Amy Speier
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479827664
- eISBN:
- 9781479858996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479827664.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
I introduce the general phenomenon of reproductive travel and survey the existing literature about this type of medical tourism. I apply feminist and globalization theories to this phenomenon as I ...
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I introduce the general phenomenon of reproductive travel and survey the existing literature about this type of medical tourism. I apply feminist and globalization theories to this phenomenon as I claim these holidays are political economies of hope (Rose and Novas 2005). I sketch the primary actors of this global care chain: IVF brokers who promise lower middle class North Americans they can have blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies, a European vacation, and excellent health care at affordable prices as well as the North Americans who travel to the Czech Republic for IVF using egg donation. I end the first chapter with a brief discussion of my ethnographic methodology and a layout of the rest of the chapters of the book.Less
I introduce the general phenomenon of reproductive travel and survey the existing literature about this type of medical tourism. I apply feminist and globalization theories to this phenomenon as I claim these holidays are political economies of hope (Rose and Novas 2005). I sketch the primary actors of this global care chain: IVF brokers who promise lower middle class North Americans they can have blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies, a European vacation, and excellent health care at affordable prices as well as the North Americans who travel to the Czech Republic for IVF using egg donation. I end the first chapter with a brief discussion of my ethnographic methodology and a layout of the rest of the chapters of the book.
