Networks

ReCAP

Reproduction: Critical Approaches and Perspectives on Pregnancy, Birth, and (Non)Parenthood 

Reproduction is a central social domain in which ideas and practices relating to the body, gender, kinship, and belonging are negotiated. Pregnancy and birth are not only biomedical processes, but 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.

Critical perspectives on reproduction focus on the complexity of these processes: How do social inequalities, for example in terms of class, race, gender, or disability, affect experiences and representations of pregnancy and birth? What tensions arise when reproductive technologies open up new possibilities on the one hand, but raise questions of accessibility, commercialization, and regulation on the other? What meanings do ideas of motherhood, fatherhood, and parenthood take on in plural family forms—and what political struggles arise around recognition and rights?

It is equally important to take non-parenthood seriously as an independent area of reproductive research: this includes not only decisions against having children, social attributions to “childless” people, or new forms of solidarity-based care beyond traditional parental roles and family forms, but also experiences of unwanted childlessness or surrogacy, which open up alternative concepts of community and responsibility.

The network sees itself as a platform for interdisciplinary discussions that combine perspectives and analyses from the humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences. The aim is to create a space for exchange and collaboration in which researchers can address and discuss questions of embodiment, subjectivity, normativity, and power in the context of reproduction in all their complexity.

The network meets online every two months to discuss key scientific contributions and its own research. Annual face-to-face workshops and network meetings are in the planning stage. Our working languages are English and German, and we are flexible in adapting these as needed.

Network Initiators:

Dr. Isabel Kalous (Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Dr. Sinah Kloß (Bonn)

Luvena Kopp (Bonn)

Dr. Lisa Krall (Cologne)

Dr. Christina Lammer (Duisburg-Essen)