Contexts

I first met Tram in 2006 in a tiny bar on Pham Ngu Lao Street in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), in a neighborhood frequented by backpackers from abroad.

Tram and other sex workers in the bar, disguised as bartenders, catered to Western budget travelers seeking brief encounters or longer relationships-for-hire. They were the bar’s key attraction, but the women received no wages from the owner; they were independent entrepreneurs in a niche of the sex trade.

Tram, 27 years old and adorned with bracelet, rings, and a diamond necklace, was a model of success and economic mobility. She lived in a brand-new luxury condo with two servants, a full-time housecleaner and a cook who prepared Western foods for her new American husband. Tram had come from a poor village, she told me, where the only jobs were in the rice fields. In Ho Chi Minh City, she worked first as a maid and then in a clothing factory. But after two years of earning no more than the equivalent of US$70 a month, Tram had saved no money, could barely cover food and rent, and saw no hope for improvement. “Life in the city is so expensive,’’ she said. She saw sex work as her best route out of poverty.

Tram met William, 70, as a client, and quickly began to develop a more intimate relationship with him, hoping that her emotional labor might lead to ongoing economic support—in a remittance relationship, or marriage. Many Western men come to Vietnam seeking wives, or they become attached to women they hired once there, sympathizing with their plight, and wanting to take them out of the sex trade and care for them. Six months after they met, William asked Tram to marry him and move to North America. They were married in 2007.

In 2009, I reconnected with Tram, along with William and their three children at an airport outside of Montreal, Canada. As we drove the three hours to their home, passing lumber farms, acres of undeveloped land, and pastures sprinkled with sheep, I commented on its beauty and tranquility. But Tram expressed no such sentiments. She had never intended to escape small town Vietnam, she said, only to end up in another small town in rural Canada. She had hoped to move to the United States, and had dreamed of living in Los Angeles or New York, “a big city, like the movies.”

Instead, she found herself isolated, in a cold climate and working long hours. Williams’ savings had dwindled, thanks to the expense of immigration, and they had arrived in North America smack in the middle of a global recession. For a year and a half, she worked nights and weekends for her brother in-law’s lumber company. She did see progress: By June of the year I came to visit, she had saved over US$20,000 and, with her sister in-law, opened a small shop selling local produce. But she was now the primary breadwinner, while William, retired but without much of his savings, stayed home with the children. “This is not what I thought my life would be like,” she lamented.

The story of Tram and William, like that of other couples in my study, suggests a reversal of the usual trajectory of marital journeys. Ethnographers Denise Brennan and Amalia Cabezas have shown that sex workers often feign love as a strategy to obtain visas to migrate abroad. In Vietnam, the opening to the West in recent decades has inspired some women, usually between the ages of 17 and 32, to seek strategic marriages with Western men through sex work. Of the 71 sex workers I interviewed, 30 got married, and of the 30 just 12 women were able to obtain visas and emigrate. While 12 may not represent a large sample, I followed them for three to six years, spending as much as a week at their homes after they landed in the United States, Australia, France and Canada. While women who traveled from Vietnam to Western countries to be with their husbands did not intend to seek out employment, two-thirds of the women in my study ended up becoming their family’s primary breadwinner—reversing typical expectations.

William, like most men in my study, had come to Vietnam deliberately seeking a wife, while others discovered these opportunities once they arrived on visits. Either way, they were eager to find women who would enter a marriage with traditional gender roles that were fast disappearing at home. Their expectations were simple; the men would provide the economic support and the women would provide care, housekeeping and emotional labor.

What happened instead was a classic case of “gender vertigo.” Sociologist Barbara Risman used this term to describe the dizzying effect on people who adopt, or find themselves having to embrace, a radical and unfamiliar social role that upends their ideas of how family structures and society work. Dating back to the 1970s at least, this vertigo hit couples engaging in egalitarian role sharing, where husband and wife occupy both roles—breadwinner and nurturer. But in recent years, especially since the Great Recession that began in 2007, this model has shifted 180 degrees. In my study, most of the women had expected to end their working days once they reached their destination. Instead, most of them quickly ended up finding jobs, looking for income to supplement their husbands’ and hoping to send some home to family in Vietnam, and 8 of the 12 women quickly became the main breadwinner, often working double shifts, with husbands working less lucrative jobs or at home doing childcare.

In Tram’s case, she was able to move beyond the daily grind to open her own business. Others struggled more—and longer.

From Sex Worker to Wife

Thy, then 28, had met her future husband, Mitchell, in 2007. “When I first met him I did not really love him,” she explains. But “life in Vietnam was hard, and I was looking for a way to get out. Even after we married I had other boyfriends because I did not think that he would get me out [of Vietnam].” But after two years of visits back and forth, and paying fees to immigration lawyers both in Vietnam and Australia, Thy was finally able to migrate.

In the mid 2000s, stung by marriage scandals, and wary of enabling sex trafficking, more visas were denied by the United States, and the emigration process became increasingly long and arduous, taking an average of two years after a couple married. Most of the men in my study depleted their savings on attorney fees, on the cost of flights back and forth, and by sending money from the United States to support wives or fiancés waiting in Vietnam. The uncertainty in turn could complicate the marriage dynamic; many women hesitate to make the commitment unless it came with some kind of assurance that they would be supported; nor did they want to drop out of the sex business if they weren’t assured support.

Thy landed in Melbourne in 2010. Using Skype, she walked me through her and Mitchell’s modest apartment, joking about how her standard of living in Australia was much lower than the one that she had in Vietnam. “The first time I went to the grocery store was a shock,” she remembered. “Eggs were $4 (Australian dollars) and a whole chicken was $15. Mitchell just kept filling the cart. The bill was $150. It was so expensive.” Soon both spouses were working just to cover the necessities.

“I feel like a machine,’’ Thy said, tears welling in her eyes. Everyday we wake up at 6:30 to make breakfast and pack lunch. He leaves, and then around 8:00, I walk to his mom’s house,” where she works as a maid for neighbors. Mitchell’s mother had introduced Thy, and spent three weeks working alongside her to instruct her on how to meet each homeowner’s personal expectations. “I work [all day] in empty houses when everyone goes to work, and when I come home, Mitchell is all I have,” said Thy. She has come to love Mitchell and to be grateful for all he sacrificed to bring her to Australia and in his work there. “Everyone in his family is very nice to me,” says Thy. “His mom buys me clothes in the winter, and she always tries to make me feel welcome. But it is very lonely.”

