A postcolonial framing of Indian commercial surrogacy: issues,representations, and orientalisms

Although only legalised in 2002, Indian commercial gestational surrogacy (CGS) is an industry worth an estimated 2.3 billion USD to India at its height. Not only has this contentious topic been researched extensively from a spectrum of academic angles, representations of Indian CGS abound in both the Indian and Western popular media (novels, documentaries, films, etc.), and increasingly online, particularly in CGS websites, advertisements, and (personal) blogs. Popular media representations as well as commercial ones can often be inclined towards the sentimental and even sanctimonious, but are immensely influential in shaping public perception. This article seeks to position the discourse and representation of transnational Indian CGS more explicitly within the postcolonial framework. Thus, it addresses a theoretical gap in explicitly connecting the problematic issues of power and ethics in CGS within the paradigms of postcolonial studies, drawing also on gender and feminist frameworks. The neo-colonisation of the body has been already considered to some extent – mostly in neo-liberalist contexts – but the industry’s systemically orientalistic set up and structure has been surprisingly little mentioned, particularly where transnational surrogacy is involved, with little framing of the imperialistic hangovers and undertones dogging these particular sets of international contracts. This article maps the orientalisms (and sometimes re-orientalisms) at play in this already fraught and contentious context, positioning transnational surrogacy as another instance of imperialism, as yet another form of cultural colonisation, othering, subalternising, and peripheralising working-class Indian surrogate women in the twenty-first century.     

Constrained Labour Agency and the Changing Regulatory Regime in China

Using the concept of ‘constrained agency’ introduced by Neil Coe and David Jordhus‐Lier, this article attempts to evaluate the possibilities and constraints facing labour agency in the Pearl River Delta in China. By reviewing the social, economic and political background of the changing labour market and labour regulations in China, and through an intensive case study of a workers’ strike and its consequences, the author argues that Chinese migrant workers have begun to challenge the state's regulatory regime on labour, which is based on individual rights. However, the introduction of a regulatory framework based on collective rights is being impeded by the party‐state's manipulation of trade unions and the strong influence of global capital on local labour policy.     

‘Life in Happy Land’: using virtual space and doing motherhood in Hong Kong

This paper examines how a group of Hong Kong working mothers use the internet in performing and realizing their paid work and domestic role identities. The internet is a technology-enabled space and also what Michel de Certeau calls a ‘practiced place’, where its nature and functions are necessarily determined by the actions and practices of agents. Through participant observation and the analysis of a sample of chatroom and forum messages from a user-driven Hong Kong-based parenting website called Happy Land, I examine the relationship between this virtual space and its users. I find that the website has developed beyond its technology-mediated nature into a community of face-to-face friendships and social and emotional support. In effect, this virtual space plays a role in the social reproduction of the contemporary dual-earner family by enabling working mothers who use the website to perform roles in production and reproduction respectively.     

Book reviews

Australian Books

A. T. Yarwood: Attitudes to Non‐European Immigration (Problems in Australian History), Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 146, $2.25.

Frank Hardy: The Unlucky Australians, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 249 + index, $4.95 (cloth), $1.95 (paper).

Stanley Brogden: Australia's Two‐Airline Policy, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 235, $5.75.

C. A. Hughes, ed.: Readings in Australian Government, University of Queensland Press, 1968, pp. 504, $6.50.

Jean Spender: Ambassador's Wife, Angus and Robertson. Sydney, 1968, pp. 207, $4.25.

Arthur Huck: The Chinese in Australia, Longmans, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 117, $4.50.

M. Revelman: Sex and Politics in Australia, Publicity Press Books, Adelaide, 1968, pp. 297, $1.35.

J. A. La Nauze, ed.: Alfred Deakin: Federated Australia: Selections from Letters to the Morning Post: 1900–1910, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 314, $7.20.

Overseas Books

Frank Parkin: Middle‐Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 207 + vii, $4.75.

L. J. Sharpe, ed.: Voting in Cities, Macmillan, London, 1968, pp. 340, $8.80.

The Times News Team: The Black Man in Search of Power, Nelson, London, 1968, pp. 174, $4.95.

J. A. A. Stockwin: The Japanese Socialist Party and Neutralism: A Study of a Political Party and its Foreign Policy, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 197 + x, $6.50.

D. A. Low, ed.: Soundings in Modern South Asian History, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1968, pp. 399 + viii, $7.50.

Gwendolen M. Carter, Thomas Karis and Newell M. Stulyz: South Africa's Transkei: The Politics of Domestic Colonialism, London, Heinemann, 1967, pp. 184 + viii, $6.70.     

“Sports is Politics”: Swimming (and) Pools in Postcolonial Singapore

Almost immediately after Singapore’s independence in 1965, sports became an agent of social engineering in the creation of the new nation, and the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) government pragmatically used the institution of sports in its nation-building enterprise. Based on an analysis of the speeches and press statements of Singaporean bureaucrats and civil servants from the 1960s to the 1980s, this article investigates the ruling elite’s general perception of sports and regional sporting events, examining how such a perception influenced Singapore’s local governance and strategic thinking in foreign relations. Although scholars have pointed out that sports were prominent in the nationalistic discourses of Singapore and in the projection of Singapore’s international image, little about the history and development of individual sports in Singapore is known. The article argues that swimming was the premier sport of choice for Singapore’s ruling elite in its projects of building bodies and the nation after independence, manifested in the swimming pools that the nascent nation strove to build in the residential estates outside the “colonial stronghold” of the central town district.     

The Great Dog Massacre in Late Qing China: Debates,Perceptions, and Phobia in the Shanghai International Settlement

Modern assessments of a well-known sign in a Shanghai park that stated “Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted” have established that the dog aspect of it was not true, but the sign remains highly visible in the Chinese historiography of Western imperialism. Such reassessments do not seem to recognize that the sign might have meant something considerably different to Chinese and foreigners in late Qing Shanghai than it would have in later periods of modern Chinese history. Dog–human relations had changed through a mix of two processes: dog-keeping as a social practice and the challenges of rabies in the management of urban space. Under the rule of the Shanghai Municipal Council, animals, health, and imperialism converged in the Shanghai International Settlement to destabilize the traditional roles of dogs and introduce modernity through the disciplining of both animal and human bodies and the demarcation and management of new urban spaces.     

Children of migrants in China in the twenty-first century: trends,living arrangements,age-gender structure,and geography

ABSTRACT

Children – including those of migrants – are China’s future. Children of migrants now make up close to 40% of all children in China. This paper analyzes the recent trends from 2000 to 2016 and the major aspects of the children of migrants by distilling data from multiple large national surveys and assessing the very small rural left-behind children (LBC) population figures published by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2016. The paper also develops a method to estimate the LBC population generated by migrants in each provincial destination between 2010 and 2015, linking up different but related populations (adult migrants, migrant children, and LBC) in the origins and destinations. This broader “origin-destination” framework allows us to pinpoint clearly a major driver of LBC and hence to identify provinces needing the most attention in national and provincial efforts to alleviate the problem of LBC.

Abbreviations: MC: Migrant Children; LBC: Left-Behind Children; MPR: Migration Participation Rate: LBCG: Left-Behind Children Generated