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SUMMARY:Genetics\, infrastructure and historicity in the quest for the 'st
 olen babies' of Spain - Miguel Garcia-Sancho (University of Edinburgh)
DTSTART:20251125T170000Z
DTEND:20251125T183000Z
UID:TALK237700@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr. Rosanna Dent
DESCRIPTION:This seminar explores the role of genetics in reuniting adopte
 es and biological families who cannot find their filiations via the offici
 al paper trail. I focus on the Spanish case\, where these ancestry searche
 s are compounded by numerous reports of infants having been given in adopt
 ion without the full\, free consent of their biological families. Building
  on Star and Bowker’s concept of infrastructure\, I follow the eugenic d
 iscourse that justified these adoption practices and show how it crystalli
 sed in a socio-technical assemblage that first contributed to political re
 pression and later coerced single mothers. This infrastructure emerged dur
 ing the dictatorship of General Franco and survived well into the establis
 hment of democracy in Spain (late 1930s to early 2000s).\n\nThe Spanish de
 mocratic authorities have become increasingly sensitised to this problem a
 nd\, since 2013\, have established a central databank to which the now-adu
 lt children and biological families can submit their genetic profiles. Yet
  I argue that for their reunion to be meaningful\, any potential match in 
 their DNA sequences needs to be interpreted in the light of the socio-tech
 nical infrastructure within which the separations occurred. This is especi
 ally true with consent practices\, since political and scientific authorit
 ies sometimes assume that\, at the time of the adoptions\, the agency of s
 ingle mothers to decide over their offspring was equivalent to present-day
  standards.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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