None of the 12 women thought of returning to sex work. Most held typical working-class jobs, although one told me in confidence that she worked in a local massage parlor that offered a number of erotic services (but not sexual intercourse). Her husband didn’t know this about the spa. She agreed to perform some of these services in order to earn more money, but she drew clear boundaries for herself around the kinds of sexual practices she would perform. What she did like about the job was that she didn’t have to struggle to speak English to colleagues or customers. “I don’t have to talk to anyone. It is mostly body language.”

For their part, many of the men in these relationships felt great anxiety and guilt that they couldn’t provide for their wives as they had promised. Most of the couples had arrived in the men’s countries in the middle of the worldwide financial crisis, and many found that they had lost their savings or retirement funds in the faltering markets. If they wanted to keep working, or to come out of retirement, they had trouble finding jobs, especially the older men.

Lawrence, in his 60s, living with his wife Nhi in Florida, told me that she “didn’t know much about life in the United States—except that I promised I would take care of her and provide her with a better life than the one she had in Vietnam. She wants so many things, and it’s hard to say no when she asks for things.” Brian, who spends idle days in Vermont, just says he’s afraid to turn on the TV to hear more news about how bad the economy is doing. His 401(k) fund is nearly gone and his $1200 a month Social Security payments are “barely enough for us to just get by.”

Younger husbands too had been through futile and humiliating job searches; 3 of the 12 were unemployed. Even for couples lucky enough to have two jobs, money was tight. Jeremie, a French man in his early 40s, had traveled to Vietnam as a tourist, and found that he and his lover, Quyen “could live it up.” Food was cheap, housing was cheap, and labor was cheap. Western men also had more opportunity; they could take up jobs as English teachers or as editors or translators for local Vietnamese companies. Back in the West, the exchange rate and status they had enjoyed in Vietnam evaporated.

But it didn’t help many of the couples to seek out other Vietnamese immigrants abroad. Some of the women found jobs in the Vietnamese ethnic enclaves, in nail salons, restaurants, or coffee shops. But when the details of their marriages were revealed, they suffered new isolation. The stigma associated with being a young Vietnamese woman married to a Western man made it difficult to establish trust or social bonds with them.

Hoai told me, “When the [Vietnamese] owners [of a nail salon] found out that I was married to an older white man, they started to trust me less with the money. They look at me like I might steal something from them because I was a bar girl in Vietnam. The female boss always watches me around her husband.”

Between Love and Money

As I heard more stories of struggle and isolation, I began to wonder—and ask—why some of the women didn’t leave their husbands, either to live on their own, in different locations or communities in their new countries, or to return to Vietnam. Most of the women in fact, believed that they could easily escape their marriages but remain in their new countries if they claimed that their husbands were abusing them; authorities would believe they were victims of human trafficking. But none wanted to do this, and none wanted to return home.

One reason was pride. Like many immigrants who boldly leave home, full of grand expectations, some of the women hid the truths of their new lives from family at home. Thanh Ha, age 26, was painfully reluctant to reveal what she was doing to earn a living in the United States. She told me at first that she had found work in a tortilla chip factory. I spent nearly four days with the family in their cramped apartment before she finally revealed what she was doing. “I work in a chip factory,’’ she said, haltingly. “But I don’t work on the line.” She hesitated. “My job is to collect garbage.”

Struck by her emotion, I tried to reassure her that this kind of job could be a stepping-stone to better things. Shaking her head, she said, “When I was in Vietnam, my first job [in a wood factory] was a step-up from my village; the bar was another step up. I was making more money. Picking up trash in America is both a step up and a step down.”

When Jeremie suggested returning to Vietnam to live, his wife Quyen was unwilling. She couldn’t imagine returning without enough money or Western luxuries to display. One of the reasons the women wanted to send money home, in fact, was to maintain the veneer of upward mobility.

But perhaps the bigger surprise in these developments is the way the women and men began to acclimate to their vertiginous situations. One pleasure for the women was how supportive their husbands were about their earning money—even when they out-earned the men. Thu was surprised by her husband Roger’s approach to the money she earned. “He never tells me how to spend it. If I was married to a Vietnamese man, it would probably be hard for him to accept. But Roger is proud; he calls me superwoman.”

“I’m lucky because Thomas lets me work,’’ says Xuan, 26, “and he never asks me how I spend the money I earn.” Xuan’s Vietnamese co-workers who are married to Vietnamese men “always have to ask their husbands if they can send money to Vietnam.’’ These immigrants may “look down on me for my past life in Vietnam, but I have more freedoms, and I live a more carefree life than they do.”

Not only were many of the men supportive, they were comforted to know that their wives would be self-sufficient without them. Stanley, a man in his late 70s, said, “She is young, and I want her to be able to take care of herself when I pass away. I had my whole life to work and build my career. She should get to do that too.” The women, meanwhile, seemed to have developed affection, even love for their husbands, and certainly a sense of loyalty, a belief that they owed their husbands a great deal. “When I married Jeremie he took care of me and paid for everything,’’ said his Quyen. “When you marry an older man you will have to pay back your debt to him and take care of him too.”

Several of the women were still optimistic about their economic prospects, and they maintained the pragmatism that had made them marry these men in the first place. Van explained to me, “We are saving money to open a small shop together. He knows English and can handle the paperwork, and I can run the shop.”

Seeking economic security and a pathway out of Vietnam, the women in my study found themselves, thousands of miles away, in marriages where they became the breadwinner. Although they wanted women whom they could support financially who would offer them emotional security, the men found themselves in non-traditional relationships they had not bargained for. This experience of transnational gender vertigo reframes our understandings of sex work, migration, and gendered relationships across transnational spaces.

These couples stayed married, for better or for worse, as the transformation of marriage, migration, and love gave rise to new and different dreams for the future. As Van said, “Do Tinh Den Bac,” a phrase that means when you have luck with love or romance, your economic luck may decline. While she and the other women I studied embarked on migration journeys believing that they were sacrificing love for economic fortune, many ended up struggling economically—and some found love along the way.

recommended resources

Brennan, Denise. What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic (Duke University Press, 2004). An ethnographic exploration of how sex work- ers strategize to get married and migrate.

Cabezas, Amalia. Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Temple University Press, 2009). This book examines the emotional labors that sex workers perform in their relations with Western tourists.

