A Review of Christina Weis, Surrogacy in Russia: An Ethnography of Reproductive Labour, Stratification and Migration. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021, 192 pp.

Abstract

A monograph by medical anthropologist Christina Weis, researcher at the Center for Reproductive Research at De Montfort University (United Kingdom), published in the Emerald Studies In Reproduction, Culture and Society series, is devoted to commercial surrogacy in contemporary Russia. This ethnographic study, based on extensive and diverse fieldwork, includes the author’s reflections, methodological decisions, emotions, and difficulties that accompanied her in the process of data collection. The author shows that surrogacy relationships in Russia are constructed as purely economic, in which social hierarchies are reproduced. Surrogacy is associated with physical and emotional work performed by women and putting their lives at risk.