Table Of ContentREIMAGINING REPRODUCTION
This book presents an ethnographic study on gestational surrogacy in
India. It frames the ethnography of the surrogacy clinic in conversation
with concerns raised in the arenas of law, policy, medical ethics, and global
structural inequality about the ethics of transnational assisted reproductive
technology (ART) practices. Engaging ethical discourses that both advocate
for and trouble the subject of reproductive rights that remains of interest
in feminist studies, the volume takes up the work of critical feminist,
anthropological and science studies scholarship in India, the United States,
and Europe concerned with reproductive technologies.
Based on fieldwork and archival sources, the volume will be of great
interest to scholars and researchers of ethnography, gender, social and
public policy, South Asian studies, and global public health, especially
reproductive health.
Kalindi Vora is Professor of Ethnicity Race & Migration, Women’s Gender
and Sexuality Studies, History of Science and Medicine, and American
Studies at Yale University. She is author of Life Support: Biocapital and
the New History of Outsourcing, Reimagining Reproduction: Essays on
Surrogacy, Labor and Technologies of Human Reproduction, and co- author
of Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological
Futures. With the Precarity Lab, she is author of Technoprecarious.
REIMAGINING
REPRODUCTION
Essays on Surrogacy, Labor, and Technologies
of Human Reproduction
Kalindi Vora
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Kalindi Vora
The right of Kalindi Vora to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-37907-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-40498-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-35336-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003353362
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
In memoriam: Christine Ann (Stromberg) Snell
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Medicine, Markets, and the Pregnant Body: Indian
Commercial Surrogacy and Reproductive Labor in a
Transnational Frame 10
3 Indian Transnational Surrogacy and the
Commodification of Vital Energy 21
4 Limits of “Labor”: Accounting for Affect and the
Biological in Transnational Surrogacy and
Service Work 35
5 Re-imagining Reproduction: Unsettling Metaphors
in the History of Imperial Science and Commercial
Surrogacy in India 53
6 Potential, Risk, and Return in Transnational Indian
Gestational Surrogacy 68
7 Experimental Sociality in Transnational Surrogacy 86
vii
CONTENTS
8 Citizen, Subject, Property: Indian Surrogacy and the
Global Fertility Market 105
9 Conclusion: After the Housewife: Surrogacy, Labor,
and Human Reproduction 120
Index 129
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In Ahmedabad, my thanks to Ramesh Bhakta for offering me generous sup-
port after we were introduced by our shared friend Matt Rahaim; and to
Nishant Shah, in Ahmedabad and everywhere else, for animated conversa-
tion and hospitality. In Rajkot: Kirit, Kanak, and Nishad Vohra, my grati-
tude for always having an open door and welcoming me to be with family.
In “northwestern India,” to the necessarily anonymous surrogates, doctors,
staff, and commissioning parents who shared their thoughts and stories with
me, I feel ongoing gratitude and responsibility to share them accurately, and
I hope I’ve done them justice.
Colleagues who’ve supported this work between 2008-2016 can be
found across the world. My writing group at UC Berkeley in 2008-2009,
including Neda Atanasoski, Kim Tallbear and Elly Teman, read and com-
mented on some my first attempts at writing through this research. My
first invitation to present this research was by the Barnard Feminist and
Scholar conference titled, “Critical Conceptions: Technology, Justice, and
the Global Reproductive Market,” through Neferti Tadiar, whose invita-
tion inspired the first piece I published out of this research in their journal
The Scholar & Feminist Online, included here as chapter two. Also early in
this research, Sheela Saravanan invited me to speak on a panel for the 2010
European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies that she organized
titled, “Reproductive Tourism in India: Ethical and Legal Concerns.” In
2011, Karen Sue Taussig and Klaus Hoeyer invited me to be a part of
the Wenner-Gren symposium “The Anthropology of Potentiality,” whose
powerful week long workshop and ensuing special issue of Current Anthro-
pology provoked another article included as chapter six in this collection.
Also in 2011, Kay Warren and the Pembroke Center at Brown invited me
to present at its annual symposium in with the theme Global Relations:
Kinship and Transnationalism, where I benefitted from deep conversations
and productive feedback. I also received tremendous benefit from invita-
tions to present this work at the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender
conference titled, Speculative Visions of Race, Technology, Science and
ix
