Antropología Del Principio y El Fin de La Vida PDF

The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life
Author(s): Sharon R. Kaufman and Lynn M. Morgan

Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 34 (2005), pp. 317-341
Published by: Annual Reviews
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The Anthropology of the
Beginnings and Ends of Life

Sharon R. Kaufman1 and Lynn M. Morgan2
department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, University of California
San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0646; email: Kaufman@itsa.ucsf.edu
2
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley,
Massachusetts 01075-1426; email: lmmorgan@mtholyoke.edu
Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

2005.34:317^1
Key Words
Medical anthropology, biopolitics, social studies of science,
The Annual Review of
Anthropology is online at personhood, birth, death
anthro.annualreviews.org
Abstract
doi: 10.1146/
annurev.anthro.34.081804.120452 This reviews recent attention to the "be
essay anthropological
Copyright 2005 by ginnings" and "endings" of life. A large literature since the 1990s
Annual Reviews. All rights the trends and innovations that characterize an
highlights analytic
reserved to of the
attention the cultural production persons,
thropological
0084-6570/05/1021 naturalization of life, and the emergence of new Ufe forms. Part I of
0317$20.00 this outlines the coming-into-being, and attenua
essay completion
tion of personhood and how life and death are attributed, contested,
and enacted. Dominant themes include how connections are
forged
or severed between the living and the dead and the socio-politics
of dead, dying, and decaying bodies. The culture of medicine is ex
amined for its role in organizing and naming life and death. Part II
is organized by the turn to biopolitical analyses stimulated by the
work of Foucault. It encompasses the ways in which the biosciences
and with state govern forms of

biotechnologies, along practices,
and and new forms of life such as the stem cell, em
living dying
comatose, and brain dead, and it emphasizes the production of
bryo,
value. Much of this scholarship is informed by concepts of Hminality
(a period and state of being between social statuses) and subjectifi
catdon (inwhich notions of self, citizenship, life and itsmanagement
are linked to the production of knowledge and political forms of
regulation).
3I7

and ends of life been as stimulat
ginnings
Contents as it is now. Over the fifteen years,
ing past
scholars have become concerned
INTRODUCTION. 318 increasingly
with how the boundaries of life and death are
Problematizing "Beginnings" asserted and and with the iden
320 negotiated,
and"Endings". that such boundaries
tity categories construct,
PART I.MAKING THE PERSON,
and redefine. In this sense, the lit
THE LIVING,AND THE protect,
erature on the of the
DEAD . 320 anthropology begin
and ends of life echoes the recent an
nings
Producing Persons. 320
thropological interrogation of other epistemic
The Dead Make the Living:
boundaries, such as those between disciplines,
Attachment, Disengagement,
forms of knowledge, subjects, and territories.
and Rituals ofMourning. 323
The beginnings and the ends of life are the
Dead, Dying, and Decaying Bodies 325
to the var
The Culture ofMedicine matically linked, then, by attention
ied ways that humans constitute and disassem
Organizes the End of Life. 326
ble themselves and their social worlds.
When Death Comes at the
This review considers the consistencies
Beginning of Life. 327
and innovations that characterize
PARTn. THE BIOPOLITICSOF anthropo
attention to these In trademark
LIFE AND DEATH. 327 logical topics.
fashion, continue to attend
Cultural Forms at the anthropologists
Emergent
to the work of culture and the cre
... (reflexively)
Beginnings and Ends of Life 329
ation of meaning: in
the lived experience of
Making Value. 330
dividual actors, the collective ascription and
Between Life and Death,
attenuation of personhood, and the
332 produc
Beginnings, and Endings. cos
tion and reproduction of material and
CONCLUSION. BEGINNINGS,
mological worlds. Yet have
anthropologists
ENDINGS, AND THE
also extended their reach to encompass sci
ETHNOGRAPHIC. 332
entific practice and knowledge production,
attention to the
paying particular increasing
biologization of political and private life.The
move toward the and
studying production
INTRODUCTION cultural effects of bioscience, bio-citizenship,
A desperately poor young mother dies of and the biosocial indicates a major shift
AIDS. Haifa world away, a child is born as the in
anthropological representations of begin
result of a $50,000 in-vitro fertilization pro nings and endings, stimulating new thinking
cedure. the literature that ex about social authoritative knowl
By juxtaposing production,
such discordant events low-tech and cultural facts, and the representations of
plores edge,
high-tech births and deaths, traditional ritu life.
als and innovative biom dical practices this Anthropological investigations of the be
review to the dissimilar conditions that and ends of life have a
speaks ginnings undergone
allow humans to come into and out of ex
major shift from the early days of ethnog
istence, and the range of reflection from of normative prac
analytic raphy, descriptions
on
socially significant thresholds and borders. tices surrounding birth and death within dis
have often used the margins crete societies to recent studies of the cultural
Anthropologists
of life as a site for examining the making and production of forms of life and death, includ
unmaking of persons and relationships, social ing the ambiguous boundaries between them,
and corporeal bodies, and life itself. Yet never and to an interest in the de
socio-political
has the literature on the be bates when life begins and ends.
anthropological concerning
$i8 Kaufman Morgan

Late nineteenth through mid-twentieth cen own death, and theways inwhich death is spo
studies were conducted within the frame ken, silenced, embraced, staved off, and oth
tury
works of the anthropology and sociology of erwise patterned (see Seale 1998 for review).
religion, ritual, the family, the sacred and Themes of identity, liminality and mem
secular, and structural-functionalism. Those ory are central to this work. are
Beginnings
frameworks remain salient in recent ethno constituted processes of social recog
through
graphies where they
are often considered nition (James 2000), and are contingent on
through the lenses of globalization, postcolo the attribution of personhood and sociality.
nialism, and bioscience. The rise of feminism Endings depend on the culturally acknowl
from the 1970s contributed to a range of stud edged transformation of a living person to
ies of childbirth and postpartum practices that something
else a corpse,
nonperson, spirit,
focused on cultural variability in the making ancestor, etc. Both are
frequendy character
of birth (although it did not equally inspire ized by a time of provisionality, indetermi
studies of care for the dying). Late twentieth nacy, and contestation as social relations are
century and early twenty-first century stud reordered.

