Displacements of meaning and appropriation of scientific categories:

An approach to practices linked to Assisted Human Reproduction Technologies in Argentina

Abstract

Assisted human reproduction technologies unleash multiple potentialities for bodies, identities, and lives to be constructed through technological intervention based on the mobilization of molecular entities. These technologies involve a tense and contradictory articulation of meanings established in belief systems and norms. Based on ethnographic experiences and in-depth interviews with professionals involved in fertility clinic procedures in Argentina and users who have used these practices, this paper analyzes the differential circulation of information among the participating subjects. We will see that when practices mobilize actors “allied” to the project of parenthood, professionals employ a dual mechanism in the treatment of official information, understood as scientific, in which they seek to minimize or increase the importance of “genetic inheritance” depending on the patient users and the bodies—or biofragments—involved (donors and surrogates). Thus, the practices and meanings of assisted human reproduction are co-produced, meaning they result from a dynamic interweaving of technical, scientific, kinship, gender, emotional, legal, political, and economic aspects.

Keywords: Reproductive technologies. Information. Genetics.

Arte da capa por: Prepared by the author with the aid of AI, 2026.