Introduction
This book examines what nature, ethics, and reproduction mean to the people of Spey Bay, a coastal village in northeast Scotland. Drawing on an ethnographic research undertaken by the author beginning in late 2005, plus various follow-up trips, the book explores what a group of middle-class people making “good” lives in Spey Bay think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies in a time characterized by the rise of biotechnology, fear of environmental crisis, explicit attention to ethics, and intense public scrutiny of reproduction, parenting, and kinship. This introduction provides an overview of bioethics, an academic discipline that has been closely associated with questions about reproduction, and some of the main themes of the book. It also maps the context of Spey Bay by describing the place and the feeling of being there and outlining some of the issues that preoccupy its inhabitants.