MONOGRAPHIC HAPPY HOUR with AYO WAHLBERG on
“GOOD QUALITY”
Monday the 22nd of October, 18-20, in Ethnographic Exploratory (4.1.12)
CSS Øster Farigmagsgade 5, 1353 København K
Building 4, 1st floor, room 12
Programme:
18.00-18.05 Welcome from Antropologforeningen
18.05-18.40 Presentation of the book “Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China” by Ayo Wahlberg, Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Copenhagen University
18.40-19.05 Discussion of the book by Laura Emdal Navne, Researcher at VIVE, the Danish Center for Social Science Research, Ph.D. and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Public Health, Copenhagen University
19.05-19.20 Break
19.20-20.00 Open floor for discussion
We will serve snacks, wine and beer. Everyone is welcome! We look forward to seeing you!
More information about the book:
From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one to two million azoospermic men–those who are unable to produce their own sperm–the demand remains insatiable. China’s twenty-two sperm banks cannot keep up, spurring sperm bank directors to publicly lament chronic shortages and even warn of a national ‘sperm crisis’ (jingzi weiji).
Good Quality explores the issues behind the crisis, including declining sperm quality in the country due to environmental pollution, as well as a chronic national shortage of donors. In doing so, Wahlberg outlines the specific style of Chinese sperm banking that has emerged, shaped by the particular cultural, juridical, economic and social configurations that make up China’s restrictive reproductive complex. Good Quality shows how this high-throughput style shapes the ways in which men experience donation and how sperm is made available to couples who can afford it.
Ayo Wahlberg is professor at the Department of Anthropology, Copenhagen University.