![]() ![]() ![]() The multiple sites of domination imply that resistance to one set of forces often involves reification of other forms of domination.Īt one level, the significance of my research is that it is the only existing work on this stunning example of international division of (reproductive) labor where poor women of the global south have babies for richer women, often from the global north. Instead of romanticizing the everyday resistances of the surrogates, I highlight the inherent paradox of their resistances to domination by the family, the community, the clinic and the state. By framing commercial surrogacy as 'labor' instead, I ask: How do commercial surrogate mothers in India, as participants in a new kind of labor, challenge and/or re-affirm ideologies, discourses and practices surrounding not just surrogacy, but women's role as producers and reproducers? Through participant observation and open ended interviews, I reveal the "labor" of women that often remains invisible and underpaid: whether in the form of "dirty" labor, "embodied labor" (labor that requires intensive use of their physical selves) or "kinship labor" (the labor of forming and maintaining kinship ties). ![]() In this dissertation, an ethnography of transnational commercial surrogacy in India, I argue that existing Eurocentric and ethics-oriented frames for studying surrogacy make invisible the labor and resistances of women within this process. ![]()
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