Download or read book Wombs in Labor written by Amrita Pande and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, Pande's research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of India's larger labor system. Pande's interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of India's surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.
Download or read book The Wombs of Women written by Françoise Vergès and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s thousands of poor women of color on the (post)colonial French island of Reunion had their pregnancies forcefully terminated by white doctors; the doctors operated under the pretext of performing benign surgeries, for which they sought government compensation. When the scandal broke in 1970, the doctors claimed to have been encouraged to perform these abortions by French politicians who sought to curtail reproduction on the island, even though abortion was illegal in France. In The Wombs of Women—first published in French and appearing here in English for the first time—Françoise Vergès traces the long history of colonial state intervention in black women’s wombs during the slave trade and postslavery imperialism as well as in current birth control politics. She examines the women’s liberation movement in France in the 1960s and 1970s, showing that by choosing to ignore the history of the racialization of women’s wombs, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color. Ultimately, Vergès demonstrates how the forced abortions on Reunion were manifestations of the legacies of the racialized violence of slavery and colonialism.
Download or read book Jesus in Our Wombs written by Rebecca J. Lester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.
Download or read book Outsourcing the Womb written by France Winddance Twine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-27 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through case studies, Outsourcing the Womb, Second Edition provides a critical analysis and global tour of the international surrogacy landscape in Egypt, India, China, Japan, Israel, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States. By providing a comparative analysis of countries that have very different policies, this book disentangles the complex role that race, religion, class inequality, legal regimes, and global capitalism play in the gestational surrogacy market. This book provides an intersectional frame of analysis in which multiple forms of social inequality and power differences become institutionalized and restrict the access of some individuals and families while privileging others, and concludes with a discussion of "reproductive justice" and "reproductive liberty." It is an ideal addition to courses on social problems, race, gender, and inequality.
Download or read book Full Surrogacy Now written by Sophie Lewis and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the “family” The surrogacy industry is estimated to be worth over $1 billion a year, and many of its surrogates around the world work in terrible conditions—deception, wage-stealing and money skimming are rife; adequate medical care is horrifyingly absent; and informed consent is depressingly rare. In Full Surrogacy Now, Sophie Lewis brings a fresh and unique perspective to the topic. Often, we think of surrogacy as the problem, but, Full Surrogacy Now argues, we need more surrogacy, not less! Rather than looking at surrogacy through a legal lens, Lewis argues that the needs and protection of surrogates should be put front and center. Their relationship to the babies they gestate must be rethought, as part of a move to recognize that reproduction is productive work. Only then can we begin to break down our assumptions that children “belong” to those whose genetics they share. Taking collective responsibility for children would radically transform our notions of kinship, helping us to see that it always takes a village to make a baby.
Download or read book Theology of The Womb written by Christy Angelle Bauman and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If it is true that God is a male, then His Divinity or Deity is expressed in His masculinity. Yet I am a woman, and there are parts of my body; such as my breasts, my vagina, and my womb that are telling a story about God that I have never learned or understood. This is an exploration of the significance of a womb that must shed and bleed before it can create. How will we engage our body which cyclically bleeds most of our life and can build and birth a human soul? How will we honor the living womb, that lives and sometimes dies within us? This is a book about the theology found in the cycle of the womb, which births both life and death. Every day each one of us is invited to create, and every day we make a decision knowing that from our creation can come death or life. Women's voices have been silenced for a long time as society and the church has quieted their bodies. Will we courageously choose to listen to the sound of your voice, the song of your womb, and speak for the world to hear?
Download or read book Discounted Life written by Sharmila Rudrappa and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharmila Rudrappa interrogates the creation and maintenance of reproductive labor markets, the function of agencies and surrogacy brokers, and how women become surrogate mothers. Is surrogacy solely a labor contract for which the surrogate mother receives wages, or do its meanings and import exceed the confines of the market? Rudrappa argues that this reproductive industry is organized to control and disempower women workers and yet her interviews reveal that, by and large, the surrogate mothers in Bangalore found the experience life affirming. Rudrappa explores this tension, and the lived realities of many surrogate mothers whose deepening bodily commodification is paradoxically experienced as a revitalizing life development.
