14 R.M. Shaw
While the values of donors and tissue providers are not necessarily
aligned with the interests of biocapital, educational and recruitment organi-
sations seek to incorporate altruistic ideals into promotional discourse where
possible, to encourage donation awareness and engagement and to provide
justificatory accounts for individuals who want to donate. As Healy ( 2006 :
2) points out, normative scripts promoting non-remunerated bodily gifting,
such as blood and organ donation, ‘provide people with reasons and oppor-
tunities to give’. Indeed, the kind of emotional labour that Arlie Hochschild
( 1983 ) talked about in her ground-breaking sociological study of flight
attendants as a condition of employment in late industrial capitalism plays
a significant role in the donation and reception of body parts and fragments
in the global bioeconomy, offering scripts not only for donors who provide
biological materials for use, but also for organisations and institutions with
vested interests in promoting tissue exchange.
The feeling rules, to use Hochschild’s language‚ around donative
acts, such as gamete or organ donation, influence and shape the kinds
of affective responses permitted by donors, recipients and health pro-
fessionals in these institutional contexts (Shaw 2008a). As research on
ovarian egg donation in the USA (Almeling 2011 ‚ 2009 ) and Spain
(Kroløkke 2015 ) shows‚ when affective and reproductive labour is
mixed with material labour‚ egg providers’ claims of empathy with
infertile individuals and couples effectively distance them from the neg-
ative charge of monetary self-interest, while simultaneously providing
an effective moral façade for fertility clinics in the business of profiting
from gamete donation. Although egg providers may enjoy the chance
to go on a holiday to a foreign destination in the process of donating
oöcytes, this aspect of their journey is downplayed to recipients so as to
frame their donation as affective and altruistic.
Altruistic scripts that promote relational gifting heighten the percep-
tion of generosity between individuals, connecting them to one another
by their affective alignment with communities of belonging. When
gifting takes this form it is not altruistic in the sense of being one-way,
unconditional and disinterested, but is based on values of solidarity
(Pennings 2015 ; Rose and Novas 2005 ). Women who donate their sur-
plus breastmilk to babies in need, for instance, not only conform to ide-
ologies around responsible motherhood by providing their infants with
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