Global Unequal Production in Surrogacy Industry: Analysis Based on Cultural Anthropology

Abstract

This article reports on an ethnographic study of the multinational commercial surrogacy industry. The Surrogacy is an arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby a woman agrees to delivery/labor for another person or people, who will become the child's parent(s) after birth. With the globalization of fertility demand and market, more and more families in developed countries choose to get their own children through surrogacy. Under such circumstances, intensive ‘surrogacy factories’ emerged in some third world countries and the surrogacy industry has become an inevitable topic in globalization. This article focuses on the interaction between the ‘surrogate mother’ and ‘the client’ in the surrogacy industry. In particular, we pay attention to how surrogates rationalize their moral behavior in this process, and how surrogates' bodies are commodified in the globalized economic interactions. And also, we try to examine the racial, religious and class inequalities contained in this huge "gray" industry from the perspective of cultural anthropology.