Book contents
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Chapter Fourteen - Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2022
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
What can the work of Marx tell us about surrogacy and vice versa; what can the work of surrogacy tell us about Marx? My research on commercial surrogacy in Georgia offers an interesting case study to reassess the relevance of Marxist research frameworks, as it uncomfortably disrupts capitalist dualisms of production versus reproduction, family versus market, gift versus commodity and waged versus unwaged work. Today, Georgian surrogates are paid for putting their reproductive biologies and gestational bodies to work in the (re)production of babies, family happiness and surplus value in the surrogacy industry. Yet, neither in classic political economy accounts nor in its Marxist counterpart are they seen as ‘real’ workers. On the contrary, surrogates and their ‘labour of love’ are made invisible and relegated to the hidden abodes of reproduction. In this chapter I use the work of Marx and his disobedient feminist ‘granddaughters’ to analyse and politically translate the invisibility of reproductive work in the global surrogacy industry.
Marx and the (Re)production of Material Life
The first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, [is that humans] must be in a position to live in order to be able to make history. But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. (Marx and Engels [1845] 1987)
I conduct research on the political economy of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), at the crossroads of ongoing histories of (settler)colonialism and (bio)capitalism. Over the past years, I have been focusing on mapping the booming transnational surrogacy chain between Israel/Palestine and Georgia. I follow the reproductive trail of infertile Israeli couples and their fertility brokers who are increasingly traveling to Georgia where they hope to recruit affordable surrogates who can make their dreams of genetic parenthood come true.
I hear the reader thinking: why on earth would Marx be relevant for studying contemporary processes of baby-and family-making?
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- Marx in the Field , pp. 189 - 202Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021