Live kidney donation as body work

Abstract

Financial incentives have increasingly been proposed to remedy what is described as a situation of global ‘organs scarcity’. In this article, I draw on qualitative sociological research investigating the corporeal generosity of living directed and non-directed kidney donors in New Zealand to ask what insights they can offer regarding financial incentives to encourage organ donation. This entails examining whether compensation and reimbursement for organ donation is likely to reduce donors’ capacity to act altruistically and diminish their dignity as moral subjects. In so doing, I seek to expand the conceptual tool kit of organ transplantation as a ‘gift of life’ to consider organ transfer in sociological terms as body work. I suggest that introducing the notion of body work into discussion about recompense for living kidney donation may help to unlock the ideological impasse currently polarising the debate between altruism and commerce.