ies have responded both to the impacts of the The politics surrounding assertions and
sciences and clinical medicine on in denials of personhood have received a
genetic great
dividual experience (especially reproductive deal of attention in the last two decades, as
technologies and technologies surrounding have the ways in which tensions between tra
dying) and to the shifting politics, ethics, and dition and modernity are enacted in individ
discourses about the beginnings and endings ual, community, and institutional responses
of life itself that accompany developments to assisted reproduction, genetic screening,
in the biological sciences and biomedicine. abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, pallia
These writings have been influenced, too, by tive and life- or death-prolonging medical
the explosion of work in the social studies of treatments, and death. Human, women's, and
science, medicine, and the body. other discourses support no

technology, rights shifting
Our essay is divided into two broad parts tions of personhood and offer rich terrain for
to reflect what we see as a
potentially produc negotiation about beginnings and endings.
tive tension between studies that foreground Part II oudines the turn to biopolitical
social organization and cultural representa analyses which has been shaped largely by
tion and those that analyze the biopolitics of developments in the biom dical sciences and
making and allowing life and death. These clinical medicine as
they
are
deployed, under
two are not ex stood, and enacted. The delineation of cul
approaches entirely mutually
clusive, but represent trends between tural forms and structural sources of
general subject
studies of culture and cultural studies. Part are central to this which
making approach,
I is concerned with the and at stresses how scientific with
production practice, together
tenuation of personhood and how life and discursive power arrangements, shapes under
death are attributed, contested, and pragmat standings of the parameters of life, death, and
enacted in social contexts. The creation the person and creates desires and
ically particular
of persons through reproduction and birth is needs. Under the rubric of the social stud
closely tied to the production of mothers, fa ies of science, this approach

covers studies
thers, viable children, and families (Ginsburg of life enabled by the laboratory and clinic
& Rapp 1995). At the end of life, ethnog and ended through medical technique. It ex
raphers have focused their attention on the plores the creation and cessation of life as de
distinction between the social and biological bated and decided in changing regimes of au
death of the person and the practical and ethi thority. Biopolitical analyses also explore how
cal quandaries created by the late modern abil poverty, body commodification, and notions
ity and desire to authorize and design one's of risk and control are lived and shaped by the
www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends ofLife 319

intersections of state local tradi d'Ivoire (2004), who are not re
imperatives, necessarily
tions, and the global reach of biomedicine. as born.
garded newly
At both the beginnings and ends of life, From the perspective of Foucauldian
scholars have turned their attention to expert there are other of
biopolitics, ways looking
and lay knowledge production and their influ at these
temporal complexities. Rites of pas
ence on
changing notions of the self, the fam sage per se are less important than the way
ily, the future, and expectations about dying, that life forms are redefined in relation to
death and longevity. Social science fascination ongoing social changes. Embryonic stem cell
with new life forms created through bureau research is a case in point. The transfer of
cratic, commercial, and technical means human cells to old, in

young, pluripotent
stem cells, embryos, fetuses, the comatose, the firm human bodies disrupts linear life-cycle
demented, and the brain-dead has directed narratives "the perfect con
by demonstrating
much effort toward the indus
ethnographic tingency of any relationship between embryo
trialized and affluent sectors of world societies and person, the nonteleological nature of the
where what it means to be human and to be
embryo's developmental pathways" (Waldby
alive or dead are
being reformulated. & Squier 2003, p. 33; emphasis in original).
Anthropologists have broadened the defini
tion of "reproductive technologies" to include
Problematizing "Beginnings" the subject-making powers held by states,
cor
and "Endings"
porations, and global intellectual enterprises
The broad topics of reincarnation and res (Franklin 2004, Ong & Collier 2004). They
urrection, along with the particular practices have also shown how technoscientific devel
of exhumation and reburial, pose a challenge opments have destabilized the genealogical,
to our terms and end, and to the and theories
beginning teleological, evolutionary grand
discrete, linear, Eurocentric trajectory these through which life has often been compre
terms imply. Anthropologists have long doc hended (Franklin & Lock 2003, Goodman
umented social that do not on et al. 2003). Such research demonstrates that
practices rely
the ideological assumption that human life beginnings and ends are
contingent local con
begins with birth and ends with death. The cepts, the meanings of which are neither stable
continuity of life is evident in Obeyesekere's nor self-evident.
(2002) ambitious comparison of "rebirth es

chatologies" among Amerindians, Buddhists,
and Greeks; in Desjarlais's ethnography of PART I.MAKING THE PERSON,
how "dying is not quite dying" in Nepal THE LIVING, AND THE DEAD
(2003); and in Papagaroufali's examination
Producing Persons
of the prolonged, liminal process of dying
in Greece (1999). Anthropologists have dis Producing persons is an
inherently social
cussed the cyclical character of life as it per project. The ethnographer's analytic role is
tains to reincarnated infants and children to illuminate the elements and scale of this
who, because they are "inhabited by their project and to articulate the range of knowl
(adult) thoughts and gestures," writes Gupta edge about "what human life is, how it comes
(2002, p. 1), "clearly have to be conceptualized into being and is sustained, and what hap
asmore complex beings than is allowed by the pens to it at death" (Strathern & Stewart 1998,
standard narrative of child-hood which posits p. 236). At the beginnings of life, anthropol
a new being who slowly finds his or her way in ogists have shown that social reproduction is
the world." In a similar vein, Gotdieb docu effected through the cultural production of
ments the spiritual and ac persons (Carrithers et al. 1985). Personhood,
knowledge respect
corded reincarnated Beng newborns in C te
they argue, is a process conferred, attenuated,
$20 Kaufman Morgan

contested, and withheld by the collective. It to reside in the incipient person rather than
does not reside in the physical or cognitive in the social body (Casper 1998, Scheper
attributes of individuals. Anthropologists fol Hughes 1992). Some anthropologists have
lowing these prescriptions have documented a championed
not
only the social construction
variety of beliefs about conception, metaphors but also the subjectivity of infants, arguing
of procreation, and processes of coming-into for their spirituality, psychological integrity,
That newborns are considered and role as social suggest that
social-being. agents. They
in many cultural contexts to be un these formed persons may govern their
unripe, newly
formed, ungendered, and not
fully human own mortality, "usually decid [ing] to remain
is evidence that personhood is not an in in this world as long as fife seems hospitable"
nate or natural but a cultural attribute (Gottlieb 2004, p. 264).
quality
(Bloch 1993, Carsten 1995, Delaney 1991,
Lambek & Strathern 1998, Loizos & Heady Abortion. The North American obsession
1999). As Hartouni observed, "Who or what with the status of embryos, fetuses, and the
is called person is, among other things,

a
origin of life has been scrutinized by an
highly contingent historical formation; it is thropologists who have shown that abortion
both the site and the source of ongoing cul is only sometimes about when life begins
tural contests and always under construction (Morgan & Michaels 1999). Efforts to see be
as a self-evident fact of nature" (Hartouni yond the polarizing politics of life and per
1999, p. 300). sonhood include Ginsburg's (1989) ground
In part as a reaction
against the biolo breaking ethnography of abortion activists in
and a-social discourses of personhood North Dakota, which argued that sup
gized Fargo,
that reign in the west, have and opponents are not
anthropologists porters fundamentally
documented the ways in which personhood hostile to one another because both sides value
is initiated and effected through the social women as nurturers. The willingness
to an
of body substances and the or be

exchange provi thropomorphize grant personhood may
sion of feeding, nurturing, and care (Astuti contingent
on factors such as kin relations,
1993, Carsten 1995, Conklin 2001, Conklin physical health and vitality, parenting expecta
& Morgan 1996, Lambek & Strathern 1998, tions, spiritual considerations, economic well
Sobo 1993). Strathern (1988) inspired a gen being that have litde to do with the onto
eration of scholars when she argued that per status of fetuses or infants.
logical Delaying
sons are
"partible" rather than autonomous or denying personhood may justify abortion,
or self-contained; in other words, "social infanticide, or infant neglect (Sargent 1989,
relations reveal the persons they produce" Scheper-Hughes 1992).Morgan (1998) shows
(Konrad 1998, p. 645). the status of the unborn to be and
ambiguous
Personhood is ascribed during social birth unknowable in highland Ecuador, where some
rituals, of which biological birth may be only women consider abortion objectionable
not
one feature (Morgan 2002 [1989]). The no because it is "murder" but because one should
tion of social birth is useful because it high not take God's will into one's own hands.
the malleable, and contested Recent discussions of

