“Without a doubt, New Organs Within Us is a significant contribution to the empirical studies exploring the global organ trade, as well as a compelling narrative that draws in the reader from the very first page.… New Organs Within Us is a unique and valuable account of the Turkish “biopolis,” an important contribution to the literature that explores the local meanings of organ donation, and a useful reference book for students who have an interest in science and technology studies which explore nature and culture. It is Sanal’s beautiful storytelling, however, that makes this book very appealing even to those who are not familiar with the existing literature or who would not usually be interested in this topic.” — Ilke Turkmendag, Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics
“New Organs within Us: Transplants and the Moral Economy is a richly ethnographic and soulfully written book that plunges its audience into the world of transplant patients and physicians…. The book is an important contribution to the burgeoning field of organ transplant.” — Monir Moniruzzaman, American Ethnologist
“New Organs within Us is an important contribution to the ?elds of science and technology studies and the anthropology of health and illness.” — Aysecan Terzioglu, American Anthropologist
“This is a brilliant book about organ transplantation in Turkey, not only as a journey into the experiences of patients, donors, and relatives of the decease, but also as a political-economy engagement that sheds light on how coping mechanisms are segregated between the poor and the rich. I learned a great deal from this book, and would like to recommend it to students of social sciences, social medicine, and political economy in Turkey.” — Fikret Adaman, Turkish Studies
"Sensitively written and deeply insightful, Aslihan Sanal’s ethnography of kidney transplantation in Turkey in the 1990s and 2000s is an intimate stitching of life histories, national and institutional narratives, and shifting meanings of life, death, and the body." — Elizabeth DeLuca, Somatosphere
"Her rendition of the hard work of surgeons and anatomists in devising terms such as ‘transitional public service’ (p. 135) in order to encourage families to donate to research labs the bodies of their long-abandoned kin is truly absorbing." — Marie-Andree Jacob, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Association
“New Organs Within Us is a tour de force. A brave, nuanced, and caring journey into the lives of transplant patients and the new worlds of meaning they tentatively inhabit. Soulfully written, the book changes the way we think about inner life and well-being, technology and human agency, and the impact of the global biomedical enterprise on local health systems. Social scientists and medical practitioners will have to reckon with this exceptional analysis for years to come.” — João Biehl, author of Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment
“I learned a great deal from this brilliant book. There is nothing else like it in the ethnographic literature on comparative high-tech medicine. Aslihan Sanal reaches far beyond the story of transplant patients and the organ trade in Turkey, taking in global flows of knowledge and ethics around brain-death, organ donation, and standards of care, as well as the worldwide organ trade, in which organs are exchanged legally and on the black market.” — Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School