Download or read book Wisdom From The Womb written by Geneva Montano Cpm and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-11-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through information, her own experience, and client stories, Geneva Montano presents birthing people with the opportunity to create a pregnancy and birth where their babies are heard and trusted, where they are invited to tap into the innate knowing within their wombs and the opportunity to exit the popular birth narrative that is mired in fear, blame, and doubt. Her compassionately connected approach offers comfort in the midst of the challenges that new parents face. It anchors them in the ancient wisdom of spirit and body to address common fears and choices that arise for many birthing families. Wisdom from the Womb delivers empowerment through the art of storytelling and humor, the evidence of science and anecdote, the practices of peaceful stillness and aligned movement, and the ability we all have to listen to and trust ourselves and our babies. Proceeds from this book will be donated to Colorado Community Birth, a non-profit organization that offers volunteer birth services to people who would not otherwise be able to access them and mentorship to people who want to guide birthing people through the process as midwives and doulas. "Geneva's compelling stories will take you on a journey of understanding the importance of MotherBaby love and connection that begins in the womb and that will guide you to claim your power in birth and parenthood. This is a midwife's tale of transformation that will support you in connecting to your baby and your body and will open you to the miracles of birth in new ways. Birth is a day that impacts and sets the foundation for your baby and your relationships. There is no greater investment than in preparing for birth with love and connection. Geneva gives you a treasure of knowledge that will engage and inspire you and your baby to a lifelong relationship of trust and love." -Debra Pascali-Bonaro, author, Orgasmic Birth "In an experience that feels like there are countless decisions to be made, Geneva carves an intuitive path to bringing your baby smoothly and calmly into the world with her beautiful words and wisdom. Her book gently reminds you that, no matter your experience in pregnancy or birth, the answers you seek are within your womb." -Ricki Lake & Abby Epstein, filmmakers, The Business of Being Born Geneva Montano is a Colorado native and mother of four. She has been a birth worker since 2003 and has attended over 650 births in homes, birth centers, and hospitals. Geneva has had a lifelong passion for spirituality, art, and self-exploration. She believes that each birth teaches her and her clients the life lessons they have been seeking. Geneva is a Registered and Certified Professional Midwife, Certified Doula, Registered Yoga teacher, prenatal and postnatal yoga teacher, CPR instructor, body and energy worker, doula trainer, author, artist, and activist. She is certified in womb massage, holistic healing of the pregnant and postpartum bodies, NLP, quantum transformation, and more. She loves teaching, listening to people's stories with her ears, heart, and hands, and being a vessel for transmitting divine healing to bodies and spirits. Midwife. Doula. Spirit Medicine. www.GenevaMontano.com
Download or read book Globalization and Transnational Surrogacy in India written by Sayantani DasGupta and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From computer support and hotel reservations to laboratory results and radiographic interpretations, it seems everything can be ‘outsourced’ in our globalized world. One would not think so with parenthood, however, especially motherhood, as it is a fundamental activity humans have historically preserved as personal and private. In our modern age, however, the advent and accessibility of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the ease with which they have traversed global borders, has fundamentally altered the meaning of childbearing and parenting. In thetwenty-first century, parenthood is no longer achieved only through gestation, adoption, or traditional surrogacy, but also via assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), where science and technology play lead roles. Furthermore, in a globalized world economy, where the movement and transfer of people and commodities are increasing to serve the interests of capitalism, gamete donation and surrogate birth can traverse innumerable geographic, socio-economic, racialized, and political borderlands. Thus, reproduction itself can be outsourced. This edited volume explores one specific aspect of the new assisted reproductive technologies: gestational surrogacy and how its practice is changing the traditional concept of parenthood across the globe. The phenomenon of transnational surrogacy has given rise to a thriving international industry where money is being ‘legally’ exchanged for babies and ‘reproductive labor’ has taken on a lucrative commercial tone. Yet, law, research, and activism are barely aware of this experience and are still playing catch-up with rapidly changing on-the-ground realities. This interdisciplinary collection of essays assuages the dearth of knowledge and addresses significant issues in transnational commercial gestational surrogacy as it takes shape in a peculiar relation between the West (primarily the United States) and India.
Download or read book Laboring Women written by Jennifer L. Morgan and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-09-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When black women were brought from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, their value was determined by their ability to work as well as their potential to bear children, who by law would become the enslaved property of the mother's master. In Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, Jennifer L. Morgan examines for the first time how African women's labor in both senses became intertwined in the English colonies. Beginning with the ideological foundations of racial slavery in early modern Europe, Laboring Women traverses the Atlantic, exploring the social and cultural lives of women in West Africa, slaveowners' expectations for reproductive labor, and women's lives as workers and mothers under colonial slavery. Challenging conventional wisdom, Morgan reveals how expectations regarding gender and reproduction were central to racial ideologies, the organization of slave labor, and the nature of slave community and resistance. Taking into consideration the heritage of Africans prior to enslavement and the cultural logic of values and practices recreated under the duress of slavery, she examines how women's gender identity was defined by their shared experiences as agricultural laborers and mothers, and shows how, given these distinctions, their situation differed considerably from that of enslaved men. Telling her story through the arc of African women's actual lives—from West Africa, to the experience of the Middle Passage, to life on the plantations—she offers a thoughtful look at the ways women's reproductive experience shaped their roles in communities and helped them resist some of the more egregious effects of slave life. Presenting a highly original, theoretically grounded view of reproduction and labor as the twin pillars of female exploitation in slavery, Laboring Women is a distinctive contribution to the literature of slavery and the history of women.
