Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses contemporary Norwegian bio-ethics, by exploring an indigenous discursive phenomena: the notion of a “sorting society”. The persuasive power of this notion rests on its capacity to bring together politics, science and religion, articulating a tension between individual and society.

Paper long abstract:

As biosciences are reshaping the concepts and definitions of life and death (Franklin and Lock), biotechnologies have become the subject of politics, power and knowledge worldwide, often converging in contested sites where fundamental, yet contradictory, values are exposed. These values are variously grounded, gaining their legitimacy from different orders of truth. Addressing contemporary Norwegian bio-politics, this paper explores one such contested site through a current discursive phenomenon particular to Norway: the notion of a "sorting society". The term is evocative, suggesting selection, discrimination, even eugenics. It is also negative. Carrying with it an underlying morality, this phenomenon works at the interface between science, religion and the state creating an ethical publicity. The notion of a sorting society articulates a fundamental tension between individual and society.

Paper short abstract:

Darwin's theory of natural selection and human societies "fight for life" has an important role in Peter Singer's theory of bio-ethics as it acts as a source of values, knowledge and truth within anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

Evolutionary theory and Darwin's theory of natural selection is an influential paradigm within biology but yet it has no proponents within the theological field.

An important factor in twenty-first century anthropology and philosophy is 'Social Darwinism' which has its foundations in Utilitarian theory. Social Darwinism underpins Peter Singer's work on ethics and the study of bioethics of the western world. Natural selection in human society has led to a continuous conflict between religion and science for instance over topics such as abortion or euthanasia.

These western bioethical questions require a novel form of morality and truth and a new vision of the individual in order to answer them.

Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes an anthropological analysis of the Italian legislation regulating assisted procreation. It highlights the moral values legislators want to convey and the type of society they try to shape. It concentrates especially on the meanings of concepts like nature, reproduction and family in the context of this legislation.

Paper long abstract:

The diffusion of assisted reproductive technologies strongly challenge the notion of nature, especially in the field of human reproduction. As a result, the re-formulation of the concept of nature is a matter of concern to religious and scientific actors. However, as these technologies deal with the reproduction and maintenance of society (affecting kinship-relations and notions of body, substance, and sexuality), they also enter the sphere of competence of political actors, such as politicians and law-makers. The choices national and regional legislators make in the regulation of assisted reproduction can be seen as the expression of local, morally oriented answers to a globally available science.

This paper focuses on Italy, one of the most restrictive countries in Europe with regard to the legislation on assisted procreation. Following an anthropological approach, the paper seeks to analyze the actual Italian legislation on medically assisted procreation (Law 40 - February 19, 2004) in relation to the respective public debate. The objective of the analysis is to highlight the moral values legislators want to convey, the role they attribute to the law as a means of influencing social practices, and the type of society they try to shape. The paper concentrates especially on the meanings that concepts like nature, reproduction and family acquire in the context of this law and provides an overview of the legal, political and moral framework in which this law is conceived.

This paper builds on the master thesis I defended at the EHESS in June 2007, and forms part of my current PhD research at the EUI.

Paper short abstract:

With international adoption growing, states try to find rules for getting ethic transaction between contracting countries.What would be good parents to replace the other ones ? I will present here a draft analyse of the discussions heard on this subject among the different actors of a French agency for adoption.

Paper long abstract:

With international adoption growing, contracting states try to find rules that will regulate child circulation within frames defined by the Hague Convention and by the International Convention for the Rights of Children. Both these conventions are based on the children's rights to have a family, to be raised by some parents, by a father and a mother. Countries then try to establish criteria to define first an ethic transaction between contracting countries and second what would be good parents to replace those the children could have kept from their birth.

I will put the emphasis on this second issue and I will present here a draft analyse of the discussions heard on this subject among the different actors of an important French agency for adoption.

After describing to you the « objective » rules that this agency follows to choose candidates to adoption whom it will accompany until they become parents, I would like to launch a reflection on the arguments used to refuse those same candidates who have already passed the "objective" rules' barrier. A real effort of coherence is required in the selection of future parents so that they are selected on the same criteria, but then what should be the logic behind the criteria? At what level? What certainties should be kept to reduce the risks attached to this so openly social kinship ?

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I wish to explore how a fact characteristic of male human nature such as nocturnal emissions is seen by medieval Catholic theologians from different points of view depending on whether it is defined as involuntary and natural or resulting for autoeroticism and hence aberrant and sinful

Paper long abstract:

In my study, I attempt to analyse the relationships between bodily nature and human will in the male body. Researchers have very often focused the analysis upon the ideas related to the naturally incontrollable and lascivious female body, source of all evil. Where did this fear of the female body and its physiology come from? Can we find its origins in the very same ideas related to the male body? By using sources from John Cassian and Augustine up to Thomas Aquinas, I wish to examine how the male body was conceptualised in its particular struggle between nature and morality. To this effect, I shall take as a central phenomenon nocturnal seminal emissions. This is a privileged location from which to observe how that battle was fought and how a balance was searched between body and ascetic will. In this connection, I will also look at the meaning of dreams and illusions in general in medieval imaginary. The effort to keep the movements of the flesh under control constitutes a privileged observatory from which to consider the mind-body interface in medieval man. Morality, physiology and psychological implications appear intertwined in a complex nexus that allows us to trace the ways in which men perceived their own nature (and to see what relationships, and in what terms, were established between body and mind).

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I wish to examine role of cultural diversity in the process of cognition.. I’ll concentrate on Folk traditions in weather forecast for explaining the meaning of “wide” views on Nature in process of cognitive activity.

