ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts presents in the subsequent chapters. This part examines the nature of ‘scientific’ knowledge and, by implication, what may be the appropriate terms for delineating relations among it, anthropology and ‘lay beliefs’. It deals with a description of a prevalent Western ethos of ‘scientism’ wherein it is assumed that a certain scientific literacy, an ability to retain bits and bytes of objective information, underlies a rightful claim to citizenship in a contemporary democracy. The public understanding of science comes about by individuals embedding New Reproductive Technologies within existing local, social, moral and spiritual universes; they make sense of new science by way of old idioms such as kinship, and as they engage with it and in the context of habitual social interactions. While fashioning new and alternative electronic connections, locations and networks, the overriding life experience made manifest is a sense of disconnection.