lights gradual, anthropological
processes through which personhood is of abortion have to be understood in the context
ten ascribed. But as Gammeltoft
points out, of the political threats to legalized abortion in
it is a normative concept that offers little in the U.S. and access to safe, affordable abortion
sight into "personal perceptions and subjec elsewhere. By emphasizing women's agency
tive feelings regarding the social and moral and pragmatism in negotiating reproductive
status of fetuses and infants" (2002, p. 320). constraints, some
anthropologists have re
The concept of social birth obscures situations jected the "fetal imperative" and provided
inwhich the agency for personhood is thought a critical counterbalance to
epidemiological

studies and discourses that cultural scholars now that an
rights-based ig systems, argue
nore women's voices. Contributors to a vol
thropology can benefit from viewing repro
ume about cross-cultural on duction itself as a key site for understanding
perspectives
abortion note that morality and ethics may the ways in which and
people reconceptualize
be less critical determinants of abortion deci reorganize the world inwhich they live" (Van
sions than the "social and economic realities Hollen 2003, p. 5; emphasis in original).
of daily life" (Rylko-Bauer 1996, p. 480; see Attention to the production of mothers
also Koster 2003, Nations et al. 1997, Oaks emerges from the feminist conviction that
2003). Meanwhile, other ar mothers are

agents (rather than objects) of so
anthropologists
gue that religious ideologies, ritual practices, cial reproduction. Davis-Floyd (2004) exam
and moral reasoning about abortion continue ines the production of mothers, showing how
to merit ethnographic attention (Delaney technocratic birthing practices and the gen
1991, Gammeltoft 2002). The focus on fe dered division of body/labor function as in
tuses diverts attention from the fact that abor struments of gender hegemony. Paxson (2004)
tion threaten women's lives in a variety argues that the urban Greeks she studied
politics
of ways: In Egypt, poor women are view nature as actualized the gen
jeopar through
dized while "wealthy women can literally buy dered social action inherent in becoming a
safety" (Lane et al. 1998, p. 1089). Through mother. Pointing to the difficulties of par
out much of Asia, "prenatal gender discrimi enting disabled and potentially disabled chil
nation" has led to the sex-selective abortion dren, Landsman (1998) argues thatmothers of
of "several million female fetuses" (Miller disabled children redefine personhood. Infer
2001, p. 1083). With these examples, criti tile women, those who are unable to become
calmedical anthropologists demonstrate that mothers, sometimes suffer the attenuation of
construed (as procre full as demonstrated in a bur

reproduction narrowly personhood,
ation, abortion, or childbirth) diverts atten literature on infertil
geoning anthropological
tion from reproduction broadly considered ity (Becker 2000, Inhorn 1994, Inhorn & van
as the power to determine who lives and who Balen 2002, Kahn 2000, Taylor et al. 2004).
dies. The latest scholarship views childbirth
(and other as the
reproductive practices) dy
Childbirth. Childbirth is one site at which namic (and dynamically unstable) interaction
gets and enacted. Fol of modernity with local forms of meaning

personhood negotiated
lowing
a spurt of ethnographic case studies making. Much of this work uses the lenses
of childbirth in the 1980s, anthropologists of postcoloniality and poststructuralism to fo
turned their attention to the cus on what when aspects of biom d

organization, happens
politics, and variability of birth practices ical childbirth are worked into local forms
across cultures (Browner &
Sargent 1996, (Ram & Jolly 1998). Dichotomies (for ex
Davis-Floyd & Sargent 1997). Van Hollen ample between western/nonwestern, tradi
(1994) describes a historical transformation in tional/modern, nature/culture) are increas
anthropological theories of childbirth "from ingly dismantled by anthropologists who see

function to which in some the selective and pragmatic adaptation of
authority" parallels,
respects, the shift from personhood to biopol childbirth and adoption practices (Erikson
itics that we use in this review. Her
ethnog 2003, Obermeyer 2000, Yngvesson 2002), as
raphy about the contradictory relationship well as
by scholars who draw our attention
between modernity and childbirth in Tamil to the "subversive potential"

of new repro
Nadu, India, states this shift clearly: "Whereas ductive technologies (Dumit & Davis-Floyd
earlier anthropological approaches
to repro 1998, p. 7) and the "uneven meanings of
duction tended to focus on how
reproduc bioscience in a multicultural world" (Rapp
tive practices and beliefs reflected social and 1998).
%22 Kaufman Morgan

In the 1980s anthropological questions both the staged constitution of death itself,
about to take and the rupture and of
reproductive rights began shape healing relationships
in reaction to
Reagan- and Thatcher-era cul among the living and between the living and
tural politics. In the 1990s, questions of per the dead.
sonhood were
incorporated into broader stud Linking these studies is the problem of at
ies of kinship, gender, the body, and the tachment and the culturally patterned ways in
role of state power in persons and which the bereaved from the mate
defining disengage
citizens. attention to person and in some cases, the memory, of the
Consequently, riality,
hood was linked to biopolitics, especially tech dead person. Conklin's study of "compassion
nologies of procreation (Edwards et al. 1999, ate cannibalism" traces the Amazonian Wari'
Franklin 1997, Konrad 2004, Thompson understanding of body, memory, and spirits
2005), kinship and relatedness (Franklin & to show how eradicating
a corpse
by eating
McKinnon 2001, Strathern 1992), the con it helped "loosen ties that bind the living and
struction of particular kinds of mothers and the dead too tighdy" (2001, p. xxi) and trans
fathers (Krause 2005), and "stratified re formed and managed connections between
production"
in the context of state power the spirit of the dead and those who live on
and postsocialist transformation (Rivkin-Fish (2001, p. 158).The dead are shown to be ac
2005). tive, holding power over the living, who re
main passive, in Shepard's (2002) account of
theMatsigenka of southeast Peru. The oblit
The Dead Make the Living: eration of the dead person as an individual
Attachment, Disengagement, is taken up in Taylor's (1993) study of the
and Rituals of Mourning of Amazonia and inWilliams'
Jivaro-Achuar
Recent ethnography points
to vital connec (2003) portrayal of the Manus (gypsies)
tions between the living and dead. The dispo of central France. Williams notes that re
sition and memorialization of the dead pro spect for the dead entails never
speaking about
foundly inform the social identity of the living. them, destroying their property, and insuring
Death and bereavement rituals have been the of that may re
disappearance anything
the subject of investigation from the earliest mind the living of the deceased. This form
days of anthropology. Relationships among of forgetting assures the incorruptibiUty of
the corpse, the soul, and the ritual practices of Manus identity and culture in the midst of
mourners continue to serve as the focal
point "gadzo" (nongypsy) society. Heilman's (2001,
for cultural analyses, long after Hertz (1960 p. 120) thick description of Jewish mourning
[1907]) set the standard for anthropological practices
stresses the
year-long
ritual process
considerations of the social ramifications of through which the bond with a living person
death. Hertz showed that death does not coin becomes amemory and the mourner develops
cide with the destruction of an individual's life, a new
identity
as well as a new
relationship
to
that death is a social event and the beginning the deceased. Battaglia's (1990, pp. 155-94)
of a ceremonial process bywhich the dead per ethnography
of cultural responses to mortal
son becomes an ancestor, and that death is an ity explores theways inwhich the personhood
initiation into an afterlife, a rebirth. A num of the dead and the survivors is performed and
ber of recent studies extend Hertz's insights, experienced in rituals of commemoration in
analyzing the mutable relationships between Melanesian Sabarl society, so that the indi
the dead and the living, the transformation of vidual is symbolically "finished" and a "future
the identity of the bereaved, the role of mem for the dead" is fabricated by the mourners
ory and forgetting in constituting death and as a
multiply-authored memory. Unlike the
the dead, the transformations of the material dead Wari', who disappear through inges
ity of the corpse and the soul/spirit thatmark tion, or the Manus, who are never evoked

