An Omission Revisited, or Making Sense of Baby Markets in India

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21055700
AutoresVrinda Marwah (0000-0001-6575-1823, Department of Social Sciences), Sharmila Rudrappa (0000-0003-0773-0383, University of Illinois Chicago)
Ano2025
Volume50
Fascículo4
Páginas811-837
Data de publicação2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/734705
OpenAlexW4411140872
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas41

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in India on surrogacy in 2011–12, and on women community health workers in 2018–19, this essay offers glimpses into the underground market in babies in India. We describe instances we came across of working-class women either having their babies stolen from them, relinquishing their babies in exchange for money, or facilitating such exchanges for other women. These instances became a methodological, analytical, and political challenge to write about, so we initially omitted writing about them in our research. Here, we correct that omission and ask: How do we make sense of a market in babies in India? We argue that mothers who “sell” their babies are engaging in economic exchanges that are at once alienating, exploitative, offensive, agentic, and even deeply maternal acts of care. Drawing on reproductive justice and economic sociology, we offer a reparative reading of the market in babies that does not disavow representation or women’s fraught agency in risky exchanges

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