politics | There is a critical tourism studies field??? Hooray!

Reproductive Tourism

The broader practice of reproductive tourism, under which maternity and surrogacy tourism fall, has been addressed by journalists, bioethicists, feminists, scholars, and others. There is no one position in response to this seemingly growing practice, although accurate statistics are difficult to locate, given that the targets are moving. Some commentators view reproductive tourism writ large as unethical, while others see it as an extension of historic colonialism. For some, like Winfrey, practices such as Indian surrogacy expand reproductive options, especially for the infertile. For others, renting a womb is seen as the worst kind of human exploitation and an especially pernicious way in which women’s bodies are exchanged for another’s profit. One critic offers two alternative terms to frame these practices, neither of which quite hits the mark: cross-border reproductive care (CBRC), which is devoid of critical analysis; and reproductive exile, which sounds promising in terms of human rights but is vague and erroneously evokes the biblical.

Rather than attempt to finesse the complex ethics of reproductive tourism here (although these should be widely debated), I suggest that we interrogate the widespread use of the term “tourism” to describe transnational reproductive phenomena. In the commentaries cited above, despite offering varied accounts, none of the authors critique the language of tourism. This is fundamentally a mistake, one that prevents a richer, fuller analysis. Scholars in the emergent field of critical tourism studies extend Malcolm Crick’s distinction between travel and tourism: one travels to discover something about the world, whereas tourism (especially in its mass form) is “experience packaged to prevent real contact with others…a manufactured, trivial, inauthentic way of being.” By this definition, “tourism” could certainly describe empty commercial transactions, such as surrogacy in India. Reproductive tourism is fast becoming a kind of mass tourism for the privileged.

But at the same time, tourism implies a kind of mindless, benign movement through the world; if one participates in a “manufactured” experience, then perhaps one is not especially cunning or adventurous. According to the tourism studies literature, the real travelers are those who go “off the beaten path” with Lonely Planet guides and global positioning systems (GPSs) in hand, eschewing the usual tourist hangouts. Real travelers do not join group tours nor do they visit insincere, crass cultural sites like Disneyworld and Dollywood. Real travelers are self-consciously aware of the marks they make on the world, and they strive, like Girl Scouts in the wilderness, to leave things as they found them. In contrast, while tourism is seen as inauthentic and potentially dangerous to the planet, tourists themselves are perceived as simply blundering through—picture Chevy Chase in European Vacation—engaging in damaging yet good-natured fun.MORE