Anthropological work on the topic of death
or mentioned after death, or the dead
who continue to for the has been the two
Matsigenka, grieve punctuated during past
living, the dead Sabarl are symbolically and decades by occasional self-conscious discus
visibly reconstituted in the assembling of fu sion about a

tri-part
moment in
ethnogra
neral foods and objects of wealth. phy: first, the ways in which personal loss in
Burial practices connect the dead and the the face of death contributes to the making
living
as well. A cross-cultural study of mem of ethnography; second, how ethnographic
ory making, ethnicity, and the incorporation fieldwork and writing shape personal engage
of the dead into life in six cemeter ments with death, and mourning; and
everyday grief,
ies in London (Francis et al. 2005) illustrates third, how writing culture, when death is
how the social existence of the deceased is the subject, alters one's relationship
to infor
maintained at the and beyond. The mants' lives, one's own and the
graveside experience,
authors talked with and observed more than entire ethnographic endeavor. Rosaldo (1984)
1000 cemetery visitors at the to re broke on these with
graveside conceptual ground topics
veal how the dead are kept alive through plant his essay, "Grief and the headhunter's rage:
ing gardens, tending graves, and speaking to on the cultural force of emotions," a medi
the deceased. to London are choos tation on the connection between his wife's
Migrants
ing to bury their kin in their new country untimely death and his understanding of Ilon
of residence, rather than repatriate the dead, got cultural and theoretical
practices explica
thus establishing
a new home and situational tion. More recently, Briggs (2004), Gewertz
identity for the deceased as well as for the & Errington (2002), and Van Hollen (2003,
descendants. In contrast, the desire to return pp. 215-20) note the ways in which the un
home to die or to be buried as a ma death of a child erases a sense of in
emerges expected
jor preoccupation for elderly Cambodian and vulnerability and shifts one's positionality in
Filipino immigrants and refugees to the U.S. the field, so that visceral, lived connections
in Becker's (2002) study of transnationality are forged with the people one studies, and
and death. Panourgia (1995) describes the analyses of political economy, social organiza
as home and as homeland in tion, discourse, narrative, and
grave cemetery representation
her of Greek death. The are, at the same time, bracketed and informed
analysis anticipa
tion of Greek Orthodox death rituals prompts by tragic personal experience. In those cases,
some Greek citizens to choose or organ the boundary between native and is
body stranger
donation so that avoid exhumation erased; the boundary between work and life is
they may
and second burial, which some consider an blurred.
abhorrent ritual (Papagaroufali 1999). In other articulate, deeply-felt musings
The anticipation of death and the con about the relationships among the experi
dition of "betweenness" the liminal state ence of the ethnographer, death, and field
of being not dead, "not alive," yet "like a work, Panourgia (1995, p. 30) uses the death
corpse" is explored in
Desjarlais's cultural of a loved one as the
ground for her ethnog
biography of two elderly Yolmo Buddhists raphy of Athenian death, in which she ex
as they prepare for death. This is a phe plores the "duplicity" of being both subject (of
nomenological ethnography of the "dissolu grief, mourning and loss) and analyst (ofAthe
tion of self (Desjarlais 2003, p. 181) prior to nian death practices), and the "realm of exis
death and a of the cultural forms that tence where human (our
study beings euphemistic
constitute the dying person. Other person "subjects") become parts of the conditions
centered texts
explore the emotional im of intersubjectivity that unite them with the
of individual deaths on com Loss of her
pact particular anthropologist." elderly grand
munities (Desjarlais 1992, Panourgia 1995, father inspired Behar (1996) to describe the
Seremetakis 1991). vuln rabilit s of the anthropologist in the
524 Kaufman Morgan

face of death and loss. Haunted by his per tinated bodies that do not decay are discussed
ceived contribution to the suffering of a dying by Csordas (2000),Waldby (2000), andWalter
Matsigenka woman, Shepard (2002) wrote (2004). Biehl (2005) documents the politics of
about her final days in order to explicate, for "letting die" and "making live" in his ex
himself as much as for others, the ways in of the of science, gov

ploration interplay
which the dead make the living and his own ernment, and subjectivity and the experience
emotional responses both to his intervention of AIDS, extreme poverty, and the in
dying
in the woman's dying and to local ways of Brazil's "zones of abandonment." The impact
knowing. Driving much of these reflexive, ex of HIV/AIDS deaths on families, commu

perimental ethnographies is the desire to in nities, and nations, as well as on traditional
tegrate the politics and practice of anthropol mourning practices, has been addressed by
ogy with the nearness and power of death, Farmer (1999), Farmer et al. (1996), Sankar
and each of these scholars uses the work of et al. (1998), and Russ (2005), among others.
culture to how personal and profes The the cause of
explore politics surrounding
sional necessity can be connected to witness, death and the identification and counting of
to express a human and the dead are taken up several scholars,
deeply engagement, by
to contribute to a different world. including Trosde (2005), who examined in
ternational differences in design and analysis
of death certificates, and Klinenberg (2002),
Dead, Dying, and Decaying Bodies who studied the 1995 Chicago heat wave.
Decaying, dying, and dead bodies provide the Klinenberg discovered how the science of
analytic starting point for delineating rela the medical autopsy became the lens through
between persons and the state, for which deaths "caused by natural disaster"
tionships
of social facts were viewed. Journalists focused on the after
understanding representations
and for oudining a sociology of body poli math of the problem: the carnavalesque qual
tics. Looking closely
at bodies "can open up ity of refrigerating and storing corpses in the
areas of social that social scientists center rather than on its source the
inquiry city
not otherwise and the bodies conditions that
might recognize, deplorable housing endanger
themselves can
give evidence of social condi frail, poor, isolated elderly, themajority of the
tions that might otherwise be difficult to doc victims. The quantity of the dead was impor
ument" (Klinenberg 2001, p. 133). Brandes tant in the
public narrative, as was the need
(2001) follows the story of the accidental cre for health, aesthetics, and order in processing
mation of a a worker in the the dead. But the bodies remained nameless,
body foreign
U.S. back to his Guatemalan where unconnected to families and
village, specific neigh
a crisis of meaning, loneliness, and unresolved borhoods. Similarly, Scheper-Hughes (1996)
grief is provoked by the absence of an in compared street children in Brazil and Black
tact corpse. Counts & Counts (2004) de township youth in South Africa to show how
scribe the social disorder among the Kaliai both come to be known as
"dangerous"
while
of Papua New Guinea resulting from dis they

are alive, yet are
depersonalized and de
agreement about the cause and meaning of a valued in social once are
representation they
death. Cohen (1998) uses the themes of se dead.
nility and old age in India and the United Dead or

missing bodies are often rele
States, and in social to vant to the of nation-building. Weiss

