Global Fertility Chains: An integrative political economy approach to understanding the reproductive bioeconomy

June 28, 2021

In this paper, published in Science, Technology and Human Values, Siggie Vertommen, Vincenzo Pavone and Michal Nahman develop an integrative political economy approach to understanding the reproductive bio-economy, structured around the concept of global fertility chains. this unified approach scrutinizes the coproduction of value, biology, and technoscience and their governance mechanisms in the accumulation of capital by taking into account (1) the unevenly developed geographies of global fertility chains, (2) their reliance on women’s waged and unwaged reproductive labor, and (3) the networked role of multiple actors at multiple scales without losing sight of the (4) constitutive role of (supra)national states in creating demand, organizing supply, and accommodating the distribution of surplus value.

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