Paper long abstract:

Folk experience in observing Nature gives some important data for understanding the role of cultural diversity in the process of cognition. Folk meteorology is a sphere of human activity organically connected specifically with the life support activity and modes of life. The Folk meteorology of Russian peasants (19th century) can illustrate this. Russian peasants created a unique system of life support activity in difficult natural environments, specifically the climate conditions of the European part Russia. The special role of emotional factors in the process of the observation of Nature and fixing of facts and data is evident.

In my paper, I'll focus attention on testing the role of "wide" views in the process of observing and assimilating Nature and the meaning and impact of cultural diversity in the process of cognitive activity with regard to this particular activity.

Paper short abstract:

Traditional Indian medicine is a paradigmatic case in which different conceptions of nature and the ways to know it are matched. From pre-independence nationalist rhetoric up to our days, the spiritual and the scientific discourse have met to ground in nature’s laws the modern individual’s necessity to express him/herself.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional medicine (ayurveda) was taken by Indian nationalism as a synecdoche for traditional culture. In the face of European claims for scientific and technologic pre-eminence, Indian thinkers such as Aurobindo, Vivekananda, Radakrishnan, accepted European representations of Indian thinking as mystic, intuitive, visionary, in order to define it as a way to know reality distinctive of Indian identity, as much effective as Western scientific discourse and complementary to it.

Ayurvedic medicine was regarded by some scholars as the leading field in which Indian ability to produce scientifically effective knowledge expressed itself.

Reinterpretations of traditional medical concepts by means of biomedical theories helped to ground in natural, instead that in social rules, prescriptions given by ayurvedic texts. This accounts for the increasing interest that ayurvedic medicine arouses in Western countries, especially among those who wish values to be reintroduced in biomedical theory.

I argue, by the results of an inquiry among ayurvedic practicians in Turin, that reinterpretations of ayurvedic medicine introduce in a pre-modern cosmology a romantic, expressive conception of the human nature, as defined by Charles Taylor.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will show how new reproductive technologies reshape »the natural facts« of a conception, a birth and an understanding of a family.

Paper long abstract:

New reproductive technologies and biotechnology challenge many common facts about nature. Different forms of the assisted conception can change the understanding of a family, a parenthood, a personhood as well as a personal identity.

Based on the interviews with the physicians and other professionals at the fertility clinic, the peculiar understanding of "natural technologies" will be discussed. The idea of »natural technology« or technology that imitates nature was a powerful argument when a family and a parenthood were debated some years ago in Slovenia when the new legislation on assisted reproduction was adopted.

In this paper, I would like to show that nature and culture can no longer be defined in the separate discourses. The cultural and natural facts are increasingly becoming fluid and even a matter of negotiation. Therefore, it is perhaps necessary to abandon those concepts as the separate entities and observe them as a single concept seen from the different viewpoints.

Paper short abstract:

Ethnography of "family constellation" performances both in international and all-Italian groups points to what can be considered as a lack of ancestorship generating suffering in “western” industrialized countries. Discourses on a "naturally" structured person often in contrast with different national politics and religious imprint intertwine in anchoring conflicting patterns into individuals’ intimacy.

Paper long abstract:

What is the nature of family? Why is ritual therapeutically effective when one goes against such "nature" and suffers?

Family Constellation Therapy, a systemic approach addressing individual suffering through rituals, offers answers to such questions. Bert Hellinger, a former missionary who founded the method, says he drew inspiration upon observing Zulu healing rituals involving ancestors, in a sort of reverse ethnopsychiatry. FTC therapy is cherished by many European psychologists: attuning to the nature and the laws of families, as Hellinger's theory goes, seems healing to both therapists and patients.

In this paper I draw on ethnography of FCT performances both in international and all-Italian groups in order to underline what can be considered as a lack of ancestorship generating suffering in "western" industrialized countries.The starting point of this research being the Osho Meditation Resort in Pune (India) and the FCT I observed there, in a specific devotional (albeit unintentionally so) context, I will focus on the relationtip between ancestorship, local history and divinity as it is theorized by both participants and therapists. FTC ethnography questions the anthropological literature about "ethnic" persons observed to be irretrievably rooted in kin and local relationships. It points to an urge for anthropologists to study what their dominant discourses consider as a "naturally" structured person and how the national politics and the religious imprint intertwine in anchoring conflicting patterns into individuals' intimacy. Thus, a form of psychotherapy becomes a legitimate anthropological field of observation.

Paper short abstract:

In the context of an ethnography of Reproductive Technologies in Barcelona I’ll analyse the difference between what is said and represented and what is done and is unrepresented. This distinction applies to see differences between the dogmatic discourse of religion and what is done by a community of believers or non-believers in relation to what it can be done or not in relation to the manipulation of human life. How are assembled norms and facts of nature in the context of moralities of kinship and religion?

Paper long abstract:

Nature has had a changing meaning though history and across cultures. A minimal definition of nature is what is exterior to human conscience - from human nature itself to physical nature. From this perspective nature has been a good tool to assemble different moralities to a minimum of basic norms. Nature had a basic rationality to be described by scientific laws or to be applied to human behaviour through norms. However, this perspective on nature is pre-Darwinian. Nature nowadays is not rational and it stops being an order. Is bio-ethics a good tool to assemble biology and ethics? How can be assembled norms and facts of nature? Is kinship a tool to assemble facts of "nature" with facts of "culture"? How are religious moralities assembled with artefacts of nature? In this paper I'll examine how moralities of kinship and moralities of religion are related or opposed in the context of reproductive technologies. In the context of an ethnography of Reproductive Technologies in Barcelona I'll analyse the difference between what is said and represented and what is done and is unrepresented. This distinction applies to see differences between the dogmatic discourse of religion and what is done by a community of believers or non-believers in relation to what it can be done or not in relation to the manipulation of human life. How are assembled norms and facts of nature in the context of moralities of kinship and religion?