European thought project
ponder ways in which the decay of the body (2002) examined the Yemenite Children Af
comes to be enacted and interpreted
as de fair, inwhich the remains of adopted Yemeni
cline and as reflection of family and commu children were exhumed andDNA tested, fifty
nity relations, the culture of the state, and years following their deaths, to determine the
scientific Virtual cadavers and plas "real" of the corpses in a national
practices. lineage

scandal about the of Yemenite cal and nursing staff interactions with patients
kidnapping
children during the establishment of the and families. Who can
speak about death and
state of Israel. The ethnic tension, compet to whom, the ways in which emotions are
or concealed,
ing truth claims, andlong-hidden information revealed and expectations about
that emerged in attempts to locate missing the timing and certainty of death all were
body parts and identify long-buried remains is shown to be
socially elaborated and bureau
echoed in the story of locating, reburying, and cratically determined. Glaser & Strauss (1968)
repatriating the brain and ashes of Ishi, Cali found that dying had a "trajectory," a duration
fornia's most famous Native American and an and shape, which was conceptually useful in
anthropological icon (Scheper-Hughes 2001; knowing how the passage from life to death
S tarn 2004). That dead bodies have a life of was constituted. When the Intensive Care
their own via their Unit and mechanical became stan
political, symbolic capi respirator
tal is described in Verdery's (1999) account dard features in North American and West
of the exhumation and reburial of famous ern European hospitals (beginning in themid
and anonymous postsocialist Eastern Euro 1970s in the U.S.), "heroic"
life-extending,
pean corpses, which are to revise collided with medicine's unclear
manipulated technologies
the past, reorient the present, and sacralize sense of its role in prolonging dying and keep
authority
in new ways. A similar issue is dis ing the "dead" alive (Kaufman 2000; Lock
cussed for contemporary Buddhist Thailand 2000, 2002;M ller & Koenig 1988). The or
inKlima's (2002) account of the complexities ganization of hospital dying in the context of
of displaying corpses an era of state medicine was taken
during high-technology up by
sponsored political violence. ethnographers (Anspach 1993, Cassell et al.
Mitford's (1998 [1963]) well-known ex 2003, Chambliss 1996,Muller 1992, Slomka
pose of the culture of the funeral industry 1992, Zussman 1992) who worked in Inten
as a venture cas sive Care Units in the U.S. to document the
money-making (especially
kets, embalming, and cemeteries) stands as
organization and negotiation of death, the
a classic in the of the commer of medical and the
description practice decision-making
cialization of death. Aside from her work, we role of hospital structure in organizing and ra
know of only one ethnography about the busi tionalizing knowledge, ethics, and no end to
ness of funerals and the emergence of funeral life. Lavi's (2005) cultural history of euthana
"professionals" Suzuki's (2000) depiction sia in the U.S. documents the decline of the
of the progressive commercialization of what ars moriendi tradition, the replacement of fear
once were
primarily religious rituals in Japan. at the deathbed by hope and the focus on the
The dearth of cross-cultural studies on the relief of pain and suffering to show how legal
business at the end of fife stands in sharp ization and regulation of techniques of death
contrast to the well-documented and became "thinkable."
industry
commercialization surrounding the begin After Kubler-Ross (1969) mapped the pa
ning of life (Sharp 2000) and presents an open tient's voice to the very end of Ufe, dying
field for investigation. came into its late-modern form as an expe
rience that could be evaluated and inflected
with value. The dying patient became wit
The Culture of Medicine Organizes ness to and creator of his or her own
identity
the End of Life
(Armstrong 1987). For anthropologists and
Sociologists Glaser & Strauss (1968) and others, the content and structure of commu
Sudnow (1967) were the first to investigate nication between patients and doctors signi
how mid-twentieth century in the U.S. fied issues of control and power. Awareness
dying
is organized and understood struc of death, and disclosure became
through truth-telling,
tural features of the hospital, especially medi topics of research (Christakis 1999, Field
326 Kaufman Morgan

1996, Good et al. 1993, Gordon & Pad 1997, genetic testing that contributed to the person
Taylor 1988), as did the ways in which hope ification of fetuses and cast women as "moral
is created, deployed, or rescinded through pioneers" (Rapp 1999); social responses to

physician-patient interaction (Good et al. pregnancy loss, especially miscarriage (Cecil
1990).The modern hospice movement, which 1996, Layne 2003); the coercive power of the
arose in the late 1960s as an alternative to in state concerned with fetal surveillance to in
stitutionalized, medicalized death, became the tervene in pregnancy (Hartouni 1997); and
organizational vehicle inwhich individual ex differential rates of infant mortality by gen
perience at the end of life could be expressed der, race, and nationality (Greenhalgh 2003,
(Russ 2005), and it has been analyzed as a site Miller 2001). Scheper-Hughes (1992) argues
of healthy moral order, and culture-bound interpretations of child
dying, nostalgia, against
ultimate individualism (Seale 1998, Walter death and mother love and defends the con
1994). Yet hospice has also become bureaucra troversial claim that desperately poor moth
tized (James& Field 1992). (For an ethnogra ers in a Brazilian

shantytown sometimes has
phy of home death, see Sankar 1999. For re ten the deaths of their own babies by defining
cent studies of nursing home death, see Black them as too weak or ill to survive. There is
& Rubinstein 2005, Kayser-Jones 2002.) no doubt that baby-killing, and infant death
As hospital death came to be considered more
generally, threatens the Euro-American
a socio-medical failure in the U.S., a road social order. Yet others have shown, too, that
block "to be cleared by modern medicine" socially significant physiological criteria are
(Timmermans 1999, p. 53), ethnographic sometimes used to anomalous infants
identify
attention turned to the hospital practices destined to die (Bastian 2001).
that both stave off and facilitate death That dead embryos and fetuses emerge
(M ller 1992, Zussman 1992). Cassell (2005), into public consciousness only in certain cir
Kaufman (2005), Good et al. (2004), and cumstances

requires explanation. Feminist
Seymour (2001) explore the disjunction, felt anthropologists argue that dead embryos and
most keenly in the U.S., between the broad fetuses are not out of place
in any abso
quest for "death with dignity" and a nat lute sense, nor are
they discovered through
ural death, that is, a death without med biom dical advances. Rather, are
they brought
ical intervention to on the into social existence and vested with
prolong dying, signifi
one hand, and the routinized use of life cance at times and in particular
specific (some
extending/death-prolonging technologies,
on times deterritorialized) places (Morgan 2002).
the other. That disjunction, felt wherever Layne's (2003) ethnography of pregnancy loss
biom dical are to wrest in the U.S. shows how mis
techniques thought support groups
control away from patients, families, (and, carriage is silenced and miscarried embryos
sometimes physicians) has led to international rendered socially invisible. Anthropologists
interest in the distinction between "good" and have examined the subjectivity and potency
"bad" deaths (Johnson et al. 2000, Seale & van attributed to fetal spirits in the Japanese prac
der Geest 2004). tice o mizuko kuyo, performed after abortion
(Csordas 1996, Hardacre 1997, Oaks 1994,
Picone 1998).
When Death Comes at the
Beginning of Life
Feminist have used the no
PART II.THE BIOPOLITICS OF
anthropologists
tion of death at the earliest margins of life LIFE AND DEATH
as a vehicle for
working
out several concerns The idea that "life" could be studied (and per
to the late twentieth the re owes its emer
specific century: haps ultimately understood)
productive imaging technologies and prenatal gence to the rise of theories of evolution and

