Discounted life : the price of global surrogacy in India / Sharmila Rudrappa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rudrappa, Sharmila, 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Surrogate motherhood--India.

Surrogate motherhood.

Surrogate motherhood--Economic aspects--India.

Human reproductive technology--Social aspects--India.

Human reproductive technology.

Human reproductive technology--Social aspects.

Surrogate motherhood--Economic aspects.

India.

Physical Description:

x, 211 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2015]

Summary:

India is the world's top provider of surrogacy services, with a multimillion dollar surrogacy industry that continues to grow exponentially. Some scholars have praised transnational surrogacy for the possibilities it opens for infertile couples, while others have offered bio-ethical cautionary tales or lamented the exploitation of surrogate mothers-but very little is known about the relationship between surrogate mothers and intended parents outside the lens of the many agencies that control surrogacy in India. Drawing from rich interviews with surrogate mothers and egg donors in Bangalore, as well as straight and gay couples in the U.S. and Australia, Discounted Life, focuses on the processes of social and market exchange in transnational surrogacy. Sharmila Rudrappa interrogates the creation and maintenance of reproductive labor markets, the function of agencies and surrogacy brokers, and how women become surrogate mothers. She argues that this reproductive industry is organized to control and disempower women workers and yet, by and large, "the surrogate mothers in Bangalore paradoxically find the experience life-affirming. A detailed and moving study, Discounted Life delineates how local labor markets intertwine with global reproduction industries and the remarkable ways in which surrogate mothers negotiate tenuous positions of power for themselves in progressively untenable socioeconomic conditions. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The Labor Market for Surrogate Mothers

1 Reproductive Interventions 23

2 Converting Social Networks into Labor Markets 44

3 The Many Meanings of Surrogacy 66

Part II Incorporating Pregnancy and Childbirth into the Market Economy

4 Locating Surrogacy in Child Sharing and Wage Labor 83

5 Babies as Commodities 99

6 Fetuses as Persons, Surrogate Mothers as Nonpersons 126

7 Surrogacy as a Gift 143.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781479874521

1479874523

9781479825325

1479825328

OCLC:

910826913