Cheng, Sealing. On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). This book examines Filipina migrant sex workers relations with American GI’s in South Korea.

Kempadoo, Kamala. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race and Sexual Labor (Routledge, 2004). This ethnography examines the racialized and gendered relations in the Caribbean’s sex tourism industry.

Schaeffer, Felicity. Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and Citizenship across the Americas (New York University Press, 2012). This book looks at the commercialization of intimacy in marriage tourism between the United States and Latin America.

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Sociologist Özlem Altıok discusses the recent efforts to further restrict abortion in Turkey. She argues that these efforts are part of an effort to manage the population by disciplining women’s fertility under a new “reproductive governmentality.”

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Further Reading

For more information on the data from Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys, check out Hacettepe University's Institute of Population Studies.

On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire to protest the humiliating treatment he received at the hands of the police.

This sparked the Arab Spring, starting in Tunisia and spreading rapidly throughout the Middle East and North Africa. American diplomatic cables released through Wikileaks helped to fan the flames of the uprising with frank reports of the rapaciousness of dictators in the region, including Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Concerns that had been whispered in private were now in full public view, and fueled the spirit of the Arab Spring in many countries. By September 2012, dictators had been deposed in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. But the revolts that spread to other countries were crushed, coopted, or had begun to die out. In Syria, a brutal civil war continues. Spring had turned to winter.

These essays examine different aspects of the Arab Spring revolts. Charles Kurzman begins and Sarah Leah Whitson ends with rather bleak overview assessments. Kurzman’s story is of how strongmen in the region who were not among the four deposed dictators have survived and tightened their grip on power. Although Egyptians and Tunisians overthrew their dictators, Whitson is pessimistic about long-term social and political change due to the persistent lack of public support for freedom of speech. The other authors offer views of the struggles within individual countries. Dalia F. Fahmy looks at the status of women in post-Mubarak Egypt. Women were in the vanguard at the beginning of the Arab Spring, but now find themselves not only marginalized but, with the new constitution, relegated to second-class legal status. Justin Gengler examines the splintering of Shi‘a opposition in Bahrain after the Sunni royal regime brutally shut down their protests. Libya appears to be one of the most chaotic states in the region with a weak central government and warring militias. But Ryan Calder, surprisingly, paints a cautiously optimistic picture of the country’s future: the government has strong diplomatic relations, and is managing to slowly build social and political institutions. Perhaps most importantly, unlike the public spirit of despair conveyed in the other essays, Calder finds that Libyans are rather optimistic about their future.

1. Winter Without Spring, by Charles Kurzman
2. Egyptian Women Betrayed, by Dalia F. Fahmy
3. Resisting Revolution, by Justin Gengler
4. Libya’s Cautious Optimism, by Ryan Calder
5. Restricting Speech Restricts Arab Freedom, by Sarah Leah Whitson

Winter Without Spring

by Charles Kurzman

From Oman in the east to Morocco in the west, most rulers of the Middle East managed to survive the uprisings of 2011. As fears of mass protest have subsided, these autocrats are reasserting control, imposing an “Arab Winter” on countries that did not experience a full-fledged “Arab Spring.”

In early 2011, after dictators were toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, strongmen in neighboring states scrambled to prevent protests from reaching their borders. In half a dozen countries, Arab autocrats were frightened enough to offer serious-sounding concessions in quick time. On February 20, 2011, King Abdullah of Jordan promised “comprehensive reform,” saying “When I talk about political reform, I want real reform consistent with the spirit of the age.” On March 9, King Mohammed VI of Morocco promised “far-reaching” constitutional revisions that would “promote the democratization, revamping, and rationalization” of state institutions. On March 10, President Ali Abdullah Saleh promised a new constitution that would give the Yemeni parliament significant powers. On March 13, Sultan Qaboos of Oman promised to upgrade parliament from an advisory to a legislative body. On March 19, Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to “open a new page on the path to reform.” On March 30, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad promised to lift emergency rule and permit opposition political parties.

In spite of these promises, revolts deepened in Syria and Yemen. Elsewhere—along with heightened repression and expanded state subsidies—these promises apparently took the edge off protest movements. Algeria ended the state of emergency maintained since 1992, when the military canceled the only free elections in the country’s history. Morocco and Oman revised their constitutions, and in Morocco a moderate Islamist opposition party won parliamentary elections and peacefully transitioned to a new government.

As popular pressure receded, plans for comprehensive democratization were withdrawn. Jordan’s monarchy manipulated a new electoral law to ensure its control over parliament, while Morocco’s king introduced a new constitution that maintains his control over all “strategic” affairs. Before elections in Algeria, the government passed a restrictive law on associations designed to hamper the opposition.

Rulers in other Arab countries refused to grant even minimal reforms, gambling that they could get by with minor concessions, combined with harsh repression of incipient protest. Muammar Qaddafi offered US$400 to each Libyan family and encouraged them to go after the “greasy rats” who were demonstrating against the regime. In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah promised billions of dollars in new government expenditures, but no shift in policy. And President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan vowed not to run for reelection—in 2015. While Qaddafi’s gamble failed, other hardliners have managed to ride out the period of unrest.

Without meaningful checks on their power, rulers have stepped up harassment of activists. A particular target is online activism, which Arab governments view as almost magically disruptive. Bloggers, Tweeters, Facebook organizers and other digital activists have been threatened and detained in one country after another. In January 2012, Algeria extended repressive press regulations from print to electronic media. Oman arrested more than a dozen online activists in a sweep last spring and convicted them of lèse majesté, insulting the king, for complaining about the limited scope of reform in the country. In September, Jordan passed a law imposing potentially dire requirements on “electronic publications.” These measures are not as harsh as the widespread and brutal repression of the recent past, but they have been effective in containing the wave of uprisings.

The stalwarts of stability now have renewed confidence in their positions and increasing derision for democratization and for the Arab Spring movements. Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told a crowd of supporters as he campaigned for reelection last year that uprisings in Tunisia and elsewhere “are the work of Zionism and NATO,” generating a “spiral of chaos” that resulted in “the destruction of Libya, the partition of Sudan, and the weakening of Egypt.” A fair number of Algerians apparently agreed—in a 2012 Gallup poll, as many respondents attributed the Arab Spring to “foreign influences” as to a “true desire for change.”

