The DOI matches its Crossref record; 35 of the 38 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 30 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.
Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters?
Open accessAbstract
In this ethnography of transnational commercial surrogacy in a small clinic in India, the narratives of two sets of women involved in this new form of reproductive travel – the transnational clients and the surrogates themselves – are evaluated. How do these women negotiate the culturally anomalous nature of transnational surrogacy within the unusual setting of India? It is demonstrated that while both sets of women downplay the economic aspect of surrogacy by drawing on predictable cultural tools like 'gift', 'sisterhood' and 'mission', they use these tools in completely unexpected ways. Previous ethnographies of surrogacy in other parts of the world have revealed that women involved in surrogacy use these narratives to downplay the contractual nature of their relationship with each other. Ironically, when used in the context of transnational surrogacy in India, these narratives further highlight and often reify the inequalities based on class, race and nationality between the clients and suppliers of reproductive tourism in India.
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Claims the paper makes
0 Valid · 5 Not valid · 26 Not checked · 75 Own results and interpretations
In the paper
“34 interviewees reported a family income which put them below the poverty line (Planning Commission of India, 2009).”
§ Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters? > Fieldwork and methodology
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Planning Commission of India, 2009
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plainn = 34- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
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In the paper
“For most of the surrogates' families, the money earned through surrogacy was equivalent to almost 5 years of total family income, especially since many of the surrogates had husbands who were either in informal contract work or unemployed.”
§ Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters? > Fieldwork and methodology
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The median family income is about US$60 per month.”
§ Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters? > Fieldwork and methodology
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper states — it cites no source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“All the surrogates live together, in a room lined with iron beds and nothing else.”
§ Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters? > Fieldwork and methodology
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“The clinic funds several surrogacy hostels where the surrogates are literally kept under constant surveillance during their pregnancy -their food, medicines and daily activities are monitored by the medical staff.”
§ Transnational commercial surrogacy in India: gifts for global sisters? > Fieldwork and methodology
What the sources say
- Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Pande, 2009a source
- Not matchedcites Pande, 2010a
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
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- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Rests on an assumption not shown here.
43 more claims
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- Probably not a substantial claim. 36
- It may state two separate claims as one. 38
Citations
Cites
The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies.
Tumin, M. M., Mauss, M., Cunnison, I., & Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1956) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2088549 · Cited by 4,076
(2000) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511563836 · Cited by 3,562
The Gender of the GiftProblems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia
Strathern, M. (1988) · University of California Press · doi:10.1525/california/9780520064232.001.0001 · Cited by 2,931
Making parents: the ontological choreography of reproductive technologies
(2006) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.43-4741 · Cited by 1,359
The Mother Machine: Reproductive technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs
Corea, G. (1986) · MCN, The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing · doi:10.1097/00005721-198609000-00014 · Cited by 585
Commercial Surrogacy in India: Manufacturing a Perfect Mother‐Worker
Pande, A. (2010) · Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society · doi:10.1086/651043 · Cited by 379
Self-citationAnderson, E. S. (2020) · Women, Medicine, Ethics and the Law · doi:10.4324/9781003073789-9 · Cited by 289
Ragoné, H. (2019) · doi:10.4324/9780429307997 · Cited by 225
Cultures of Transnational Adoption
(2005) · Duke University Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctv11cw01p · Cited by 224
Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart
Blodgett, B., & Ragone, H. (1995) · Journal of Marriage and the Family · doi:10.2307/353707 · Cited by 221
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Pande, A., 2009a. Commercial Surrogate Mothering in India: Nine Months of Labor? Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
- Planning Commission of India, 2009. Report of the expert group to review the methodology for estimation of poverty (Online). <http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/rep_pov.pdf/> (30.05.11).
Cited by
Inhorn, M. C., & Patrizio, P. (2015) · Human Reproduction Update · doi:10.1093/humupd/dmv016 · Cited by 1,926
“…become the new millennium’s emblem of IVF globalization—boast-ing (cid:2) 500 IVF clinics and a growing industry of commercial gestational surrogacy(Pande,2010,2011;Rudrappa,2010,2012)—theneighboring South Asian states of Bangladesh and Pakistan, with populations of 161 million and 179 million,…”
BackgroundSurrogacy: outcomes for surrogate mothers, children and the resulting families—a systematic review
Söderström‐Anttila, V., Wennerholm, U., Loft, A., Pinborg, A. B., Aittomäki, K., Romundstad, L. B., & Bergh, C. (2015) · Human Reproduction Update · doi:10.1093/humupd/dmv046 · Cited by 237
“There have been worries about the possibility of exploitation or coercion of women to act as gestational carriers (Tieu, 2009; Pande, 2011; Deonandan et al., 2012).”
BackgroundSmietana, M., Thompson, C., & Twine, F. W. (2018) · Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online · doi:10.1016/j.rbms.2018.11.001 · Cited by 184
Cross-border reproductive care: a future research agenda
Inhorn, M. C., & Gürtin, Z. B. (2011) · Reproductive BioMedicine Online · doi:10.1016/j.rbmo.2011.08.002 · Cited by 151
“In particular, five of the studies provide much-needed qualitative insights regarding the motivations of patients and their experiences (Bergmann, 2011; Hudson and Culley, 2011; Inhorn, 2011b; Speier, 2011; Zanini, 2011), while four others provide ethnographic reflection on CBRC choreographies of transnational travel…”
InfluentialAltruistic Agencies and Compassionate Consumers
(2015) · doi:10.1177/0891243215602922 · Cited by 124
Metadata
- Authors
- Pande, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Cape Town (ZA)
- Corresponding author
- Pande, Amrita
- ORCID
- Pande, Amrita
- Venue
- Reproductive BioMedicine Online
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2011-11
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 618-625
- ISSN
- 1472-6483 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2040749633
- Cited by
- 179
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 11.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- Locations
- Reproductive BioMedicine Online (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Cape Town
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Reproductive Medicine › Reproductive Health and Technologies
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › International Human Rights and Reproductive Law
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Sex work and related issues
- Keywords
- commercial surrogacy, transnational surrogacy, reproductive tourism, gift exchange, sisterhood, class inequality, race and nationality, women's narratives, India
- MeSH terms
- Anthropology, Cultural, Commerce, Female, Humans, India, Interviews as Topic, Pregnancy, Socioeconomic Factors, Gestational Carriers, Health Care Surveys, Narration, Medical Tourism
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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