Description
Book SynopsisAndrea Whittaker traces the development of international surrogacy industry and its movement across Southeast Asia following a sequence of governmental bans in India, Nepal, Thailand, and Cambodia. The book offers a nuanced and sympathetic examination of the industry from the perspectives of the people involved in it.
Trade Review“An original, comprehensive, and eye-opening account of the unprecedented growth of commercial surrogacy in Southeast Asia. By focusing on the industry’s multiple stakeholders—particularly Thai surrogates who have gestated babies for Australian intended parents—Whittaker writes with ethnographic sensitivity and compassion, while at the same time critiquing the “disruptive industry” within which surrogacy takes place. A must-read for those interested in globalization, biotechnology, and reproductive justice.” -- Marcia Inhorn * author of Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai *
"Andrea Whittaker, one of the leading anthropologists working on reproduction has produced an important and timely book. We are presently at a moment when cross-border reproduction is at once, a lucrative industry, a facilitator of people's reproductive hopes and dreams and a site of intense scrutiny and regulation. It is this potent mixture that Whittaker analyses and describes so deftly, taking us through crises in South East Asian reproduction, that despite their particularity, span a globe of experience and connection. This assemblage of facilitators, intended parents, surrogates and the law form a powerful account of the centrality and importance of detailed ethnographic work to the future regulation of cross-border reproduction. Carefully woven and engrossing!" -- Michal Nahman * author of Extractions: An Ethnography of Reproductive Tourism *
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Notes on Language and Transliteration
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Growth of Disruptive Commercial Surrogacy in Asia
Chapter 2. Merit and Money: The Moral Economy of Surrogacy
Chapter 3. The Best of Intentions
Chapter 4. Facilitation
Chapter 5. Digital Umbilical Cords
Chapter 6. Rotten Trade
Chapter 7. Baby Gammy
Chapter 8. New Destinations, New Markets
Conclusions: The Future of International Surrogacy
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Glossary
References
Index