While the mass mobilizations of the Arab Spring ushered in uncertainty, frustration, and disillusionment across the region, they have also generated a sense of political vitality in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, where the people toppled dictators. But in countries that did not have an Arab Spring, there is even more disillusionment and cynicism as dictators have strengthened their grip on power.

Egyptian Women Betrayed

by Dalia F. Fahmy

On January 18, 2011, 24-year-old Asma Mahfouz posted a video on YouTube calling on Egyptians to take to Liberation Square on January 25 to reclaim their honor and dignity. Mahfouz’s video has been credited with sparking the Egyptian uprising and ending the 30-year reign of President Hosni Mubarak. The simple chant of “One Hand”—that all Egyptians should unite for a democratic Egypt—was to usher in a new era for women. However, the 17-day uprising has led to two years of contentious politics and has marginalized the very group instrumental for its initial success—women.

Liberation Square symbolized a space where women were equal with men. The increasingly visible role women played showed that the culture of fear towards the state was ending. However, the state responded with appalling violence towards women, who were beaten and sexually assaulted by the security forces. Even after Mubarak’s fall, the military subjected 18 women protesting in Liberation Square to humiliating “virginity tests” aimed at forcing women from the streets during the short-lived post-revolution military rule. In what has become known as “The Blue Bra Girl” incident, a young female protester was stripped, revealing her blue bra, beaten and stomped on by helmeted riot police, becoming the symbol for Egyptian protesters calling for an to end the country’s military rule.

Eventually women were driven from the public square they were so integral in establishing during the revolution and post-revolutionary politics have pushed them further out of the political arena. Their marginalization from negotiating the political and social direction of Egypt began during the early moments of the transitional period after Mubarak’s overthrow. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces, the interim, post-revolution authority, excluded women from the negotiating the transition by not including any women on the committee that drafted Egypt’s transitional constitutional declaration. The military council also dissolved the National Council of Women, a body meant to strengthen the position of women in the public.

The military council also cancelled the Mubarak-era electoral quota that had guaranteed 64 out 444 parliamentary seats for women. Given that the first newly elected parliament would designate a Constitutional Assembly to draft the new Egyptian Constitution, the absence of female parliamentarians meant they would have no voice in the drafting process and no opportunity to influence key legislation for the future of Egypt. Ultimately, due to the underrepresentation of women (6 out of 100 members), this Constitutional Assembly was dissolved by the Supreme Administrative Court.

The second Constitutional Assembly was intended to be more representative, yet included only seven women, with none explicitly working on women’s rights. To prevent the Assembly from being dissolved again, newly elected President Mohammed Morsi, issued a declaration barring the judiciary from dissolving the Assembly, thus cementing the underrepresentation of women in the drafting of the new constitution.

Morsi, who was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a previously banned Islamist group that once supported banning women from the seat of the presidency, vowed to defend women’s rights if elected. However, in the recently approved constitution, women’s rights are not fully protected and are defined by traditional family roles. For instance, Article 10, while it allows for free maternal and child health services, also states the government will “enable the reconciliation between the duties of a woman toward her family and her work.” Further, Article 11 allocates to the state the power to preserve “morality” and to monitor the media in this regard. The article further stipulates that one of the roles of the media is to “uphold public morality” and to foster the “true nature of the Egyptian family.”

These articles designate women’s primary roles in relation to the traditional family, ultimately defining women’s duties both in public and private. If a woman’s public life infringes on her private family duties, she can be held legally accountable. This legislation is likely to lead to increased regulation and subjugation of women, and in many ways unequal citizenship, with insufficient protections from discrimination under the law. Furthermore, the new constitution does not delineate an electoral system that ensures the effective participation of women or that women will be represented within different elected assemblies.

Egyptian women, like Asma Mahfouz, came to symbolize a vision for Egypt that was based on democratic principles, participation, and social and political equality. In their struggle to bring down the Mubarak regime, Egyptian women found themselves fighting not only for the future of their country but also for their personal liberty. Today women in Egypt find themselves sidelined and still struggling to be heard.

Resisting Revolution

by Justin Gengler

On February 14, 2011, thousands of protesters descended on the Pearl Roundabout, a sprawling intersection featuring a 300-foot-tall sculptural homage to the pearl, Bahrain’s unofficial national symbol and the basis of its pre-oil economy. The government responded immediately with brutal violence. For one bloody, chaotic month, the roundabout would serve as headquarters for debilitating mass protests in demand of the basic social and political reforms pledged but ultimately abandoned by King Hamad bin ‘Isa Al Khalifa following his accession in 1999. That the Arab Spring arrived in Bahrain on February 14 was no coincidence. The date marked nine years since the unilateral promulgation of the country’s 2002 constitution, a charter that came to symbolize for regime opponents—in particular the country’s long-disenfranchised Shi‘a majority—the false promise of political reform.

Sunni-Shi‘a differences have always held social and political significance in Bahrain, but they took on added importance after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and especially following the post-2003 empowerment of Iraqi Shi‘a. Fearing similar revolutionary aspirations among their own population, Bahrain’s Sunni tribal ruling family has worked over the past decade to systematically minimize the political influence of Shi‘a, which comprise around 60 percent of a citizen population of just 600,000. Shi‘a are also disproportionately excluded from government benefits—including public-sector employment, government housing, and infrastructure development.

Even as King Hamad pledged reform in 2002, the country’s voting districts were redrawn to dilute Shi‘a representation in the elected but toothless parliament. Shi‘a were also disproportionately excluded from powerful government ministries and entirely disqualified from police and military service. Selective naturalization of Arab and non-Arab Sunnis has dramatically increased their numbers relative to Shi‘a. Finally, to dissuade ordinary Sunnis from acting on their own considerable political grievances, the state propagates anti-Shi‘a sentiment and demonizes the opposition as an Iranian-backed fifth column.

Initially led by a broad coalition of activists, Bahrain’s “Pearl Revolution” was soon buoyed by the organizational capacity of established Shi‘a and secular groups. The Shi‘a political bloc al-Wifaq threw its considerable weight behind the protest movement when its members resigned from parliament over the deaths of several protesters. To help check the momentum of the uprising, an alliance of mainly Sunni loyalist groups orchestrated their own mass counter-mobilization, sparking sectarian clashes and threatening open Sunni-Shi‘a conflict.

