Att skapa liv och utforska död

Abstract

Artificial reproduction and the handling of dead bodies give us important information about the interaction between societal structures, identity, and the body. They also tell us something about the extent to which it is collective or personal needs that are signalled via the body. On the basis of the two empirical fields studied here, we think that we can say that the experience of living in a high-tech society, where questions of life and death have become negotiable, means a changed identity perception, a different view of the self. There appears to have been a shift of periphery and centre; the centre of peoples' consciousness is no longer society as much as the self.

This does not mean, however, that peoples' bodies have ceased to be an expression of collective needs. There is rather an interaction between social structure and the satisfaction of personal needs.

As regards the dead body, the interest in preserving the body intact and authentic testifies to the strong bond between identity and the body. This individual need for wholeness can be stretched, however, as the positive Swedish attitude to autopsies shows. Swedes are willing to place corpses at the disposal of science for the collective good. After the autopsy the wholeness of the body can be restored, which means that individual and collective needs do not have to conflict.

In this respect, artificial reproduction is more problematic. Having a child by in vivo fertilization satisfies personal needs of both biological and a collective kind. But these personal needs have an age limit in Sweden. Collective needs define a "natural" family. In this family there is no room for, say, women who become pregnant after the menopause. There is no mistaking the significance of the fertile or infertile body for identity. Here people are prepared to adjust biological conditions which run counter to their view of the right cultural identity.

People's reflections about life and death have been among the eternal and existential questions throughout history. This means that the view of life and death includes both topical comments on today's society and ideas with deep historical roots. This combination of topicality and history makes issues of life and death into rewarding focuses for anyone seeking to understand how individual needs relate to the societal framework, and how this relationship changes through time.