This is a multidisciplinary information systems thesis with a strong sociological focus. Theoretically it uses the technical concerns of human-computer interaction as the background to consider the separate theories of consumer decision-making and the diffusion of innovations. Emphasis is placed on understanding how consumers make sense of the Internet and come to define the role and use of the Internet in their lives. A practical framework for hermeneutic investigation was created to access the unreflective thoughts and actions driving online consumer decision-making. Implicit within hermeneutics is the prospect of transcendental interpretations and the ability to investigate in situ new avenues of research that emerge as a result of anomalous comments or findings. Hence, this thesis presents two different, but inter-related, research inquiries and their associated findings. Initial interest was centred on consumer behaviour and interface design. Specifically, can a dedicated 'consumer interface' be designed using principles based on consumer perceptions of online convenience. The resulting data analysis created a framework of advice that interface designers can use to improve their understanding of the nature and limitations of convenient interfaces and associated consumer decision-support technologies. A second research theme emerged from the data analysis which broadened the focus into a consideration of online consumer behaviour as a distinct issue. Specifically, a new from of interactive behaviour prevalent in electronic retail markets was identified and, following a second literature review, labeled "surrogacy". Related in form to the personal shoppers found in traditional marketplaces, surrogacy differs from electronic intermediaries with regard to (i) the motivations of use and (ii) the symbolic and functional benefits of usage. The emergence of this phenomenon suggests that interactions between individuals (as consumers) and Web-based systems are maturing, albeit in a non-predictable manner. Together, the methodological refinements presented here with the accompanying research findings provide a reference point for further work in the following three areas: interface design for electronic marketplaces; Web-based consumer decision support technologies; and the development of interpretive approaches suitable for socio-technical investigations.

My aim with this research has been to see how surrogate mothers' situation in Georgia looks like, and how different aspects affect the understanding of the process itself and create different prerequisites for surrogate mothers. I interviewed staffs who meet surrogate mothers in their work. I conducted five interviews. The theories I have chosen to use in the study is Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Goffman's labeling theory. I concluded that surrogacy is a controversial subject that is interesting to analyze, based on these theories. After I had interviewed people, it turned out that there are some hierarchical differences between surrogate mothers and biological mothers. The study shows those surrogate mothers' motives and perception is different in society, leading to stigma and categorized ring of the phenomenon. In the future it will be interesting to formulate, visualize, debate and discuss how surrogacy affects society and the professionals' assessments of the phenomenon. I hope that the study raises future interest in others and brings new perspectives which professionals can benefit from. / Mitt mål med denna uppsats har varit att se hur surrogatmödrars situation i Georgien ser ut, och hur olika aspekter påverkar förståelsen för själva processen och skapar olika förutsättningar för surrogatamödrar.  Jag gjorde detta genom att intervjua personal som träffar surrogatamödrar i sin verksamhet. Jag genomförde fem intervjuer. De teorier jag valt att använda i studien är Maslows behovstrappa och Goffmans stämplingsteori. Jag kom fram till att surrogatmödraskap är ett omdiskuterat ämne som är intressant att analysera utifrån dessa teorier. Efter att jag intervjuat personerna visade det sig att det förekommer en del hierarkiska skillnader mellan surrogatmödrar och biologiska mammor. Studien visar att surrogatmödrarnas motiv och uppfattning ser olika ut i samhället, vilket leder till stigmatisering och kategorisering av själva fenomenet. I framtiden kommer det bli intressant att formulera, synliggöra, problematisera och diskutera hur surrogatmödraskap påverkar samhället och professionellas bedömningar på fenomenet. Jag hoppas att studien väcker framtida intresse för andra och bidrar med nya perspektiv som professionella kan ha nytta av.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how Swedish journalism portrays surrogacy through printed press. I used critical discourse analysis according to Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model to explore the subject. In this study, fourteen articles where analysed. The analysis found four major discursive themes in the articles: the justifying discourse, the invisibility discourse, the hero discourse and the normalizing discourse. The study concludes that surrogacy is portrayed in a positive manner in Swedish printed press. Through the justifying discourse and the inivisibility discourse, in which the role of the surrogate is toned down, any moral implications of surrogacy are legitimatized. By describing the surrogate as a selfless and charitable person, she is constructed as a hero. By portraying surrogacy as something unproblematic, surrogacy arrangements are normalized. The study also found that the articles reproduce the idea of parenthood as something natural for women and that they constructed homosexual men as feminine to legitimize them as parents.