By March 12, amid rapidly disintegrating law and order, government killings, and torture, the king’s son, Crown Prince Salman, was deputized to lead a government-opposition dialogue to negotiate an end to the crisis. He was authorized to discuss even the thorniest of political issues, including the possibility of a government that “reflects the will of the people.” But al-Wifaq conditioned its participation on the state’s agreement to an elected assembly empowered to revise the 2002 constitution. Several more radical factions rejected the idea of talks altogether, demanding an end to the Al Khalifa monarchy.

Faced with faltering negotiations and pressure from hardline ruling family members, King Hamad abandoned the initiative— scheduled to last six weeks—after two days. Instead, several thousand ground troops from neighboring Gulf states arrived in armored vehicles via Saudi Arabia, strengthening the Bahraini government’s resolve in the face of mounting popular and diplomatic pressure. Martial law was declared the next day, foretelling a violent end to mass protests, as well as the decisive marginalization of moderates within both the opposition and ruling family.

The same issues that precluded peaceful resolution of the crisis in 2011 have crystallized in the two years since. The crown prince’s embarrassing failure to broker a deal with opposition leaders sidelined him within the ruling family. Power and influence have shifted markedly toward more conservative figures, including the king’s uncle and long-time prime minister, who has gained strong support among (mainly Sunni) advocates of an even harsher crackdown on protesters.

Meanwhile, cracks in the opposition continue to widen. The movement today is split broadly into two groups: formal opposition societies, including al-Wifaq, which continue to hold out hope for a negotiated settlement; and a youth-oriented street movement more willing to resort to destructive and violent means of resistance. As Bahrain’s youthful activists continue to move further outside the sphere of the mainstream opposition, so too does the hope for a political solution fade. Increasing violence gives security-minded royals and citizens justification to escalate repressive measures, while al-Wifaq appears an ever more unreliable partner in dialogue, as it cannot claim to represent—much less control—the Shi‘a street.

On March 18, 2011, following a deadly nighttime raid to clear the Pearl Roundabout of demonstrators, government bulldozers razed the monument. Coins bearing its image were removed from circulation. The intersection, which has yet to reopen, was renamed Al-Faruq Junction, after the very military operation by which it was, in the government’s words, “cleansed.” Rather than address underlying sources of political discontent, then, the ruling family has sought instead to erase the very memory of the uprising. Still, two years on, protests continue, with neither societal reconciliation nor a political resolution in sight.

Libya’s Cautious Optimism

by Ryan Calder

By all accounts, Libya seems to be in chaos. Kalashnikov-toting militias run entire cities. An American ambassador was assassinated in Benghazi last September. Libyan weaponry and militants are implicated in the January attack on an Algerian gas facility that left 48 foreign workers dead. Has Libya’s Arab Spring failed? While on the surface it may seem so, there is reason for cautious optimism.

Most of Libya’s current problems stem from a weak state: a legacy of Muammar Qaddafi’s autocratic rule. Authoritarianism has been common across the postcolonial Arab world, but true autocracy—power concentrated wholly in one leader—has been rare. In Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, opposition political parties were kept on a tight leash. But Qaddafi’s Libya had no political parties at all—not even a ruling party. Instead, there were the Revolutionary Committees: units of Qaddafi-loyalist cadres who spied on their neighbors, enjoyed perks in hiring and housing, and had a reputation for intimidation. The 2011 uprising dismantled the Revolutionary Committees, leaving a vacuum of political institutions. Worse still, civil-society institutions such as professional associations, universities, and charitable organizations were few under Qaddafi.

Qaddafi also had no defense ministry: the armed forces reported directly to him. He kept his army small and effete, fearing a coup d’état of the sort that brought him to power in 1969. NATO bombing destroyed most of the Libyan air force in 2011, which helped anti-Qaddafi forces win the war but made it harder for them to maintain post-war security. Today, Libya’s most pressing security problem is independent militias. Many of the militias that fought Qaddafi refuse to disarm, believing weapons will guarantee them autonomy and a stake in the new Libya.

Clashes between powerful militias from Misrata and Zintan, two western cities that suffered greatly during the uprising, have been bloody. Meanwhile, the Libyan army is so weak it has ceded control to the militias in many areas. And efforts to turn militiamen into police officers have had limited success. Many still associate the police with Qaddafi’s rule.

Meanwhile, in Libya’s south—a vast desert region dotted with oasis towns—the weak central government faces different challenges. Violence between ethnic Tabu who opposed Qaddafi, and Arabs who enjoyed Qaddafi’s support, claimed hundreds of lives in 2012. Smugglers move weapons and drugs across the porous borders with Chad, Niger, Sudan, and Algeria. Arms spilling over from the Libyan civil war even helped create the current conflict in Mali.

Despite these challenges, there are reasons to remain hopeful. Predictions that Libya would splinter along tribal lines or lurch toward extremism have proved false. National elections in July 2012 were free and fair. The 200-person legislature includes 33 women—not many, but the same proportion as the 2012 U.S. Senate. Libya looks set to write a new constitution in 2013. And the question of Islam in politics has aroused less discord than in Tunisia or Egypt because there is general consensus that Islam and sharia, or Islamic law, should play a significant but moderate and circumscribed role.

Quality of life and economic indicators are also gradually improving. By 2012, Libya’s gross domestic product (GDP) had returned to the 2010 level despite the war’s devastation; the Economist Intelligence Unit predicts real GDP growth of 9.6 percent a year between 2013 and 2017. Rapid inflation during and after the war reversed course in autumn 2012. Basic services such as water, electricity, and garbage collection are resuming in areas where the state controls security. Oil production is already at pre-war levels, although the development of non-oil industries—a perpetual headache for oil-dependent economies—continues to be a challenge.

Despite domestic disarray, the Libyan state has developed stable external relations, in stark contrast to Qaddafi’s history of military adventurism and largesse to fellow dictators. Relations with countries slow to recognize the opposition, including Russia and China, have re-normalized. Ties with neighboring Tunisia and Egypt are good.

Foreign powers’ support for institution-building will prove critical to Libya’s long-term stability. Among Libyans, the United States, Britain, and France still enjoy goodwill for having fought Qaddafi during the 2011 civil war. These governments have an opportunity that eludes them in much of the Arab world: a chance to build relations not stymied by distrust or major ideological differences. Yet foreign powers must scrupulously avoid political meddling. The Qatari government, once adored by anti-Qaddafi Libyans during the war for sending them arms, jets, and special forces, has since gotten harsh criticism from high-ranking Libyan politicians for supporting Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood chapter.

