The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East by Marcia C. Inhorn (review)

Marcia C. Inhorn's latest book, The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East, opens new terrain for research on masculinity, reproduction, technology, and religion in the context of the ever-rapidly changing Middle East. An epidemic of male infertility among Middle Eastern men, Inhorn argues, has crystalized a "recalibration of manhood" (1). What it is to be a man, to father, and to produce and head a family are called into question as increasing numbers of Middle East men find they are not measuring up to local criteria of manhood, fatherhood, and family life through means that they had assumed they naturally embodied. Refusing to relinquish their own expectations and those of their society, many men, with their wives, are turning to assisted reproductive technology. Supported by fatwas by leading Shi'a clerics, such as Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, who gave permission for the use of donor technologies, many Muslim men are opening new doors to manhood. While Sunni clerics appear to continue their rejection of donor reproductive assistance, many men (Muslim and Christian) still find their way through these doors. The turn to technology, Inhorn claims, is unsettling local notions of masculinity, patriarchy, religion, and gender—including some her own earlier notions about Middle Eastern men and patriarchy.

A trained medical anthropologist with a distinguished record of research in the Middle East, Inhorn breaks new ground empirically, methodologically, and theoretically. Little research has been carried out or published on male infertility and the deployment of new technologies of reproduction in the Middle East. Indeed, with the exception of a few social science collections and the exception of literary genres, there is relatively little empirical work on Middle Eastern masculinity. Inhorn moves to challenge these scholarly silences, breaking through gendered assumptions of the kind of research a female anthropologist can undertake.

Her methods are respected anthropological pathways to informants, as well as to the unexpected. In casual conversation with Hamza, a retained driver, she discovers he has a fertility problem. While from a background initially unreceptive to the idea of sperm donation, Hamza shifts his thinking as he learns of the possibilities technology offers. Inhorn acts both as anthropologist and mentor with Hamza as he navigates this knowledge-sphere of culture to eventually become a father. Inhorn follows individual men (and women) closely through their reproductive journeys, documenting in rich detail their personal stories. She offers the results of surveys and questionnaires carried out in several countries over a several year period. Ever the scientist, she shifts through the medical fields of research on male infertility, donor practices, and other forms of reproductive technologies to evaluate their relevance for her subjects.

Theoretically, Inhorn challenges standing notions of Middle Eastern manhood, masculinity, and patriarchy—including some of her own earlier positions. She disrupts standing stereotypes, too often elevated to theory, about Middle Eastern men. Countering representations of Middle Eastern men as domineering, oppressive, even fanatical, she offers up the images of the men she meets—caring, respectful of their wives, more concerned about intimacy and love than power and progeny, open to new ideas, and willing to explore (in concert with their wives) new dimensions of relationships, connectivity, and familial existence. In addition, Inhorn is determined to re-embed men in the research on reproduction. Both culturally and theoretically, she argues, Middle Eastern men are the "second sex" in discourses of reproduction. Inhorn recenters Middle Eastern men in the imaginaries of reproduction. She also takes on the neoliberal reproductive rights discourse, questioning whether it has delivered on its promises or even translated itself accessibly to audiences in the Middle East—despite the fact that Cairo, Egypt, was the site of the watershed 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Inhorn also situates questions of male infertility within foundational political economy questions driven by globalization, accelerated inequality around the world...