ABSTRACT
A point still made in social scientific commentary on new reproductive and genetic technologies is that they present nothing new. This argument has it that people (cultures) are infinitely adaptable and the ‘biological facts’ of human reproduction are already assimilated and ‘represented’ in all kinds of different ways across the world. From such a vantage point, technological intervention in conception presents just another innovation in the many and diverse ways in which human societies create and constitute persons and social relationships. Kinship, from this perspective, is an infinitely malleable and ‘plastic’ institution.
