The Substance of Sperm

In this chapter, the author examines the ways in which anthropologists, sociologists, and science and technology studies scholars working in different parts of the world have ethnographically engaged with sperm as a substance. Carried out in different parts of the world, ethnographic research has shown how sperm as a substance indexes masculinity, vitality, and “strength,” both individually and collectively; has become commodified and exchangeable through the work of sperm banks; has led to complex negotiations of kinship; and acts as a sentinel of today's global environmental crisis. The making of technosemen has been undergirded by what can be thought of as technologies of assurance – a configuration of strategies and techniques within which certain persons, activities, objects and/or substances come to be vouched for over others.