International Solidarity in reproductive justice: surrogacy and gender-inclusive polymaternalism

Reproductive justice and gestational surrogacy are often implicitly treated as antonyms. Yet the former represents a theoretic approach that enables the long and racialised history of surrogacy (far from a new or ‘exceptional’ practice) to be appreciated as part of a struggle for ‘radical kinship’ and gender-inclusive polymaternalism. Recasting surrogacy as a dynamic contradiction in itself, full of latent possibilities relevant to early Reproductive Justice militants’ family-abolitionist aims, this article invites scholars in human geography and cognate disciplines to re-think the boundaries of surrogacy politics. As ethnographies of formal gestational workplaces, accounts of gestational workers’ self-organised resistance, and readings of the attendant public media scandals show (taking examples from India, Thailand, and New Jersey), there is no good reason to place these new economies of ‘third-party reproductive assistance’ in a ‘realm apart’ from conversations about social reproduction more generally. Surrogacy, I argue, potentially names a practice of commoning at the same time as it names a new wave of accumulation in which clinicians are capitalising on the contemporary – biogenetic-propertarian, white-supremacist – logic of kinmaking in the Global North. Ongoing experiments in the redistribution of mothering labour (‘othermothering’ in the Black feminist tradition) suggest that ‘another surrogacy is possible’, animated by what Kathi Weeks and the 1970s intervention ‘Wages Against Housework’ conceive as anti-work politics. In making this argument, the article revives the concept ‘gestational labour’ as a means of keeping the process of ‘literal’ reproduction open to transformation.     

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.     

Slaves, servants and wage earners: Free and unfree labour, from Grotius to Blackstone

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

La persistance des relations pre-politiques entre agents de l'autorite et classes populaires pendant la revolution francaise (le discours public de l'autorite en situation d'emeute)

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

从《苏州商团档案汇编》看近代苏州商团

1906年成立的苏商体育会是苏州商团的前身,也是近代中国较早由商人创办的新型准军事团体,1912年初发展成为苏州商团公会,直至1936年2月才宣告结束。与上海和武汉等地的商团相比较,苏州商团的特点是与商会的关系十分密切,组织比较细密,规章也比较完备,是统一的一元化组织,而且发展的历史较长,虽在政治上没有突出影响,但在维护地方治安和保护商人利益等方面却发挥了重要作用。180余万字的《苏州商团档案汇编》是国内外即将出版的第一部大型商团档案文献资料,内容丰富,对研究近代苏州商团乃至整个近代中国商团都具有很高的史料价值。     

韩国经济地理学研究现状和趋势

至今在我国国内,有关评介韩国地理学研究状况的文章甚少。虽然韩国地理学研究历史较短,但有些领域的研究已走到了我们的前面。本文将系统地介绍韩国农业地理学、工业地理学、商业流通地理学、交通地理学的研究状况,并指出目前在经济地理学研究中所存在的一些问题和今后的发展趋势。     

Acknowledging economic realities. The CMEA policy change vis-à-vis the European Community, 1970–3

In the early 1970s, the economic consequences of European Community (EC) policies forced the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) to devise its trade policy vis-à-vis the outside world. With the implementation of its Common Commercial Policy, the EC was about to change the rules and conduct of its foreign trade. The East–West trade boom that took off in the 1960s had created significant commercial links, and substantial dependencies, across the Iron Curtain. The smaller members of the CMEA began to advocate an opening up towards the EC due to their fears of worsening trade prospects caused by the new EC policies. After reconsideration of its allies' commercial needs, the Soviet leadership was pressured to change its mind in favour of a common approach vis-à-vis the EC. This article follows the debate within the CMEA Executive Committee on the socialist countries' dependency on the Western market and on the advisability of opening up to the global market. It relies on official CMEA documents as well as Soviet and German Democratic Republic (GDR) policy-making documents. This article analyses the process of socialist integration in connection with the simultaneous developments taking place in their Western European counterparts, and thereby fills a gap in the historiography of Europe in the Cold War.     

From town to town: how commercial travel connected manufacturers and markets during the industrial revolution

Positioning itself with regards to debates on the role of regionalization in the industrial revolution and on consumer and retailing revolutions, this paper uses the records of John Shaw, hardware factor of Wolverhampton, to examine how commercial travel created real spatial interactions across the industrializing economy of northern England in the period 1810–15. The paper argues that by integrating production and consumption, commercial travel played a vital part in advancing and reconciling the concurrent but apparently conflicting processes of economic regionalization and economic integration that characterized the period. Empirically, the paper contributes original data indicating concrete patterns of interaction across the space economy of early nineteenth century northern England in terms of both ‘routes’ and the intensity of interactions. The empirical material also allows for discussion of customer identities, the structure of geographically dispersed commodity chains and regional variations, if any, the nature of customer relationships.     

我国商品房销售市场的法律调制体系研究

我国现行的商品房销售市场法律调制体系存在对开发商的违法责任规定不够明确、对开发商的违法行为处罚较轻、相关配套措施之间缺乏协调、管理措施难以到位、未规定房管部门不尽管理职责等四大问题。笔者建议从三方面来加以完善：立法上加大政府的调制力度,完善政府的调制制度;加强执法力度,使整顿和规范房地产市场秩序工作经常化;建立科学、合理、规范、高效的房地产市场管理运行体系。     

商事如政事--张元济“以政入商”下的文化运作

民元鼎革之际,中华书局以共和教科书为突破口,抢占商务教科书市场份额。面对危机,商务领导人张元济将其丰富从政经验与政治智慧导入商业模式,加之苦心经营政学商三界高端人脉有年,故得以及时调整并挽回颓势。商务也适时利用其丰沛人脉,在动荡不安的历史年代夹缝中求生存,以文化出版事业为桥梁,无分新旧左右、禹内域外,效仿科举大举储才,将各方势力活成一片,使人脉在商务这个"变相之官场"的平台上,继续在政学商界良性延展,获得了自身历史上义利双赢的黄金时代。