Egg dates sperm: a tale of a practice change and its stabilization
研究一项意大利法律如何改变医学辅助生殖实践，并通过谈判、修辞封闭和技术锚定实现新实践的稳定化，揭示稳定后产生的非预期权力效应。
The aim of this article is to enlarge practice-based studies to the consideration of institutional environment and institutional work, opening a dialogue with neo-institutionalism and, in so doing, advance the growing field of sociology of practice. This study attempts to do this by answering the question: how does a change in a practice become stabilized and what does the new practice do, once stabilized? Within practice-based studies, most studies have considered mainly endogenous changes, emergent from the community of practitioners under study. By contrast, this study discusses an exogenous change (a recent Italian law limits medically assisted reproduction practices) and the emergent relations that stabilize a provisional new practice through negotiation within the institutional context. Stabilization of a new practice is achieved by limitation, by rhetorical closure and by anchoring in technology. The aim of the article is to show the unintended power effects that a new practice generates once stabilized.