Overview

Zooming in on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine, Intimate Strangers addresses market expansion into the intimate spheres of life that play out on women's bodies as mothers and workers. Veronika Siegl follows the inner workings of a surrogacy market marked by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. She explores intended mothers' anxious struggles for a child in light of stigmatized infertility and the aggressive biopolitics of motherhood; the uncertain but pragmatic pathways in and out of fertility clinics as surrogates navigate harsh economic realities and resist being objectified or morally judged; and the powerful role of agents and doctors who have found a profitable niche in nurturing and facilitating other people's existential hopes. Intimate Strangers discusses these issues against the backdrop of ultra-conservatism and moral governance in Russia, the rising international popularity of the Ukrainian surrogacy market, and the pervasiveness of neo-liberal ideologies and individualized notions of reproductive freedom.

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9781501769917

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Reviews

Intimate Strangers emerges as one of the most up-to-date and all-sided accounts of surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine. -- Maria Kirpichenko * H-Diplo * Intimate Strangers is an ethnography tendered with rigour as well as sensitivity, that readers would not only enjoy reading but that also engages with the life experiences of surrogates, the start-up stories of facilitators, and the reproductive requests and dreams of prospective parents suffering from various kinds of infertility. -- Jung Chen * Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters *

Author Information

Veronika Siegl is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Geography, University of Bern, and at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. She has published articles in journals such as the Anthropological Journal of European Studies and Curare. Journal of Medical Anthropology*, and is co-editor of the photo-text-book Hope.

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