Openness about sperm and egg donation and the regulation of donor anonymity or non-anonymity are new phenomena. How do affected families, clinics, and regulators deal with information about gamete donors and the donation itself? And how does this knowledge management contribute to the creation and enactment of kinship? Addressing these questions in Germany and Britain, this ethnography makes a comparative contribution to the empirical and theoretical analysis of kin-formation and social change. Maren Klotz reveals a contemporary renegotiation of the values of privacy, information-sharing, and connectedness as they relate to the social, clinical, and regulatory management of kinship information. Transparency, not genetics, is the moral imperative, and instead of an unambiguously discernible "geneticization," her findings on donor non-anonymity and parental openness display a pattern of "transparentization." This pattern represents a shift in authority over kinship away from the sometimes highhanded reproductive medical profession towards concerned groups, parents-by-donation, and policymakers. Bekommt ein Paar ein Kind mithilfe von gespendeten Ei- und Samenzellen, stellt sich die Frage, wie diese Familie mit dem Wissen um die Spende im Alltag umgeht. Maren Klotz untersucht, wie Verwandtschaft vor diesem Hintergrund konstruiert wird. Sie zeichnet ein Bild von Familiengründung im 21. Jahrhundert, das weniger von einer Relevanz genetischen Wissens geprägt ist, als vielmehr von Transparenz und Informationsfreiheit als neuem moralischem Gebot. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Humboldt-Preis 2013 der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Maren Klotz ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Europäische Ethnologie der HU Berlin.

Acknowledgements 11

1. Introduction 13

2. Three Conceptual Arrival Scenes: Comparative Vantage Point, Kinship and Knowledge, Kinship Matters 29

Scene 1: Knowledge-Management During Gamete Donation as Policy Problem in Britain and Germany 31

Scene 2: Kinship and Knowledge in Anthropology 41

Scene 3: What's the Matter with Kinship? 55

3. Fieldwork and Data Analysis 65

4. Knowing Kinship-by-Donation as Parents: Reflections and Histories 79

4.1 What is Kinship? Characteristic Tensions of Choice, (Corporeal) Continuity, and Love 81

4.2 Reproductive Histories and DI as a Technology of the Last Resort 90

5. Clinical Knowledge-Management and Beyond: How Kinship-by-Donation Becomes Constituted in Clinics 103

5.1 Local Fieldwork-Local Regulations 106

5.2 The Medical Trajectory of Knowing Kinship-by-Donation: The WHO standard, Viruses, and Excel Sheets 117

5.3 The Accessible Clinical/Institutional Trajectory of Knowing Kinship-by-Donation: Sealed Envelopes, Donor Files, and a National Registry 169

6. Familial Knowledge-Management: Emerging Canons and Parental Reflections 185

6.1 Normative Canons of Knowledge-Management 186

6.2 Familial Moralities of Knowledge-Management 219

7. Familial Knowledge-Management: Everyday Practices and Emerging Relations 229

7.1 Getting to Know the Donor: The Constitution of Administered Relations 231

7.2 Of Donors and Daddies, Fathers, (Co-)Mothers, Moms, and Mommies: Naming and Terminology Work 247

7.3 Telling the Child 257

7.4 Subversive Knowledge-Management and Wayward Relations 266

8. Familial Knowledge-Management: Confrontations and Tactics 293

8.1 Resemblance-Talk: "The old folks would always say 'Just like Daddy', no matter how the child looks like" 295

8.2 Medical History: "Not that we're aware of " 311

8.3 Kinship Terminology: "Will they meet their real father?" 317

8.4 Not Conforming to the Reproductive Norm: "Is it true that Jonas has two moms?" 318

8.5 Biological Reproduction as a Confirmation of Heterosexual Love and Virility: "Well done, nice shot!" 322

8.6 The Child Talks: "If we have eggs in the kitchen, we also need sperm for Daddy" 326

9. Conclusions 331

9.1 National and Transnational Regulation and the Constitution of Kinship-by-Donation 333

9.2 Transparentization 337

9.3 Diverse Fields of Authoritative Knowledge-Production 344

9.4 Agency and Reflexive Expertise 346

Abbreviations 353

List of Figures 355

Bibliography 359

Index 379