Conceiving Market, Bearing Morality: The Development of Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Local/Cross-Border Reproductive Care in Taiwan

• In Event: 4341 - Markets and Morality

Abstract

This research moves beyond the civilizing versus destructive moral views of market society to examine the emerging local/transnational Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) market in Taiwan. The author adopts Fourcade and Healy’s (2007) approach of “moralized market” to understand the moral landscape of an emerging market and its economic orders. Multiple research methods were utilized for data collection, mainly fieldwork, in-depth interview, and secondary source data search. The author argues that social actors mobilize contesting justificatory logics to do moral legitimacy, through which the moral and economic orders of commencing ARTs care have been generated, practiced, and experienced. In addition, my findings suggest that there is a variation in the ARTs market organization. This research contributes to the old question about morality and market in economics and economic sociology. Positioning in economic and organizational sociology, feminist studies, and science, technology, and society (STS) studies, this research specifically contributes to the body of literature on the moralized market by incorporating techno-scientific and feminist lens, and contributes to the previous feminist and STS studies of the ARTs by incorporating a moralized market approach. Moreover, this research offers an empirical understanding of the emerging global ARTs market in our current time.

Author

• Wen-Ling Kung, State University of New York, University at Albany