its expansion to concepts formed through the sections of states, institutions, and individual
sciences of physiology and, more recently, of experience; shifting conceptions of the nor
molecular biology and genetics (Canguilhem mal and the pathological; and strategies and
1994, Clarke 1998). Anthropologists seeking procedures for governing the beginnings and
to
explore how cultural meanings about the ends of life. It has also been used to describe
natural are inscribed in biological materiality the "biopolitical subjects" that are created
and how technique informs the understanding when biom dical expertise intersects with
of what life is have been inspired by a num "the social and bureaucratic practices that so
ber of theorists. Arguably themost influential cialize subjects of the modern welfare state"
is French historian and philosopher Michel (Ong 1995, p. 1243; see also Biehl 2005,
Foucault, who endeavored to understand sci Cohen 2004, Petryna 2002).
ence as a series of "truth games" by which "hu Anthropologists interested in biopoliti
mans
develop knowledge about themselves" cal approaches to life's beginnings and end
(Foucault 1988, pp. 17-18). He analyzed the ings have also drawn from the work of
of new and ge Foucault's mentor, the
development technologies Georges Canguilhem,
nealogies of power as seen

through mental French philosopher of science and medicine
institutions, prisons, and processes whose articulation of the changing cultural
hospitals,
of self-making. Foucauldian hermeneutics, as and biom dical of "normal" and
meanings
first interpreted for English-speaking anthro "pathological" have stimulated and informed
pologists by Dreyfus & Rabinow (1982), sig analyses (see especially Cohen 1998). Femi
naled an epistemic shift for anthropologists nist anthropologists and those interested in
concerned with the production of life forms. "how the social shapes the biotechnolog
They have built on a number of Foucault's ical" (Franklin & Lock 2003, p. 5) have
concepts, including the notion of the "med been inspired by Donna Haraway, the fem
ical that is, the authoritative stance inist theoretician of technoscience who intro
gaze,"
made possible in the eighteenth century, when duced the epistemological concept of "situ
scientists and physicians paired pathological ated knowledge" and the notion of "boundary
anatomy (gleaned through dissection and new creatures" such as the cyborg (defined as a
optical technologies) with their clinical exper machine-organism hybrid) into anthropology
tise to a new, clin 1997). attention to the
justify empirically-based (Haraway Haraway's
ical medicine and biom dical science. The intersections of meaning-making has inspired
medical gaze created the historical conditions many anthropologists who examine the ten
through which life and death could be appre sions between representations and practices,
hended (and constituted) as fundamentally bi as well as the

practices of representation.
An
ological processes. This idea has been taken thropologists have also been influenced by the
up by those interested in the shifting forms work of French philosopher and anthropolo
and impacts of (bio)medicalization and result gist of science Bruno Latour on the construc
ing subjectification (Clarke et al. 2003). tion of scientific facts, the modern separation
Foucault also introduced the concept of of nature from society, and the displacement
"biopower" to refer to the historical shift of the notion of life to the life sciences (Latour
that allowed political authorities to wield in 1993, p. 22; Latour &Woolgar 1986).
fluence through the production of knowl These and other theorists (Agamben 1998,
edge and regulation of information about vi Rose 2001) have brought our attention to the
tal processes such as life, death, and health biopolitical subjects that have come to play
(Foucault 1978). Increasingly, politics is tied a dominant role in political discourse in the
to the task of managing life;Rose (2001) calls West. Both through and beyond the influence
this the "politics of life itself."The concept of of biom dical practices per se, it can be
ar
biopolitics has been used to analyze the inter gued that life and death are understood today
328 Kaufman Morgan

through their biopolitical definition and ne tuses (Hartouni 1999). Anthropologists dis
gotiation. Starting in the 1990s a great deal cuss "fetal subjects"
as the outcome of a social
of ethnography about beginnings and endings project in which the animated, material fetus is
has documented the linkages among instru discursively created and politically deployed.
mentalization techniques, identity politics, These scholars have been keenly
aware of
consciousness, and the political contexts within which

personhood, citizenship, reproduc
bureaucratic form. tive imaging technologies (especially obstet
rical ultrasound) are introduced and inter
are critical, as well, of how new
preted. They
Emergent Cultural Forms at the biom dical techniques (such as prenatal ge
Beginnings and Ends of Life netic testing and fetal surgery) and forms of
Anthropologists have been quick to examine surveillance reify fetal subjects (Casper 1998,
the technoscientific, institutional, religious, Haraway 1997, Hartouni 1997, Heriot 1996,
and biom dical processes that produce new
Layne 2003, Mitchell 2001, Morgan 1998,
forms at the margins of life. The stem cell, Morgan & Michaels 1999, Oaks 2001, Rapp
"orphaned" embryo, fetus, fetal specimen (the 1999, Taylor 1998). At the same time that
dead unborn), sperm and egg donors and re the fetus is politically deployed and reified
cipients, comatose, demented, neomort, and and is analyzed less frequently as person and
"cadaveric" organ donor all can be seen more often as iconographie biopolitical tool
as biopolitical subjects, brought into being cultural subjects
near or at the end of life are
through the workings of biom dical regimes also emergent. These latter forms are not as
of power. Their emergence into social sub publicly visible or politically charged as the
jecthood creates new relationships and obli fetus, nor do they coalesce
into a
singular, po
and kin, between tent and multivalent
gations (among strangers image symbol.
doctors and patients, and between individu The 1968 definition o brain deathmoved,
als and institutions), new forms of knowledge, blurred, and troubled the traditional bound
and new kinds of normalizing practices at the ary between life and death, a boundary which
same time as
they foster tensions about politi had never before been publicly questioned
cal, ethical, andmedical responsibility. Those or clinically debated (Giacomini 1997). Lock
forms have served to
legitimate institutional (2002) describes the differential reaction to
bioethics and to
spark the creation of new the concept of brain death inJapan andNorth
disciplines such as artificial life and marine America, illustrating how the redefinition of
bioinformatics (Helmreich 2003). Features of death was
perceived
as an affront to the nat
physiological development and disruption be ural and the traditional in Japan (see also
come to intense as ar et al. 1994, for China, see
subject dispute, people Ohnuki-Tierney
gue on the basis of competing moral, legal, Ikels 1997). The existence of dead persons
religious, and political claims (Kaufman 2000, kept in life-like conditions of ongoing respi
2003; Lock 2002).We limit our discussion to ration
suggested that there was more than one
just a few of the emergent life forms that have kind of death or that brain death was not ac
recently excited anthropologists' interest. tual, final death. European and North Ameri
Feminist anthropologists, along with other can

