Strange Harvest

by Sharp, Lesley A.

• ISBN13: 9780520247840
• ISBN10: 0520247841
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-20
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Strange Harvestilluminates the wondrous yet disquieting medical realm of organ transplantation by drawing on the voices of those most deeply involved: transplant recipients, clinical specialists, and the surviving kin of deceased organ donors. In this rich and deeply engaging ethnographic study, anthropologist Lesley Sharp explores how these parties think about death, loss, and mourning, especially in light of medical taboos surrounding donor anonymity. As Sharp argues, new forms of embodied intimacy arise in response, and the riveting insights gleaned from her interviews, observations, and descriptions of donor memorials and other transplant events expose how patients and donor families make sense of the transfer of body parts from the dead to the living. For instance, all must grapple with complex yet contradictory clinical assertions of death as easily detectable and absolute; nevertheless, transplants are regularly celebrated as forms of rebirth, and donors as living on in others' bodies. New forms of sociality arise, too: recipients and donors' relatives may defy sanctions against communication, and through personal encounters strangers are transformed into kin. Sharp also considers current experimental research efforts to develop alternative sources for human parts, with prototypes ranging from genetically altered animals to sophisticated mechanical devices. These future trajectories generate intriguing responses among both scientists and transplant recipients as they consider how such alternatives might reshape established--yet unusual--forms of embodied intimacy.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
INTRODUCTION: STRANGE HARVEST	1	(41)
The Ideological Underpinnings of Organ Transfer	7	(22)
Studying Transplantation in American Contexts	29	(13)
1. WE ARE THE DEAD MEN: MIND OVER MATTER	42	(59)
A Most Peculiar Death	47	(27)
Reconstructing Donor Histories	74	(18)
Body Economies	92	(9)
2. MEMORY WORK: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REPRESENTATIONS OF SUFFERING, LOSS, AND REDEMPTION	101	(58)
Recipient Suffering and Renewal	107	(16)
Honoring the Dead in Safe, Public Places	123	(13)
The Private Lives of Donor Kin	136	(23)
3. PUBLIC ENCOUNTERS AS SUBVERSIVE ACTS	159	(47)
Bureaucratic Constraints on Social Desire	161	(20)
The Ties That Bind	181	(9)
Claiming the Donor Body	190	(16)
4. HUMAN HYBRIDITY: SCIENTIFIC LONGING AND THE DANGERS OF DIFFERENCE	206	(36)
Dangerous Miracles	207	(4)
Professional Desires to Cultivate Nature	211	(16)
Denatured Bodies and Transformed Selves	227	(8)
Nature's Body	235	(7)
EPILOGUE	242	(5)
Notes	247	(16)
Glossary	263	(6)
References	269	(30)
Index	299