Anthropological Perspectives on Assisted Conception

Abstract

mainstream anthropological literature, or at least 'seen but not heard', children may now be recognized as a source for demonstrating one of anthropology's great strengths its refusal to be silent about those things that people cannot speak about. O. Jonathan Benthall SUMMARY OF CONFERENCE Sunday 5 January Stephen Chanock (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda) presented I Need a Friend: Kids Talk about the AIDS Virus, a video made by the National Cancer Institute, Pediatric Branch, Bethesda, Maryland, in which a girl with AIDS interviews other children with AIDS or cancer. Monday 6 January Two keynote papers: Christina Toren (Brunel University): 'There is no ethnography of children: there are only anthropological issues.' Matthew Hodes (St Mary's Hospital, London): 'Children saying No'. Bob Hartley (psychologist and independent film-maker) presented his film And I was such a lovely baby about the lives of children with severe emotional problems, set in a residential special school in Oxfordshire. Tuesday 7 January Ethnographic particulars: four presentations. Nancy Scheper-Hughes (University of California, Berkeley) on urban Brazil. Charles Stafford (Brunel University) on Taiwan. Myra Bluebond-Langner (Rutgers University) on a U.S. paediatric leukemia ward, Jill Swart-Kruger (University of South Africa) on Johannesburg street-children. The seminar split into four working parties. A rapporteur from each reported to a final plenary session, and the results are summarized above. Ample time was left for discussion, in which Allison James (South Bank Polytechnic), Murray Last (University College London), John O'Neill (York University, Toronto), Alan Prout (Keele) and Mamphela Ramphele (University of Cape Town) played particularly lively parts, in addition to those already mentioned. Steering Committee for the seminar: Jean La Fontaine (Past President, RAI, Chair), Jonathan Benthall (RAI Director), Matthew Hodes, Christina Toren. Representing the RAI Council: Judith Ennew. Acknowledgments: The Institute is most grateful to the Nuffi'eld Foundation and the Baring Foundation for financial support for the seminar. Roland Littlewood was not present, but it was he who first suggested that research with children should be the focus for the 150th anniversary of the Ethnological Society of London in 1993. (I wish to thank Jean La Fontaine, Christina Toren and John Knight for advice on the writing of the above report and editorial. JB)