physicians and nurses questioned whether
have in a col donors on were

colleagues, engaged long-term, potential respirators really
laborative enterprise
to examine the coming dead. They sometimes noted that donors
into-existence of fetal subjects in Europe and died twice first from trauma or disease and
North America. They are interested not in then again when respirators
were removed.
the ontological status of fetuses (a topic well Rather than specifying and clarifying themo
covered by philosophers) but in conditions ment and conditions of death, the notion of
that produce the social subjectivity of fe brain death made death more indeterminate
www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends of Life 329

and troubling, for some observers, because it in the ubiquitous discourses of quality of life,
became death, the to know, the right to choose, and
almost-but-not-quite perhaps right
an of risk assessment that penetrate so in the
epiphenomenon transplant technology deeply
or an event that could be decided through affluent sectors of Western societies, and sec
political deliberation (Agamben 1998).While ond, in the fife strategies opened up through
clinicians, biom dical scientists, and bioethi biom dical techniques (such as assisted repro
cists disagree about the liminal status, indeed duction and genetic screening). One's biolog
the life status, accorded persons labeled brain ical destiny (including the style and timing of
dead, the "brain death now extends one's death), and that of one's progeny, is no
problem"
to debates about the nature of consciousness, longer taken to be fixed or immutable. Fertil
the degree towhich brain dead persons can be ized embryos
are frozen for future implanta
from and the moral am tion and genes are transferred across to
distinguished corpses, species
of bodies that are neither nor stock. Prevention, enhancement, and
biguity persons improve
cadavers (Kaufman 2000; Lock 2000, 2002). intervention are
possible,
even into advanced
Biom dical technique together with a le age, and the end of life can be postponed. The
socio-economic and bioethical ap rhetoric of "choice," combined with the pro
gitimating
paratus creates and sustains growing numbers liferation of biom dical options, means that
of liminal beings who hover in an ambiguous choice is increasingly understood as an im
zone between life and death: the long-term perative (Rose 2001, p. 22). For those who
comatose, demented, unconscious or can access the new biom dical
severely techniques,
conscious. These states of being one's no
minimally corporeal materiality longer imposes
not-dead-but-not-fully alive, sustained by strict limits on the body or self (Franklin &
modern medical practices destabilize and Lock 2003, Taussig et al. 2003) and the "nat
force a
remapping of the notions of life, ural" can be (re)made (Rabinow 1996, p. 99;
death, and person in different ways than do Strathern 1992).
the fetus: first, because the personhood of Yet the proliferation of biom dical options
these liminal is assessed and nego couched in a cultural rhetoric of choice in
subjects
tiated largely through intersubjective knowl evitably raises questions about "larger social
and second, because the of issues to do with the

edge, question having organization,
their embodiment the reflexive and control of the new
knowledge interpretation,
of the is emplaced in the and resources that will
self-in-the-body knowledge undergird
social relations between them and those who future understandings of what makes [and un
interact with them (Cohen & Leibing 2005, makes] an acceptable human being" (Taussig
Kaufman 2003). In addition, these emergent 2005, p. 224). Feminist anthropologists have
forms are
troubling
material evidence of end analyzed the differentially distributed social
that do not arrive, due to discourses of of choice as to preg
ings consequences applied
and that circulate amid the struc nancy, child rearing, and nar
hope rights prenatal testing,
tures and techniques that organize surveil ratives of perfectibility (Gregg 1995,Wozniak
lance and maintenance. 2002). Meanwhile, choice is at best an illusion
for most of the world's peoples, who have
little control over when, how, or from what

Value
Making they or their progeny will die (or live, or
Biopolitics must be concerned with how work, or give birth). Anthropologists have
value and debate about value comes to be drawn attention to the contexts
consistently
attached to life forms (Rajan 2003). The "new within which values and choices about the
ethics of biom dical subjectivity" (Novas & margins of life are created, negotiated, and
Rose 2000, p. 502) is characterized by dis controlled. For example, the state
literally
putes
over value that are made apparent first, brings people into and out of existence by
550 Kaufman Morgan

Controlling important reproductive dis body parts, subjectivities, and and
sociality,
courses, instrumentalities, and resources second with how those pro
developments
(Kligman 1995,Weiss 2002). voke new ethical and ontological challenges
Anthropological investigations of the value (Rabinow 1996). The emotional, material,
of life illustrate how valuable or vulnerable symbolic, and exchange value of transplanted
biopolitical subjects emerge. Petryna (2002, organs that live after death or enable life at
p. 7) documents the stark order of "social the expense of health is now well-trod ethno
and economic exclusion" following the Cher graphic terrain (Cohen 2004, Hogle 1999,
nobyl nuclear reactor
explosion, when "bio Joralemon 1995, Sanner 1994, Scheper
logical citizenship" began to be negotiated in Hughes 2004, Sharp 2001).Waldby (2002, p.
"life-and-death terms" for sick survivors in the 306), for example, describes how "as
embryos
post-Soviet political economy. Cohen (2004) potent icons of promised control over our bi
pursues a similar theme in his study of the ex ology and health" are biologically engineered
panding market in human tissue bioavailabil to act as tissue sources which are circulated,
ity in India (especially kidneys). He describes thus transforming the notions of gift and value
the sacrifice of health and corporeal integrity and creating
new forms of economy, reci
so that the poor live as modern indebtedness, and
may political procity, community.
subjects, participating in organ "donation" in Anthropologists interested in biopolitics

for short-lived economic Biehl have devoted less attention to the market
exchange gain.
(2001, p. 131) examines the medico-political forces that undergird and drive the emer
strategies whereby the poorest, sickest per gence of new bioscientific life forms, per
sons with AIDS in Brazil are socially invisi haps because their dissatisfaction with histor
ble and of no value until they are dying and icalmaterialism has not yet been replaced by
then, social death and the living dead areman a meta-theoretical
critique of global capital
aged in a special place designated for "life's ism. Exceptions to this trend are
analyses of
leftovers." "Nobody gives a damn if I live or the commodification and corporate control of
die," the tide of an article about the synergis life forms. Examples include Haraway (1997)
tic effects of substance abuse, violence, HIV on the shift from "kind" to "brand," Franklin
risk, and prostitution among women in Hart (2003, 2004) on stem cell development and
ford, Connecticut, sums up the perspective of (2004) on na
patenting, Taussig genetic
those who are disenfranchised from the vi ture/culture inHolland, andTaylor (2000) on
tal technologies made available bio the commodification and metaphoric "con
through
science (Romero-Daza et al. 2003). Nichter of fetuses. Life itself has become a
sumption"
& Cartwright (1991) show the contradic commodifiable object (Comaroff & Comaroff
tory nature of global child health campaigns 2002, Sharp 2000). Participants in a School of
that coexist the global of American Research Advanced Seminar orga
alongside expansion
smoking, only
to "save the children for the nized by Sarah Franklin andMargaret Lock
tobacco as well as the elaborated the concept of "biocapital." Draw
industry." Compassion,
resources necessary for survival, is dispropor ing from Marx the notion that capitalism is
tionately distributed (Kleinman et al. 1997, predicated
on the extraction of value, bio
Farmer 2004). capitalism refers to the ways that the biotech
Attention to biopolitics sheds light on industry
creates the conditions and alliances
the complex and curious intersections that which bi
(state-academic-corporate) through
link the constituencies that produce and uti ological objects are created and manipulated.
lize the new technologies of life and death. The extraction of value occurs when life forms
Much of this research has been concerned and snippets of life (such as genes, haplotypes,
first with how clinical and scientific develop or
single nucleotide polymorphisms)
are made
ments reconstitute relations between bodies, available for private and
ownership patenting,
www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends of Life 551

