Collection uses ethnographies of globalization to explore the consequences of interactions between global processes and national structures on human reproduction and reproductive health in a range of contexts.

Seeking to extend our understanding of the contemporary global political economy, this book provides an important and original introduction to the current theoretical debates about social reproduction and argues for the necessity of linking social reproduction to specific contexts of power and production. It illustrates the analytic value of the concept of social reproduction through a series of case studies that examine the implications of how labor power is reproduced and how lives outside of work are lived. The issues examined in countries including the Ukraine, Chile, Spain, Nepal, India and Indonesia, consist of: Human trafficking and sex work Women and work Migration, labor and gender inequality Micro-credit programs and investing in women Health, biological reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies The book lends a unique perspective to the understandings of transformation in the global political economy precisely because of its simultaneous focus on the caring and provisioning of the everyday and its relationships to policies and decisions made at the national and international levels of both formal and informal institutions. With its multi-disciplinary approach, this book will be indispensable to students and scholars of International Political Economy, Development Studies, Gender or Women’s Studies, International Studies, Globalization and International Relations.

This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the USSR/Russia, and the United States. The essays focus on the official, organized efforts that states pursued to facilitate state decisions about how many people, and which people, would be born within their borders.

This book paints a comprehensive portrait of Mexico’s system of assisted reproduction first from a historical perspective, then from a more contemporary viewpoint. Based on a detailed analysis of books and articles published between the 1950s and 1980s, the first section tells the story of how the epistemic, normative, and material infrastructure of the assisted reproduction system was built. It traces the professionalization process of assisted reproduction as a medical field and the establishment of its professional association. Drawing on ethnographic material, the second part looks at how this system developed and flourished from the 1980s up to 2010, its commercialization process, how the expansion of reproductive services took place, and the messages regarding reproductive technologies that circulated within a wide discursive landscape. Given its scope and methods, this book will appeal to scholars interested in science and technology studies, reproduction studies, history of medicine, medical anthropology, and sociology.

These essays examine the global impact of infertility as a major reproductive health issue, one that has profoundly affected the lives of countless women and men. The contributors address a range of topics including how the deeply gendered nature of infertility sets the blame on women's shoulders.

This volume provides an investigation of the dynamics of reproduction. Using reproduction as an entry point the authors examine how cultures are produced, contested, and transformed as people imagine their collective future in the creation of the next generation.

Third party conception is a growing phenomenon and provokes a burgeoning range of ethical, legal and social questions. What are the rights of donors, recipients and donor conceived children? How are these reproductive technologies regulated? How is kinship understood within these new family forms? Written by specialists from three different continents, Transnationalising Reproduction examines a broad range of issues concerning kinship and identity, citizenship and regulation, and global markets of reproductive labour; including gamete donation and gestational surrogacy. Indeed, this book seeks to highlight how reproductive technologies not only makes possible new forms of kinship and family formations, but also how these give rise to new, ethical, political and legal dilemmas about parenthood as well as new modes of discrimination and a re-distribution of medical risks. It also thoroughly investigates the ways in which a commodification of reproductive tissue and labour affects the practices, representations and gendered self-understandings of gamete donors, fertility patients and intended parents in different parts of the world. With a broad geographical scope, Transnationalising Reproduction offers new empirical and theoretical perspectives on third-party conception and demonstrates the need for more transnational approaches to third-party reproduction. This volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Health Care Sciences, Reproductive Technology and Medical Sociology.