We may well see reasons for hope in 2013, especially if the Libyan state can bring the militias to heel. Most Libyans have not given up on the 2011 revolution and still appreciate their hard-won freedoms—a fact lost in news reports of domestic chaos. In the words of Libyan-American poet Khaled Mattawa: “Somewhere, an earthly sun is shining on us, with us, again. There is air in the air again.”

Restricting Speech Restricts Arab Freedom

by Sarah Leah Whitson

The sight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs marching on the streets of a number of Arab countries, demanding their dignity and rights, will remain among the iconic images of the twenty-first century. The willingness of so many citizens to take such tremendous risks to their own lives, with thousands dying for their freedom, stunned a world long accustomed to the image of the resigned, subordinate, cynical Arab masses.

Yet, even in countries that have succeeded in dislodging autocratic regimes and holding democratic elections, there has been a disconnect between the public’s passionate demonstrations for freedom and their commitment to the legislative and institutional reforms needed to protect their rights against future government abuses. There is widespread buy-in for restraints on the power of security forces, but little recognition among citizens that free speech and independent civil society are the bulwarks of freedom from tyranny.

Egypt offers the best example of this disconnect. The newly elected Islamist leadership has expressed its commitment to ending police impunity, unfair trials, and arbitrary detention. These were hallmarks of Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule under its notorious Emergency Law, which allowed for indefinite detention without charge and trials by special security courts that provided few due process protections. Muslim Brotherhood members for decades found themselves enduring brutal arrests, torture, and imprisonment for the crime of belonging to an “illegal organization.” So it is no surprise the new government allowed the Emergency Law to expire (recently the government declared a state of emergency for 30 days in parts of the country) and proposed a draft constitution with strong protections against torture and arbitrary detention. In my meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood’s senior leadership, they made clear that curbing police torture and prison abuses would be among their top commitments. In the same vein, the Muslim Brotherhood’s experience of direct abuse at the hands of the Mubarak government has led to endorsement of accountability for the killings of protesters in the lead up to the overthrow of Mubarak.

Yet on the issue of free speech the new government has relied on restrictions that the Mubarak government routinely used to muzzle government critics. A new constitution written by the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly was approved in a referendum with more than 60 percent voting in favor, though only about 30 percent of the electorate voted. The constitution includes a general commitment to protect freedom of ”thought and opinion,” but then bans “insults” to individuals and prophets. And this is no theoretical danger: President Mohamed Morsi’s government authorities over the past year have investigated or prosecuted at least 22 people for “insulting” the president or the judiciary.

In Tunisia as well, the interim governments moved to investigate the attacks on demonstrators during the uprising and to prosecute security forces implicated in numerous deaths and injuries. The draft constitution strongly affirmed protections against torture and unlawful detention as well. But on free speech, the country is tied in knots. The governments have used laws inherited from the deposed president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to prosecute several people for speech deemed “immoral” or “harmful to public order,” such as sculptors and bloggers, but also for “impugning the reputation of the military.”

Again and again in my decades of observation and meetings in the region, I have seen widespread support for limits on speech, not just in Egypt, but throughout the Middle East. Many citizens from a wide cross-section of society see no contradiction between the right to speak critically of government officials (or their religion) and the “right” of officials (and even institutions) to punish those who allegedly insult them. Much of the Arab public cares little for the fact that international human rights law rejects “insult” as a legitimate limit on speech, because it easily can be used to stifle critics and opponents and to restrict the vigorous public debate that is essential for government accountability. Even in countries like Morocco and Tunisia, where new constitutions broadly assert respect for free speech, the authorities continue to jail people for allegedly insulting or defaming the police or government officials.

The challenge for human rights advocates in this new era is to persuade the Arab public that there can be no freedom without broad space for political speech, however obnoxious. It’s far from certain, despite the sacrifices made for freedom during the Arab Uprisings, that the public recognizes how important this issue is to their future.

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Sociologist Amy C. Finnegan provides a critical analysis of the movement behind the Kony 2012 campaign and how this unique form of activism coalesces with the biographies of the activists, who are notably white, privileged, Christian, adolescent females.

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While the United States dominates the global film market, strategies are available to non-U.S. filmmakers seeking to make their mark. Sociologist Diane Barthel-Bouchier discusses how the Oscar-winning French film, The Artist, used the strategies of solving the language problem, meeting cultural expectations, building connections with Hollywood insiders, and mounting a media charm offensive to win the 2012 Best Picture Oscar award.

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"Exportability of Films in a Globalizing Market: The Intersection of Nation and Genre", Cultural Sociology, March 2012 6: 75-91.

“If you asked me two years ago whether I’d have a baby and give it away for money, I wouldn’t just laugh at you, I would be so insulted I might hit you in the face,” said Indirani, a 30-year old garment worker and gestational surrogate mother.

“Yet here I am today. I carried those twin babies for nine months and gave them up.” Living in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, married at 18, and with two young children of her own, she had delivered twins a month earlier for a Tamil couple in the United States.

I met Indirani when she was still pregnant and living in a dormitory run by Creative Options Trust for Women, Bangalore’s only surrogacy agency at the time. COTW works with infertility specialists who rely on the Trust to recruit, house, care for, and monitor surrogate mothers for their clients. Straight and gay couples arrive from all over India and throughout the world to avail themselves of Bangalore’s expertise in building biological families. Indirani and other mothers introduced me to 70 other surrogates they had gotten to know through their line of work. Some of them, including Indirani herself, double as recruiting agents, bringing new laborers into Bangalore’s reproductive assembly line.

India is emerging as a key site for transnational surrogacy, with industry profits projected to reach $6 billion in the next few years, according to the Indian Council for Medical Research. In 2007, the Oprah show featured Dr. Nayna Patel in the central Indian town of Anand, Gujarat, who was harnessing the bodies of rural Gujarati women to produce babies for American couples. Subsequent newspaper articles and TV shows, as well as blogs by users of surrogacy, popularized the nation as a surrogacy destination for couples from the United States, United States, England, Israel, Australia and to a lesser extent Italy, Germany, and Japan.