Download or read book Birth Without Violence written by Frédérick Leboyer and published by Pinter & Martin Publishers. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birth without Violence revolutionised the way we perceive the process of birth, urging us to consider birth from the infant's point of view. This Pinter & Martin edition is the definitive edition, published exactly how the author intended it.
Download or read book The Flaming Womb written by Barbara Watson Andaya and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Princess of the Flaming Womb, the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet, despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male-female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women's roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500-1800) - the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors - drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies.
Download or read book Labor of Love written by Heather Jacobson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the practice of surrogacy has existed for millennia, new fertility technologies have allowed women to act as gestational surrogates, carrying children that are not genetically their own. While some women volunteer to act as gestational surrogates for friends or family members, others get paid for performing this service. The first ethnographic study of gestational surrogacy in the United States, Labor of Love examines the conflicted attitudes that emerge when the ostensibly priceless act of bringing a child into the world becomes a paid occupation. Heather Jacobson interviews not only surrogate mothers, but also their family members, the intended parents who employ surrogates, and the various professionals who work to facilitate the process. Seeking to understand how gestational surrogates perceive their vocation, she discovers that many regard surrogacy as a calling, but are reluctant to describe it as a job. In the process, Jacobson dissects the complex set of social attitudes underlying this resistance toward conceiving of pregnancy as a form of employment. Through her extensive field research, Jacobson gives readers a firsthand look at the many challenges faced by gestational surrogates, who deal with complicated medical procedures, delicate work-family balances, and tricky social dynamics. Yet Labor of Love also demonstrates the extent to which advances in reproductive technology are affecting all Americans, changing how we think about maternity, family, and the labor involved in giving birth. For more, visit http://www.heatherjacobsononline.com/
Download or read book Humoral Wombs on the Shakespearean Stage written by Amy Kenny and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-21 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the humoral womb was evoked, enacted, and embodied on the Shakespearean stage by considering the intersection of performance studies and humoral theory. Galenic naturalism applied the four humors—yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood—to delineate women as porous, polluting, and susceptible to their environment. This book draws on early modern medical texts to provocatively demonstrate how Shakespeare’s canon offers a unique agency to female characters via humoral discourse of the womb. Chapters discuss early modern medicine’s attempt to theorize and interpret the womb, specifically its role in disease, excretion, and conception, alongside passages of Shakespeare’s plays to offer a fresh reading of (geo)humoral subjectivity. The book shows how Shakespeare subversively challenges contemporary notions of female fluidity by accentuating the significance of the womb as a source of self-defiance and autonomy for female characters across his canon.
Download or read book Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies written by Jena Pincott and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Where Baby Mama meets the Discovery Channel, a bright book of brain candy about the wild science behind pregnancy"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Sexuality Maternity and Re productive Futures written by Kazue Harada and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexuality, Maternity, and (Re)productive Futures explores how contemporary Japanese female speculative fiction writers have challenged historical inequalities of sex, gender difference, and family roles by imagining alternative worlds where sexes are fluid and childbearing crosses the boundaries of male/female, biological/bioengineered, and human/nonhuman.
Download or read book Not Like a Native Speaker written by Rey Chow and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled in a similar manner, make their appearances in the various chapters: the young mulatto happening upon a photograph about skin color in a popular magazine; the man from Martinique hearing himself named "Negro" in public in France; call center agents in India trained to Americanize their accents while speaking with customers; the Algerian Jewish philosopher reflecting on his relation to the French language; African intellectuals debating the pros and cons of using English for purposes of creative writing; the translator acting by turns as a traitor and as a mourner in the course of cross-cultural exchange; Cantonese-speaking writers of Chinese contemplating the politics of food consumption; radio drama workers straddling the forms of traditional storytelling and mediatized sound broadcast. In these riveting scenes of speaking and writing imbricated with race, pigmentation, and class demarcations, Chow suggests, postcolonial languaging becomes, de facto, an order of biopolitics. The native speaker, the fulcrum figure often accorded a transcendent status, is realigned here as the repository of illusory linguistic origins and unities. By inserting British and post-British Hong Kong (the city where she grew up) into the languaging controversies that tend to be pursued in Francophone (and occasionally Anglophone) deliberations, and by sketching the fraught situations faced by those coping with the specifics of using Chinese while negotiating with English, Chow not only redefines the geopolitical boundaries of postcolonial inquiry but also demonstrates how such inquiry must articulate historical experience to the habits, practices, affects, and imaginaries based in sounds and scripts.
