. Schmidt and Lisa Jean Moore
Constructing a Good 'Catch,' Picking a Winner:
The Development of Techno-Semen and the Deconstruction of the Monolithic
Male
Charis M. Cussins
"Quit snivelling, cryo-baby--we'll work out which one's your mama!"
Steven Daniel Mentor
Witches, Nurse-Midwives, and Cyborgs: IVF, ART, and Complex Agency in the
World of Technobirth
Janet Isaacs Ashford
Natural Love
Monica Casper
Fetal Cyborgs and Technomoms on the Reproductive Frontier: Which Way to the
Carnival?
Lisa Mitchell and Eugenia Georges
Baby's First Picture: The Cyborg Fetus of Ultrasound Imaging
Emily Martin
The Fetus as Intruder: Mother's Bodies and Medical Metaphors
Rayna Rapp
Refusing Prenatal Diagnosis: The Uneven Meanings of Bioscience in a Multicultural
World
David Chamberlain
Babies Don’t Feel Pain: A Century of Denial in Medicine
Elizabeth Roberts
"Native" Narratives of Connectedness: Surrogate Motherhood and Technology"
Joseph Dumit with Sylvia Sensiper
"Living with the 'Truths' of DES: Toward and Anthropology of Facts"
Elizabeth Cartwright
The Logic of Heartbeats: Electronic Fetal Monitoring and Biomedically Constructed
Birth
Robbie Davis-Floyd
From Technobirth to Cyborg Babies: Reflections on the Emergent Discourse
of a Holistic Anthropologist
Jennifer Croissant
Growing Up Cyborg: Developmental Stories for Postmodern Children
Mizuko Ito
Inhabiting Multilple Worlds: Making Sense of SimCity 2000 TM in the Fifth
Dimension
Sherry Turkle
Playing with Artificial Life
Anne A. Hill
Children of Metis: Beyond Zeus the Creator
Paganism and the Possibilities for Embodied Cyborg Childraising