‘Make-up’: Personhood through the lens of biotechnology†

Abstract

This paper looks through the ethnographic lens of ‘new reproductive and genetic technologies’ (NRGT) at the idiom of ‘make-up’ in English understandings of personhood and relatedness. In the kinship thinking of interest here, persons are both ‘made’ and ‘made-up’. There are both unpredictable and inevitable elements in the way in which people ‘turn-out’ and their character or personality is meant to be idiosyncratic, lumpy and unique. The paper draws on the way in which residents of a town in the north of England explore possibilities presented by NRGT in ways that make explicit their understandings of personal identity, interpersonal relatedness and communal belonging. The paper attempts to integrate the quotidian and personal narratives of residents with broader social and economic changes occurring in their town. Make (n) (Of natural or manufactured thing) kind of structure or composition; build of body; mental or moral disposition Make-up (n) disguise of actor, cosmetics (etc.); person's character and temperament Make-up (v) concoct (story), settle (dispute); be reconciled