Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India

by Daisy Deomampo

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479828388
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	09/27/2016
Series:	Anthropologies of American Medicine: Culture, Power, and Practice , #1
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Daisy Deomampo is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Public Health and Assisted Reproduction in India 27

2 Making Kinship, Othering Women 59

3 Egg Donation and Exotic Beauty 95

4 The Making of Citizens and Parents 123

5 Physician Racism and the Commodification of Intimacy 145

6 Medicalized Birth and the Construction of Risk 171

7 Constrained Agency and Power in Surrogates' Everyday Lives 195

Conclusion 223

Appendix: Profile of Study Participants 233

Notes 239

Bibliography 245

Index 265

About the Author 273

Editorial Reviews

"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

"I highly recommend this book to any person interested in surrogacy, race and kinship in India and beyond."

Noémie Merleau-Ponty

"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

"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

"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"

"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

From the Publisher

"I highly recommend this book to any person interested in surrogacy, race and kinship in India and beyond."

Noémie Merleau-Ponty