La conservation familiale de sang placentaire et la (re)privatisation de la reproduction sociale 

Abstract

Cord blood banking in Canada is an interesting case study for analyzing consequences of neoliberal governance on social reproduction—health care institutions in particular—as well as the formation of contemporary political subjectivities. It illustrates the shift from a welfare state logic of distribution of the human body’s ‘products’ to a neo-liberal orientation based on the commodification of these products. This is so because two biobanking models (one of them private and the other public) coexist in the current Canadian context where universal access to health care is increasingly challenged. This paper examines how the promotional discourse of Canadian-based commercial cord blood banks articulates culturally situated conceptions of health, motherhood and family in relation to the broader themes of neoliberal accountability and consumer choice. I argue that discursive strategies that encourage expecting women to act as responsible mothers by insuring the future health of their children operate within this discourse as techniques of neoliberal governmentality. Building upon these observations, this article re-examines the scope of the concept of biocitizenship through the feminist lens of social reproduction. By highlighting the centrality of the family in the neoliberal moral economy, this article stresses the need to situate recent debates on biopolitical changes within broader considerations of gender and distributive justice.

Keywords

• cord blood banking; neoliberalism; biological citizenship; social reproduction
• materialist feminism