Legitimating Life

Sonja van Wichelen is a senior research fellow with the department of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney in Australia. She is the author of Religion, Gender and Politics in Indonesia: Disputing the Muslim Body.

Contents List of figures, tables and images Acknowledgements Introduction: Adoption in the Age of Globalization and Biotechnology The Ethical Market: Between Reproduction and Humanitarianism Double Movements: International Law as Transparency Device Valuing Bodies: Somatic Ethics in the Biomedicalization of Adoption Grievable Lives: The Adoptee and the Child Migrant Economies of Return: Openness, Knowledge, Relations Conclusion: Legitimating Life Bibliography Index

"Van Wichelen offers a captivating and capacious framework for understanding global reproduction and modern family formation. Using ethnographic moments in international adoption as a launch point, she develops a sophisticated critique of the interrelations among humanitarianism, rights, and biomedicalization."- Sara Dorow, author of Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship "In Legitimating Life, Sonja van Wichelen provides a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of international adoption into a technology of reproduction through the imposition of a legal 'clean break' that decouples the child from its family and community of origin so that it can become a global resource for producing 'as-if-begotten' families in Europe and North America. Legitimating Life makes a compelling case for a new politics of international adoption that opens up a landscape for 'the doing and desiring of kinship otherwise,' even as it secures the right of every child to family life, as mandated by international law."- Barbara Yngvesson, author of Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption