4 R.M. Shaw
2001 , 2007a, 2007b, 2008 ; Waldby 2000 , 2002 ; Waldby and Mitchell
2006 ; Waldby and Cooper 2008 , 2010 ). These scholars are not only
interested in how body parts and bodily fragments move between indi-
viduals, families and strangers to produce new subjectivities, identi-
ties and biosocial groups; they are interested in the transformation of
biological materials as they travel between biobanks, laboratories and
cultures and across transnational territories. The essays in this edited
volume contribute to this conversation, drawing on original research
from many viewpoints to examine the social, cultural, ethical and eco-
nomic dimensions of bodily exchange in the areas of fertility, clinical
research, health and medicine.
In this volume, the term bioethics is read broadly to refer to schol-
arship concerning a range of issues relating to biomedical research,
technological innovation and health therapy associated with tissue
provision, donation and exchange. In keeping with the interdisci-
plinary and multidisciplinary spirit of global bioethics, we include
chapters in the volume by scholars working in the fields of anatomy,
anthropology, biochemistry, cultural and media studies, medicine,
nursing and midwifery studies, philosophy, psychology, and sociol-
ogy. The volume is thematically organised into four sections: stem cell
research, assisted human reproduction, organ donation and transplan-
tation, and breastmilk exchange. The chapters in each section exam-
ine the framing of bodily exchange through the lens of altruism and
gift and commodity relations; bioethical conundrums around the cir-
culation of human biological materials and their legal and regulatory
limits in the global context; the economic benefits and health values
attributed to various body parts and products in the present climate;
and the matter of immaterial labour and affective relations that are
formed between donors, recipients and other actors involved in tissue
exchange processes.
In the title of the edited collection‚ we use the notion of human bio-
logical materials generically to refer to the separation of bodily fluids,
cells, reproductive tissue (e.g. gametes and embryos) and solid organs
as objects from the body. This term, which is borrowed from Margaret
Lock and Vinh-Kim Nguyen ( 2010 : 206), is used in much the same
way as Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell ( 2006 : 6) deploy the
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