Reproduction is a central social realm in which ideas and practices of body, gender, kinship, and belonging are negotiated. Not only do pregnancy and birth involve biomedical processes, but they are also embedded in cultural, social, and political contexts. Questions of parenthood—or non-parenthood—open up spaces for debate about social norms, power relations, and justice.
This workshop aims to bring together researchers inquiring into issues of reproduction—such as pregnancy, birth, and (non-)parenthood—from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. We are looking for interdisciplinary, theoretical, and empirical contributions that address various topics in this field of research, including:
- Reproduction, intersectionality, and social inequalities
- Reproductive technologies: possibilities, exclusions, political regulations
- Norms, representations, and narratives of motherhood, fatherhood, and parenthood within plural concepts of family and kinship
- Politics and practices of non-parenthood and alternative care concepts
- Embodiment, subjectivity, and normativity in the context of pregnancy, birth, and reproduction