172 Gender insecurities, citizenship ideals and European trends in the use of biotechnologies

Friday, March 30, 2018: 11:00 AM-12:45 PM
Exchange North (InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile)
National health care and civil protection systems have grown reliant upon cutting-edge diagnostic, therapeutic and forensic technologies for decision making on citizen inclusion/exclusion. Biotechnologies promise authorities new systems intelligence through improvements in the quality, accuracy and reach of analytics on human conditions and needs. Motives for this shift include improvements in cost effectiveness, delivery efficiencies and better-informed patients. Although securitizing welfare systems, public health and social stability are critical concerns, the public promotion of biotech often emphasizes improved service equity, choice and justice. Bioanalytics ideally require comprehensive citizen participation, but can also segment populations by health and social status. Such evidence-based decisions raise Foucaudian biopolitical concerns on state control over the bodies of citizens that include expressions of sexuality and gender. Heightened oversight threatens to perpetuate the marginalization of sexual minorities and gender roles in unfamiliar ways. This paper session examines current biotechnologies that record and evaluate data on citizens’ health status captured before, during and even after the human life course. Our works consider the counter-narratives of human difference and new dynamics of belonging/exile that may arise from purely data-based understandings of gender, wellbeing and social participation.
Chair:
Shelley K. Grant
Discussant :
Claire Dunlop
Abolishing Anonymity in UK Donor Conceptions, the (un)Realized Fears of Gender Disparity in Child Creation
Shelley K. Grant, University of Washington/Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and Hawaii
Heteronormativity in Health Policy: The Impact of Budgetary Demands on Lesbian Mothers
Sarah Cooper, University of Exeter; Claire Dunlop, University of Exeter
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