Transposing bodies of knowledge and technique: Animal models at work in reproductive sciences

Abstract

A prominent feature of biological and biomedical research and therapeutics over the past century is the entanglement of human and other animal bodies in the making and remaking of knowledge, techniques and products. In this paper, we explore how animal models work in two different but interrelated situations: early/mid 20th-century reproductive sciences focused on human biomedicine; and early 21st-century assisted reproduction of endangered animals in zoos. We use the concept of ‘transposition’ to describe and compare how findings about different species, the infrastructures supporting different species and the body parts of different animal species have been mobilized at these sites. We show how such mobilizations create dynamic relationships in organizational, discursive and embodied ways. The two case studies illuminate the changing practices of modelling within the reproductive sciences, and the changing kinds of work animal models have done in those fields.