The cities of Anand, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore have become central hubs for surrogacy due to the availability of good medical services, inexpensive pharmaceuticals, and, most importantly, cheap and compliant labor. The cost of surrogacy in India is about $35,000-40,000 per baby, compared to the United States, where it can run as high as $80,000, which makes it particularly appealing to prospective parents. It is working class women who make India’s reproductive industry viable. In Bangalore, the garment production assembly line is the main conduit to the reproduction assembly line, as women move from garment factories, to selling their eggs, to surrogacy.

Indirani’s life typifies that of other women in Bangalore’s garment factories. Paid low wages, she works intermittently in one of the city’s many garment factories. She quit when she became pregnant, and joined the line again when her two children attended school, taking time away when she was sick, or to care for sick family members. Bangalore’s reproduction industry affords women like her the possibility of extracting greater value from their bodies once they have been deemed unproductive workers in garment factories. Because of its life affirming character, Indiriani and others see surrogacy, however exploitative, as a more meaningful and creative option than factory work.

Disposable Workers

The popular understanding is that women who have large debt burdens and are destitute opt to become surrogate mothers. But while they are in debt, the 70 mothers I met were not among the poorest in Bangalore. Many were part of dual or multiple income households, and tended to be garment workers who earn more than the average working woman in the city.

Former surrogate mothers, who also work as recruiting agents, have extensive networks among women in prime reproductive age in their own extended families, and among neighbors and friends who work as maids, cooks, street sweepers, or construction workers. Because cuts in food, education, and medical subsidies due to state divestment, along with volatile markets and global financial crises, lead to unsteady factory work and low wages, their greatest recruiting success is among garment workers.

Like garment workers in sweatshops across the world, women in Bangalore are underpaid and overworked. In order to meet short production cycles set by global market demands, they work at an inhumanely fast pace, with few or no breaks. They frequently suffer from headaches, chest pain, ear and eye pain, urinary tract infections, and other health problems. Sexual harassment and abuse are rampant on the production line. The supervisors, almost all men, castigate women in sexually derogatory terms when they do not meet production quotas, and often grope the women as they instruct them on how to work better. “Sometimes,” says Indirani, “I wouldn’t take a lunch break when pieces piled up. I didn’t want to be shamed in front of everyone. I would go to any length to avoid calling the supervisor’s attention to me.”

Indirani earned $100 to $110 monthly, depending upon her attendance, punctuality, and overtime hours. Frequently, she and her co-workers were unable to meet the inordinately high production targets and were required by supervisors to stay past regular working hours to meet their quotas. “Playing” catch-up, however, did not necessarily result in overtime pay. Indirani’s husband became suspicious if her paycheck did not reflect her overtime hours. He wondered whether she was really at the factory, or whether she was cavorting with another man. Indirani, like many of the women I interviewed, reported that she felt debased at work and at home.

Prior research on Bangalore’s female garment workers suggests that they work an average of 16 hours a day in the factory and at home doing laundry, cooking, taking care of children, and commuting to work. Working in the factory all day, and then returning home to complete household tasks was absolutely exhausting. Indirani’s friend Suhasini, who was also a surrogate mother, avoided garment work altogether. Her mother, sister, and other women family members had worked the line, and she knew it was not what she wanted for her life. “But I need money,” she told me. “For us,” she says, “surrogacy is a boon.” She describes Mr. Shetty who started COTW, as “a god to us.” When I met her again in December 2011, Suhasini was receiving hormonal injections so that she could be a surrogate mother for a second time.

For much of her working life Indirani has been intermittently employed in one of Bangalore’s many garment factories. She quit when pregnant, and joined the line again when her two children attended school. She also stopped factory work when she was sick, or had to care for sick family members. From the perspective of the garment factories, when Indirani is healthy she is a valuable worker for the firm. But during her pregnancies and illnesses, or when she has to attend to her family’s needs, she loses her value as a worker, and the company replaces her. She is, as anthropologist Melissa Wright calls it, a “disposable worker.” Upon recovering her health, or managing family chores efficiently, Indirani cycles back into the garment factory again, this time miraculously having regained her value for the production process. Over her working life, Indirani has shifted from being valuable, to becoming an undesirable worker who must seek other forms of employment to help support her family.

Making Babies

Indirani and her auto-rickshaw worker husband have struggled for much of their married life to make ends meet, and to support their small children. Indirani’s husband did not earn much money. He rented his vehicle from an acquaintance, and the daily rental and gasoline costs cut significantly into the household income. So Indirani and he decided to borrow money from her cousin to purchase an auto-rickshaw of their own. Their troubles worsened when they were unable to pay back the loan, and the cousin would often arrive at their door, demanding his money and screaming expletives at them. He would come to the factory on payday and take Indirani’s entire paycheck. She said, “I’d work hard, facing all sorts of abuse. And at the end of it I wouldn’t even see any money. I felt so bad I contemplated suicide.” When a friend at work suggested that she sell her eggs to an agency called COTW for approximately $500, Indirani jumped at what she perceived as a wonderful opportunity. After “donating” her eggs, Indirani decided to try surrogacy; she became pregnant with twins on her first attempt.

When I asked Indirani whether the hormonal injections to prepare her for ova extraction, and subsequently for embryo implantation, were painful or scary, she avoided answering directly. “Aiyo akka,” she said. “When you’re poor you can’t afford the luxury of thinking about discomfort.” When I told her about the potential long-term effects of hyperovulation, she shrugged. Her first priority was getting out of poverty; any negative health threats posed by ova extraction or surrogacy were secondary.

Indirani did not find surrogacy to be debasing work. She earned more money as a reproduction worker than she did as a garment worker, and found the process much more enjoyable. She was exhausted physically and emotionally working as a tailor in the factory and then cleaning, cooking, and taking care of her family. Upon getting pregnant, however, Indirani lived in the COTW dormitory. At first she missed her family, often wondering what her children were doing. Was her mother-in-law taking care of them? “I was in a different place surrounded by strangers,” she recalled. But soon she began to like the dormitory. She didn’t have to wake up by 5 am to prepare meals for the family, pack lunches for everyone, drop the children off at the bus stop so they could get to school, and then hop onto the bus herself to get to the garment factory. Instead, she slept in, and was served breakfast. She had no household obligations and no one made demands on her time and emotions. Surrogacy afforded her the luxury of being served by others. She did not remember a time in her life when she felt so liberated from all responsibilities.

