Abstract

Zsuzsa Berend presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates’ views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.

“Berend’s insights here both contribute to and are consistent with the newer school of thought in economic sociology that views economic relations as socially embedded… [Her] work fills a crucial oversight in sociological knowledge about surrogacy and the connections between economic and personal relations…Scholars from diverse backgrounds will likely find this a useful and intriguing read. Given the concepts and approaches taken here, this book would be very suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses, either in full or through the use of select chapters.” • Contemporary Sociology

“This is a much awaited contribution to the surrogacy scholarship as it is the first ethnographic study to look at surrogacy in the United States since the early 1990's… Berend's book is also cutting edge in its methodology, since it is based on "online ethnography.” • Elly Teman, author of Birthing a Mother: the Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self

Zsuzsa Berend teaches sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the academic administrator of the sociology departmental Honors program. For over a decade, she has been doing ethnographic research on an online surrogacy support forum and published on surrogacy-related topics in Medical Anthropology, Sociological Forum, and American Anthropologist.