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Domesticating Organ Transplant: Familial Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico

by Megan Crowley-Matoka

Duke University Press, 2016
eISBN: 978-0-8223-7463-3 | Paper: 978-0-8223-6067-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-6052-0
Library of Congress Classification RD575.C77 2016

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Organ transplant in Mexico is overwhelmingly a family matter, utterly dependent on kidneys from living relatives—not from stranger donors typical elsewhere. Yet Mexican transplant is also a public affair that is proudly performed primarily in state-run hospitals. In Domesticating Organ Transplant, Megan Crowley-Matoka examines the intimate dynamics and complex politics of kidney transplant, drawing on extensive fieldwork with patients, families, medical professionals, and government and religious leaders in Guadalajara. Weaving together haunting stories and sometimes surprising statistics culled from hundreds of transplant cases, she offers nuanced insight into the way iconic notions about mothers, miracles, and mestizos shape how some lives are saved and others are risked through transplantation. Crowley-Matoka argues that as familial donors render transplant culturally familiar, this fraught form of medicine is deeply enabled in Mexico by its domestication as both private matter of home and proud product of the nation. Analyzing the everyday effects of transplant’s own iconic power as an intervention that exemplifies medicine’s death-defying promise and commodifying perils, Crowley-Matoka illuminates how embodied experience, clinical practice, and national identity produce one another.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Megan Crowley-Matoka is Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University.

REVIEWS

"Crowley-Matoka’s semiotic-inspired approach successfully offers new insights into a growing body of anthropological work on organ transplantation."

-- Parsa Bastani Somatosphere

"Crowley-Matoka’s ethnographic evidence is compelling, and her sensitive examination of what are very often matters of life and death makes clear how intimate experiences reveal a good deal about life in contemporary Mexico and the politics of transplantation more generally."

-- Lauren A. Wynne Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"If it is the duty of ethnography to complicate our understanding of the world, then Crowley-Matoka has more than fulfilled her responsibility.... The book’s great strength is the depth of interview material, often acquired under very difficult circumstances, and the modesty that the author brings to her own role as reporter."

-- Donald Joralemon Journal of Anthropological Research

"Domesticating Organ Transplant is an engaging and compelling ethnography that makes important contributions to the anthropology of transplant and medical anthropology."

-- Cristina T. Bejarano Anthropological Quarterly

"A remarkably well-written work of anthropology, enriched throughout with well-balanced, reflexive, and theoretically challenging insights.”

-- Marie Le Clainche-Piel Medicine Anthropology Theory

"Based on extensive fieldwork with patients, Crowley-Matoka offers a fascinating insight into how notions about motherhood, miracles and mestizos shape the ways in which lives are transformed by transplantation, and how the social and familial consequences reverberate for many years thereafter."

-- Gavin O'Toole Latin American Review of Books

"A beautifully written and theoretically perceptive exploration of both the biological and existential realms, Crowley-Matoka’s study deserves a wide readership. It makes a significant contribution to scholarly literature on medical anthropology, bioethics, and moral politics in Mexico.... The book is a must-read for anyone interested in medical anthropology in Latin America."

-- Steven J. Bachelor The Latin Americanist

"A compelling ethnographic account of the cultural and biopolitical nature of kidney donation and transplantation in Mexico. . . . Given its ethnographic richness and depth of analysis, this book will appeal to multiple audiences, especially those interested in anthropological studies of health and biomedical practices in Latin America and the growing literature on organ transplant and its corporeal and cultural implications. This book is a robust, yet refined addition, to both these areas of inquiry."

-- Shana Harris Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part I. Giving Kidneys (Or Not)

1. Living Organ Donation, Bioavailability, and Ethical Domesticity 33

2. Cadaveric Organ Donation, Biounavailability, and Slippery States 65

Part II. Getting Kidneys (Or Not)

3. Being Worthy of Transplant, Embodying Transplant's Worth 109

4. The Unsung Story of Posttransplant Life 147

Part III. Framing Transplantation

5. Gifts, Commodities, and Analytic Icons in the Anthropological Lives of Organs 187

6. Scientists, Saints, and Monsters in Transplant Medicine 225

Coda 261

Notes 267

References 285

Index 307

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