when they
are oriented toward profitability the lived and perceived differences between
rather than toward the public good (Franklin bare or natural life on the one hand, and moral
& Lock 2003, Rajan 2003). This trend is part and political life on the other, are
collapsed,
of a larger transformation in the organization fused, and one another" in sit
"pass through
and financing of bioscientific research, such uations inwhich the suspension of traditional
that "scientific labor and technology transfer" juridico-power becomes the norm (Agamben
will link "the laboratory direcdy to commer 1998, p. 37; see also Dean 2004). Contempo
cial oudets" (Shorett et al. 2003, p. 123).With rary trends indicate that anthropologists will
greater biocapitalism, global health becomes continue to document the collapse of bound
less of a priority and the biom dical endeavor aries between bare/natural fife and political
is further distanced from its goal of advancing life and the contested boundaries between liv
the public health. ing and dead, organic and technological, and
artificial and natural.
Thus
in the realm of beginnings and end
Between Life and Death,
ings, ethnographers have addressed the broad
Beginnings, and Endings
challenge, articulated by Rose (2001, p. 5),
Turner's (1974) concept of liminality guided of "markpng] out the specificity of our con
much anthropological analysis of themargins temporary biopolitics." They have done this
of fife until Foucault's work gained promi in their scrutiny of the interplay of bureau
nence. Turner described the period betwixt cratic form, marketplace and biom d
activity,
and-between social statuses as a time of ical technique that together produce liminal
intense and social and entities or have traced the pro
personal vulnerability, beings. They
he described communitas as a societal mode duction of scientific and symbolic knowledge
in which people and societies seek out ritual about these anomalous and politically produc
authorities and practices to guard and guide tive entities and documented how they
are de
them through those transitions. Anthropol ployed in negotiating boundaries and owner
ogists influenced by Turner have appreciated ship. They have described and interrogated
the power and the danger encapsulated in lim new forms of subjectification. And finally, they
inal beings (such as newborns and corpses) and have shown how the lives, bodies, and life itself
their manifestations (such of whole, persons are that is,
phantasmagorical living governed
as and made and sick, valuable and vulner
ghosts spirits). healthy
As structural functionalism gave way to able, visible and invisible, expendable, prof
critical theory, the idea of the liminal ex itable and mortal through regulatory, biom d
to include work on con ical, ethical, and political structures as well as
panded emergent,
tested, and nontraditional kinds of life and the through strategies of citizenship, appropria
shifting cultural and political forces that gov tion, resistance, and resilience.
ern life and death. Foucault (1978), for ex
drew attention to the contradictions
ample,
inherent in societies that are CONCLUSION. BEGINNINGS,
simultaneously
devoted to
biopolitics creating, preserving,
ENDINGS, AND THE
and life and to
ETHNOGRAPHIC
organizing thanato-politics,
that is, the production of death through state The task of representing, witnessing, and
sponsored violence. Agamben (1998) was less writing the creation and cessation of persons,
concerned with the tensions between bio- and forms of life and the conditions that surround
thanato-politics than with the horrific poten them will continue to be driven by at least
tial realized when violence and the politics of three themes. First are the transformations
death merged with life itself.He refers to that in cultural practice (shaped by globalized po
merger as the "zone of indistinction," in which litical economies) and emerging relationships
552 Kaufman Morgan

among science, the clinic, and the state that spond to emerging changes.We suspect itwill
shape birth, death, life, the constitution of the continue to be informed by the broad ethno
person, and opportunities for life and health. graphic endeavors, along with their theoret
Second are the biom dical techniques and the ical and practical applications, that are out
economic structures that them and lined in this review. What matters within the
legitimize
make possible the extension of life and pro discipline of anthropology, including its abil
of In the process, techno to to broader audiences, will de
longation dying. ity speak
scientific industries and practices are
creating pend on how anthropologists form alliances
new forms of life, liminality, knowledge, and with scientists, professional and community
social organization. Third is the increasing organizations, and citizens of the world. It
biopolitical vulnerability of many populations will depend also on efforts to forge new di
through global commodification, poverty, so rections in public advocacy for vulnerable
cial invisibility, and violence. populations, which will require
access to an
The anthropology of life's beginnings and even broader range of sites of knowledge and
ends will continue to track and re power.

invariably
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
conversations with Laurie Hart, Susanne Mrozik, and Andrea Sankar us
Important helped
think through sections of our review.We offer our heartfelt thanks to Gay Becker and Lesley
Sharp for their comments on an earlier draft and our gratitude to Ann Magruder for her work
on the bibliography. Co-author names in order.
appear alphabetical
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The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life

Author(s): Sharon R. Kaufman and Lynn M. Morgan

This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:56:19 PM

Beginnings and Ends of Life

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

and with state govern forms of

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$i8 Kaufman Morgan

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century and early twenty-first century stud reordered.

science, medicine, and the body. other discourses support no

closely tied to the production of mothers, fa ies of science, this approach

www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends ofLife 319

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cratic, commercial, and technical means human cells to old, in

continuity of life is evident in Obeyesekere's nor self-evident.

(2002) ambitious comparison of "rebirth es

$20 Kaufman Morgan

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is called person is, among other things,

of body substances and the or be

the malleable, and contested Recent discussions of

www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends ofLife 321

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2003). Meanwhile, other ar mothers are

calmedical anthropologists demonstrate that mothers, sometimes suffer the attenuation of

construed (as procre full as demonstrated in a bur

gets and enacted. Fol of modernity with local forms of meaning

turned their attention to the cus on what when aspects of biom d

(1994) describes a historical transformation in tional/modern, nature/culture) are increas

anthropological theories of childbirth "from ingly dismantled by anthropologists who see

between modernity and childbirth in Tamil to the "subversive potential"

%22 Kaufman Morgan

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www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends ofLife 525

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visibly reconstituted in the assembling of fu sion about a

524 Kaufman Morgan

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himself as much as for others, the ways in of the of science, gov

knowing. Driving much of these reflexive, ex of HIV/AIDS deaths on families, commu

of Papua New Guinea resulting from dis they

nility and old age in India and the United Dead or

States, and in social to vant to the of nation-building. Weiss

www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends ofLife 325

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326 Kaufman Morgan

This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:56:19 PM

is created, deployed, or rescinded through pioneers" (Rapp 1999); social responses to

tized (James& Field 1992). (For an ethnogra ers in a Brazilian

Kaufman (2005), Good et al. (2004), and cumstances

www.annualreviews.org The Beginnings and Ends ofLife 527

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nealogies of power as seen

hended (and constituted) as fundamentally bi as well as the

328 Kaufman Morgan

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consciousness, and the political contexts within which