Surveillance and Sisterhood

As she got to know the other women in the COTW dormitory, Indirani began to feel as though she was on vacation. For Indirani and many of the surrogate mothers I interviewed, it was easier to talk with the friends they made in COTW than with childhood friends and relatives; they felt they had more common with one another. Through the surrogacy process, many women told me, they lost a baby but gained sisters for life.

Indirani’s husband brought the children over to visit on some weekday evenings, and her daughter stayed overnight with her on weekends. Her older sister Prabha, also a garment worker who was similarly strapped for cash, joined her at COTW two months after Indirani arrived, becoming a gestational surrogate for a straight, white couple. Like most surrogates, she had no idea where they were from, or where her contract baby would live.

Noting the closed circuit cameras that monitored the
mothers’ every move in the dormitory, I asked how they felt about them. Indirani said they didn’t bother her; in fact, most of the mothers did not register the cameras’ presence. While this initially surprised me, I soon realized that they were accustomed to surveillance in their everyday lives. Living under the gaze of relatives and inquisitive neighbors, and housed in one-two room homes where it was common for six to eight households to share a bathroom, notions of privacy were quite foreign.Surveillance at the dormitory was benign in comparison to the surveillance and punishment meted out for supposed infractions on the garment shop floor, where long conversations with teammates, taking a few minutes of rest, or going on breaks were all curtailed. In comparison, surveillance at COTW, designed to check on whether the women were having sex with their men folk who visited the facilities, seemed relatively banal.

The surrogate mothers delivered their babies through caesarian surgeries between the 36th and 37th week of gestation in order to conform to the scheduling needs of potential parents. Indirani was initially fearful of going under the knife, but she saw many mothers survive caesarians and was no longer anxious. In the end, she found the caesarian method of delivering the twins she had carried easier than the vaginal births of her own two children.

The $4000 Indirani earned was far less than the $7000 the surrogacy agency charged for the children. While she was legally entitled to a larger amount because she carried twins, Indirani made no more money than those mothers pregnant with singletons. Her take-home pay actually ended up being less than $4000 after she paid the recruiting agent $200 and bought small, obligatory gifts for the COTW staff who cared for her during her pregnancy. Indirani had the option of staying on in the dormitory for up to two months after delivering her twins, but like all the mothers I interviewed, she chose not to do so because COTW charged for post-natal care, and for food and board. She could not afford to lose her hard-earned money on what she perceived as a luxury, so she returned home within days of delivery to all the household work that waited. Within a week of returning home, her remaining earnings went directly to her cousin, the moneylender. Still, knowing her debts were paid off gave her peace of mind.

Indirani claimed she does not feel any attachment to the twins she carried. “They were under contract. I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything for them,” she told me. “They were never mine to begin with, and I entered into this knowing they were someone else’s babies.” It is hard enough for her to take care of her own two children, she said. “Why do you think I’m going through all this now? What would I do with two more? They are burdens I cannot afford.” On the other hand, some mothers professed deep attachments to the babies they had given up. Roopa, a divorced mother who gave birth to a baby girl three years ago, always celebrated her contract baby’s birthday. “June 21st akka,” she said, “I cook a special meal. My daughter doesn’t know why we have a feast, but it’s my way of remembering my second child. I still cry for that little girl I gave away. I think about her often. I could never do this again.”

Life out of Waste

Regardless of how they felt about the babies they had given up, the women almost all said they derived far more meaning from surrogacy than they did working under the stern labor regimes of the garment factory. In our conversations, time and again, women described the many ways they are deemed worthless in the garment factory. Their labor powers exhausted, their sexual discipline suspect, their personal character under question, they are converted to waste on the shop floor—until they are eventually discarded. On the other hand, Bangalore’s reproduction industry, they said, gave them the opportunity to be highly productive and creative workers once more.

Indirani contrasted the labor processes in producing garments and producing a baby: the latter was a better option, she said. “Garments? You wear a shirt a few months and you throw it away. But I make you a baby? You keep that for life. I have made something so much bigger than anything I could ever make in the factory.” Indirani observed that while the people who wore the garments she’d worked on would most probably never think about her, she was etched forever in the minds of the intended parents who took the twins she bore.

Indirani and the other mothers I met did not necessarily see selling eggs or surrogacy as benign processes. Nor did they misread their exploitation. However, given their employment options and their relative dispossession, they believed that Bangalore’s reproduction industry afforded them greater control over their emotional, financial, and sexual lives. In comparison to garment work, surrogacy was easy.

Surrogacy was also more meaningful for the women than other forms of paid employment. Because babies are life-affirming in ways garments are obviously not, surrogacy allowed women to assert their moral worth. In garment work their sexual morality was constantly in question at the factory and at home. At the dormitory, in contrast, they were in a women-only space, abstaining from sex, and leading pure, virtuous lives.

Through surrogacy, Indirani said, she had built a nuclear family unit and fulfilled one infertile woman’s desire to be a mother. In the process, she had attempted to secure the future of her own family and her own happiness. As a garment worker Indirani felt she was being slowly destroyed, but as a surrogate mother she said she was creating a new world. She was ready to go through surrogacy once again to earn money for her children’s private schooling. The last time we met in December 2011, Indirani asked me, “If anyone you know wants a surrogate mother, will you think of me? I want to do this again.”

Recommended Resources

Haimowitz, Rebecca and Vaishali Sinha. Made in India (2010). This is a feature length documentary film on surrogacy in India, which explains the organization of the industry through the journey of one American couple to an Indian surrogate.

Pande, Amrita. “Commercial Surrogacy in India: Manufacturing a Perfect Mother-Worker,” Signs (2010) 35: 969-992. This is an account of surrogate mothers living in dormitories in Anand, India.

Teman, Elly. Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self. (University of California Press, 2010). The book documents the relationships between straight women and their surrogates in Israel, where assisted reproductive technologies are subsidized for heterosexual couples.

Wright, Melissa. Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. (Routledge, 2006). An anthropological description of how women in the global south are seen as bad workers, and yet their work is crucial to multinational companies’ profits.

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Social scientific research is uniquely poised to document the patterned and probabilistic evidence helpful in achieving legal accountability for mass atrocities—and offers a voice to those who would not otherwise be heard.

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During eight years of a U.S.-led occupation, Iraqi attitudes have shifted away from sectarianism and toward a national identity. Coupled with increased support for the separation of politics and religion, this shift may pave the road for a functioning national government.

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