Chapter 17 The Racial Contours of Queer Reproduction

In this chapter, we bring queer theory into dialogue with critical race studies. We ask “How does the literature in queer kinship engage with the issues of race and intersecting inequalities?’’ This chapter builds upon the foundational literature in queer family studies. It departs from the foundational literature in the anthropology of reproduction by placing the role that racial hierarchies and racial logics play at the center of analysis. We refer to family forms that do not conform to heteronormative, monoracial models. This chapter also advances debates in anthropology that illuminate the social, cultural, and political imperatives that confer respectability and legitimacy to transgressive family forms. Given the changing legal and global landscape, we offer a nuanced analysis of the ways that queer families employ racial and cultural logics as they engage with technologies in their pathways to parenthood. Finally, our analysis innovates and renovates queer family studies by proving an analysis of the ways that heteronormativity and Whiteness mark all logics of reproduction in the early twenty-first century

Chapter 17 The Racial Contours of Queer Reproduction

In this chapter, we bring queer theory into dialogue with critical race studies. We ask “How does the literature in queer kinship engage with the issues of race and intersecting inequalities?’’ This chapter builds upon the foundational literature in queer family studies. It departs from the foundational literature in the anthropology of reproduction by placing the role that racial hierarchies and racial logics play at the center of analysis. We refer to family forms that do not conform to heteronormative, monoracial models. This chapter also advances debates in anthropology that illuminate the social, cultural, and political imperatives that confer respectability and legitimacy to transgressive family forms. Given the changing legal and global landscape, we offer a nuanced analysis of the ways that queer families employ racial and cultural logics as they engage with technologies in their pathways to parenthood. Finally, our analysis innovates and renovates queer family studies by proving an analysis of the ways that heteronormativity and Whiteness mark all logics of reproduction in the early twenty-first century

The Racial Contours of Queer Reproduction

In this chapter, we bring queer theory into dialogue with critical race studies. We ask “How does the literature in queer kinship engage with the issues of race and intersecting inequalities? This chapter builds upon the foundational literature in queer family studies. It departs from the foundational in anthropology of reproduction by placing the role that racial hierarchies and racial logics play at the center of analysis. We refer to family forms that do not conform to heteronormative, monoracial models. This chapter also advances debates in anthropology that illuminate the social, cultural and political imperatives that confer respectability and legitimacy to transgressive family forms. Given the changing legal and global landscape, we offer a nuanced analysis of the ways that queer families employ racial and cultural logics as they engage with technologies in their pathways to parenthood. Finally, our analysis innovates and renovates queer family studies by proving an analysis of the ways that heteronormativity and whiteness mark all logics of reproduction in the early twenty-first century

Making and breaking families – reading queer reproductions, stratified reproduction and reproductive justice together

In February 2016 we convened a workshop at UC Berkeley, Making Families: Transnational Surrogacy, Queer Kinship, and Reproductive Justice. We were seeking to bring into direct conversation three theoretical frameworks that have each transformed scholarship and influenced practice around transnational surrogacy and reproduction: ‘stratified reproduction’, ‘reproductive justice’, and ‘queer reproductions’. Given the different intellectual and activist genealogies of these three fields, our aim in the workshop and in this resulting symposium issue was twofold: firstly, to draw out the explicit and implicit contributions of these three areas to understanding and helping shape the changing landscape of transnational surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology (ART) and secondly, to work through apparent tensions among these three approaches so as to forge intellectual and political solidarities that can strengthen scholarship and influence policy.Wellcome Trust (grant no. 100606 and grant no. 209829/Z/17/Z); European Commission (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF, grant no. 629341); Spanish Ministry of Economy, Competitiveness and Industry (grant no. CSO2015-64551-C3-1-R

The Contexts, Paradoxes, and Rewards of Multidisciplinary Teaching

In the Fall of 2021 we co-taught a graduate seminar that launched a year long Mellon Sawyer series. In this essay, we reflect on the contexts, paradoxes and processes that informed our multidisciplinary collaboration teaching a Sawyer Seminar on Race, Migration and White Supremacy in California. We believed that it was vital to being with the migration experiences of Native Americans from rural areas to urban California. We sought to position American Indian migration histories as foundational to cultural and historical understandings of migration to California. Our account of our pedagogical practices details the rewards and realities of collaborative teaching at a public research university. We identify the paradoxes and tensions that we encountered as we developed a syllabus that did not simply "add and stir" different methodologies, histories or fields, but instead, synthesized theoretical and pedagogical across film, art and media studies, history and sociology.

Visual Sociology in a Discipline of Words: Racial Literacy, Visual Literacy and Qualitative Research Methods

This article analyzes the limitations of qualitative research methods that over-privilege textual analysis in North American sociology graduate programs. I argue that visual literacy, as a methodological tool, is neglected and marginalized in the graduate curriculum. Training in visual culture including the use of photography, film and video, can contribute to theoretically grounded empirical research on race and racism. A form of academic apartheid continues to restrict the types of qualitative research methods that are authorized and regularly taught in graduate programs in sociology

Visual Sociology in a Discipline of Words: Racial Literacy, Visual Literacy and Qualitative Research Methods

This article analyzes the limitations of qualitative research methods that over-privilege textual analysis in North American sociology graduate programs. I argue that visual literacy, as a methodological tool, is neglected and marginalized in the graduate curriculum. Training in visual culture including the use of photography, film and video, can contribute to theoretically grounded empirical research on race and racism. A form of academic apartheid continues to restrict the types of qualitative research methods that are authorized and regularly taught in graduate programs in sociology