Transnational Reproduction traces the relationships among Western aspiring parents, Indian surrogates, and egg donors from around the world. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on interviews with commissioning parents, surrogates, and egg donors as well as doctors and family members, Daisy Deomampo argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of "stratified reproduction"-the ways in which political, economic, and social forces structure the conditions under which women carry out physical and social reproductive labor-it also complicates that concept as the various actors in this reproductive work struggle to understand their relationships to one another.
The book shows how these actors make sense of their connections, illuminating the ways in which kinship ties are challenged, transformed, or reinforced in the context of transnational gestational surrogacy. The volume revisits the concept of stratified reproduction in ways that offer a more robust and nuanced understanding of race and power as ideas about kinship intersect with structures of inequality. It demonstrates that while reproductive actors share a common quest for conception, they make sense of family in the context of globalized assisted reproductive technologies in very different ways. In doing so, Deomampo uncovers the specific racial reproductive imaginaries that underpin the unequal relations at the heart of transnational surrogacy.
Transnational Reproduction traces the relationships among Western aspiring parents, Indian surrogates, and egg donors from around the world. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on interviews with commissioning parents, surrogates, and egg donors as well as doctors and family members, Daisy Deomampo argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of "stratified reproduction"-the ways in which political, economic, and social forces structure the conditions under which women carry out physical and social reproductive labor-it also complicates that concept as the various actors in this reproductive work struggle to understand their relationships to one another.
The book shows how these actors make sense of their connections, illuminating the ways in which kinship ties are challenged, transformed, or reinforced in the context of transnational gestational surrogacy. The volume revisits the concept of stratified reproduction in ways that offer a more robust and nuanced understanding of race and power as ideas about kinship intersect with structures of inequality. It demonstrates that while reproductive actors share a common quest for conception, they make sense of family in the context of globalized assisted reproductive technologies in very different ways. In doing so, Deomampo uncovers the specific racial reproductive imaginaries that underpin the unequal relations at the heart of transnational surrogacy.
Daisy Deomampo is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Fordham University. She is the author of Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India.
Accessibly written, it could be taught in undergraduate courses or
modules on transnational surrogacy or assisted reproduction and
social/economic inequality at lower and upper levels. The book
promises to be an important resource for scholars of global markets
in reproductive services.
*Medical Anthropology Quarterly*
Building upon the classic feminist concept of stratified
reproduction, Deomampo is the first to offer a powerful critique of
the racialization inherent in transnational surrogacy practices.
Combining detailed ethnography with critical medical
anthropological perspectives, Transnational Reproduction is both
hard-hitting and provocative, challenging the race, class, and
gender inequities underlying Indias commercial gestational
surrogacy scene.-
*Marcia C. Inhorn,author of Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns
in Global Dubai*
Deomampo shows in exquisite detail how racialized fantasies,
stereotypes, and prejudices knot together the long-distance,
cross-border threads of intimate commerce and citizenship involved
in Indian surrogacy. European, North American, Australian, and
other commissioning parents are connected to their Indian
surrogates and entrepreneurial providers through diverse legal and
social connections, yet all involve prior powerful notions of race
at the heart of transnational family-making. This focus enriches
and complicates discussions of Indian surrogacy.
*Rayna Rapp,New York University*
I highly recommend this book to any person interested in surrogacy,
race and kinship in India and beyond.
*Noémie Merleau-Ponty,Research Associate, Reproductive Sociology
Research Group, University of Cambridge*
Daisy Deomampo’s ethnography shows how particular imaginations and
workings of race undergird the political economy of commercial
surrogacy. Her book brings together previous work on ‘stratified
reproduction’ – which describes the differential conditions that
made reproduction possible – with recent studies on commercial
surrogacy.
*Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale*
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