Family And Gender In A Neo-Liberal Context
Anuja Agrawal
SOLID: LIQUID: A (TRANS)NATIONAL REPRODUCTIVE FORMATION by By Kumkum Sangari Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2015, 264 pp., 695.00
July 2016, volume 40, No 7

Solid: Liquid offers significant new insights about the emerging configurations of family and gender relations in Indian society which are increasingly being shaped by a neoliberal state and market. Focused on the practices of sex selection and commercial surrogacy, Sangari makes a strong case for the relevance, if not indispensability, of a triadic framework made up of family, state and market to analyse the emerging and persisting patriarchal configurations in contemporary India. As revealed through an incisive analysis of the uses to which assisted reproductive technologies have been put in India, this work shows that patriarchal practices exist both within and outside a transnational capitalist regime and must not be mistaken as ‘women’s issues’ (p. 156).

The enigmatic title of the book is the author’s take on the famous statement made by Marx: ‘All that is solid melts into the air’, signifying the excessively amorphous and elusive character of the patriarchal formations in a neoliberal context. Though somewhat inaccessible in terms of writing style, owing also to the extremely voluminous endnotes which make up more than one third of the book’s text, there are many significant insights in this work. Dedicated to her former colleague and co-author Sudesh Vaid, the book is a product of the author’s engagement with the issues of sex selection and commercial surrogacy for almost a decade.

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