{"word_count": 1167, "character_count": 8443}
By Anindita MajumdarOnceidentified as an emerging transnational industry, the commercial surrogacyarrangement in India was more than mere commerce. It also involved the birth ofkin and relationships that included cross-cultural dialogues and conflictsbetween forms of reproduction and birthing. TransnationalCommercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India engages with theidea of emerging forms of families and meanings of kinship in a transnationalworld through ethnographic research, kinship, gender studies and science andtechnology studies.&#160; The ethnographydraws from a context that is enmeshed in the local-global politics ofreproduction, and the engaging and ongoing debates regarding ethics andmorality in the sphere of reproductive rights. As of2018, the Indian Parliament has suggested a ban on transnational commercialsurrogacy, giving way to domestic altruistic surrogacy arrangements. Such a lawfollows the dynamic, controversial trajectory of transnational commercialsurrogacy in India. This book aims to present an ethnographic picture of such acomplicated, controversial practice as commercial surrogacy by focusing on itsrelevance for kinship and our understanding of interpersonal relationships atlarge. Anindita Majumdar, Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India seeks to explore the multiple relationships that emerge, are constructed and rejected in the course of contracting and participating in a commercial surrogacy arrangement. Drawing from conversations with foreign couples coming to India to hire Indian surrogates through Indian fertility clinics, lawmakers and clinicians, this book engages with multiple facets of the transnational commercial surrogacy process: the politics of foreign gay couples seeking families through surrogacy in India, the identity-giving processes of &#160;babies born to foreign couples, the clinicians’ understanding of kinship, the networks of commerce and surrogacy agents, and the ways in which the surrogate and her husband position themselves within the arrangement. Some of the questions that the book explores are: What are the mechanisms by which kinship is understood and practiced in a comparative and cross-cultural milieu? How can anthropology develop a more nuanced notion of interpersonal relationships in a global, transnational setting? How do biology and the social come to be configured within kinship in transnational commercial surrogacy? Transnational commercial surrogacy becomes a fertile ground for the examination of cross-cultural engagements with kinship and technology.Despite different areas of focus in the academic research on surrogacy — such as the nature of the surrogacy contract; the notion of reproductive choice; the examination of the gift-giving relationship as it is practiced within surrogacy; and the emerging markets in reproductive labour and reproductive tourism—kinship is a recurring motif in the analysis of surrogacy. This is primarily because surrogacy along with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is seen to have led to a break between the biological-nurturing roles of parenting by creating multiple mothers: the one who donates her eggs, another who gestates, and the one who nurtures the child. This ‘fragmentation’ of motherhood continues to be a concern due to its importance within the ‘natural-biological’ context of kinship, as well as due to the sexual division of labour, which is based on the ‘assumptions’ of the natural bond of motherhood. However, the sociological analysis of the surrogacy arrangement focuses only on the surrogate mother, and, to an extent, on the adoptive-social mother. The overwhelming engagement with motherhood often leaves unanswered questions regarding the father, the clinicians, the child and other relations/persons involved in the arrangement and their negotiations with each other in the act of making a child through surrogacy. While each of these other people and their relationships have been studied in relation to assigning parentage, they do not form an important part of the academic engagement. This book seeks to explore the multiple relationships that emerge, are constructed and rejected in the course of transnational commercial surrogacy, including motherhood.Emerging research points towardsthe dynamism of cross-cultural kinship practices in the use of assistedreproductive technologies (such as IVF) that are redefining the discipline inits theoretical core. Thus, in TransnationalCommercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India, canonical textswithin the anthropology of kinship become important nodes to discuss and reviewthe discipline through the practice of transnational commercial surrogacy. Thisincludes an invocation of Marilyn Strathern’s work on technology and kinship, withthat of David Schneider’s on kinship as a cultural symbol, along with JanetCarsten’s theorization of relatedness. But the book does not limit itself tothese three theorists alone, and goes on to place the analysis in the bookfirmly within the new kinship studies. Thus, by invoking Sarah Franklin’s workon infertility technology with that of Charis Thompson, Elizabeth Roberts,Marcia Inhorn, Aditya Bharadwaj, Amrita Pande, Jeanette Edwards and others, theaim is to engage with ideas of relatedness and ‘biology’ as they conflict andcollide in transnational practices of reproductive technologies. The combination of technology andtransnational-global trade in reproduction and international laws means thatkinship ideologies and everyday practices of relatedness are increasingly beingplaced under scrutiny. In the book, I posit that transnational commercialsurrogacy provides fertile ground for the examination of cross-culturalengagements with kinship and technology. The blending of Euro-American notionsof kinship, biomedical ideas of kin and ‘kinning’ mesh in interesting ways withIndian ideas and practices of kinship and relatedness. The book is centred on thetheoretical development of the notion of ‘conflicted kinship’. The mapping oftransnational commercial surrogacy in its processual, dynamic representationleads to the emergence of certain ideas regarding kin and kinship. From thechoice of the arrangement, to the pregnancy and finally to the birth of thechild, the surrogacy process is mapped in broad stages, which encapsulatewithin them other related conflicted processes.&#160;Through the mapping of these stages the idea was to engage with the waysin which relationships ‘unravel’ and may be made sense of through kinship as atool of analysis. Thus, the primary conflicts occur between the identificationof the parents and ‘others’ (the surrogate, her husband and the egg/spermdonors); between the idea of what constitutes nurture and nature (biology,genes, blood); and between choice and kinship, or the ability to choose who youare related to through the intervention of technology. Each of these conflictspoints towards deeper ideas of how people build relationships, especially when theyare faced with such artificial, external interventions as technology. The aim of this book is to blendtogether the lived experiences of surrogates and commissioning couples as theycome together in transnational commercial surrogacy. The stories of the growinggay family enthusiastically participating in surrogacy in India are animportant source of conversation. Narratives and experiences of commercialsurrogacy, including those of the surrogate’s husbands and the families ofcommissioning couples, bring forth a more nuanced portrait of navigating thetransnational commercial surrogacy industry in India. Anindita Majumdar is Assistant Professor at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad, Telangana. Her book, Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India is based on her doctoral research, which was awarded the ‘Distinction in Doctoral Research Award’ by the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 2016. In February 2019, she was a participant of the Exploratory Workshop “Exploring Networks of Transnational Surrogacy” at Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. Citation: Anindita Majumdar, Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India, in TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 08.04.2019, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18329. 