Commercial gestational surrogacy, also called contract pregnancy, involves privately contracting a biogenetically curated pregnancy using IVF. It distinguishes itself from what is commonly considered 'natural' in procreation, in that the human fetuses it produces are formally entered into a legal unit other than the family of the gestator. My work here contends that this practice is best thought, not in isolation, but in the context of social reproduction more generally and as a central component of future geographies of fetal manufacture that would treat (all) pregnancy as work. This project demands, for me, a critical revisiting of theoretic texts like Mary O'Brien's The Politics of Reproduction (O'Brien 1981). But, in my reading, O'Brien's race-blind gynocentrism doomed her to miss the ensemble of practices - forms of surrogacy among them - that have already long been engaged in the sublation of reproductive labour she professes (yet defers until after the revolution). In geography as in O'Brien, the political horizon of reproductive justice theorised by Black and/or Marxist feminists since the 1970s (Davis 1981; Ross et al. 2016), has been neglected. In assembling materials for a future rewriting of "The Politics of Reproduction" in the context of geography -a trans-inclusive uterine geography- I draw on this canon of reproductive justice first. I question the assumption that there can ever be an absence of surrogacy (i.e. an absence of assistance, co-production, or "sym-poesis" (Haraway 2016)) in babymaking. Thus I explore the synthetic substance of surrogacy synthetically, using a lens I call 'gestational labour': a conceptual hybrid of the postwork perspective on care (Weeks 2011; Federici 1975), the Marxist-feminist concept 'clinical labour' (Cooper and Waldby 2014) and cyborgicity (Haraway 1991). Deploying 'gestational labour' together with a commitment to solidarity vis-à-vis surrogates, I analyse recent events, pro- and anti-surrogacy discourses (both clinical-capitalist and activist), and trends in critical literature that illuminate an immanent 'uterine geography' (or fail to). I aim to demonstrate that the technophobic anticommodification critique of surrogacy's detractors is ultimately as insufficient as the class-blind ('philanthrocapitalist') feminism of surrogacy's sales representatives. My point is that so-called natural forms of the family are themselves already 'technologies of reproductive assistance' differently mediated in the market. Our task is unfortunately neither a matter of simply saying 'stop', nor of pretending that the satisfaction people feel in "mutually advantageous exploitation" (Panitch 2013), on such an unequal playing-field, is somehow 'enough'.Surrogate gestators sometimes show us glimpses of 'mothering against motherhood'. They expose gestation as a cyborg form of labour-power, which is to say, collective human activity always already mixed up with 'technologies' on the one hand and strange more-than-human organisms on the other. Pitting surrogacy against surrogacy, I propose keeping our understanding of what surrogacy could mean radically open. On this basis, I point readers and potential future collaborators towards new kinds of sym-poetic geographical practice: surrogacies - or, engagements with reproductive politics in the broadest sense - which I think our historic moment urgently requires.

abstract: The advent of advanced reproductive technologies has sparked a number of ethical concerns regarding the practices of reproductive tourism and commercial gestational surrogacy. In the past few decades, reproductive tourism has become a global industry in which individuals or couples travel, usually across borders, to gain access to reproductive services. This marketable field has expanded commercial gestational surrogacy--defined by a contractual relationship between an intending couple and gestational surrogate in which the surrogate has no genetic tie to fetus--to take on transnational complexities. India has experienced extreme growth due to a preferable combination of western educated doctors and extremely low medical costs. However, a slew of ethical issues have been brought to the forefront: the big ones manifesting as concern for reduction of a woman's worth to her reproductive capabilities along with concern for exploitation of third world women. This project will be based exclusively on literature review and serves primarily as a call for cultural competency and understanding the circumstances that gestational surrogates are faced with before implementing policy regulating commercial gestational surrogacy. The paper argues that issues of exploitation and commodification hinge on constructions of motherhood. It is critical to define and understand definitions of motherhood and how these definitions affect a woman's approach to reproduction within the cultural context of a gestational surrogate. This paper follows the case study of the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in northern India, a surrogacy clinic housing around 50 Indian surrogates. The findings of the project invokes the critical significance of narrative ethics, which help Indian surrogates construct the practice of surrogacy so that it fits into cultural comprehensions of Indian motherhood--in which motherhood is selfless, significant, and shared. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Biology 2011

The topic of the diploma thesis is the determination of parenthood in the light of the current status of reproductive medicine. The importance of reproductive medicine is increasing in contemporary society in connection with the growing number of people suffering from infertility. Many infertile couples who have undergone reproductive medicine treatment have become parents through these methods. The question of legal parenthood in connection with the issue of assisted reproduction is the core part of the diploma thesis. The diploma thesis aims to perform a legal analysis of the determination of parenthood to a child born through assisted conception, to point out possible shortcomings in legal regulation and to recommend legislative amendments from the perspective of de lege ferenda. The first chapter explores effective legal regulation of maternity and paternity determination, defining the fundamental kinds of parenthood, because biological, genetic, social and legal parenthood should not be confused. The second chapter deals with assisted reproduction, which specifically manipulates human gametes. Attention is drawn to international and national legal regulation, including the question of legal parenthood of a child that has been conceived in this way. The next part of the thesis deals with...

Surrogacy - abstract This master thesis deals with the phenomenon of surrogate motherhood (surrogacy) and analyses it from the point of view of Czech and British law, especially the Private law. Its main objective is to approximate to the answer to the question whether surrogacy should be entrenched in Czech law and, if so, what should the main features of such legal regulation be. In order to achieve this aim, it, firstly, focuses on the currently valid and effective Czech legislation. It is a well-known fact that, apart from the provision of § 804 of the Czech Civil Code, Czech law does not provide for surrogacy, at all. Surrogacy is, therefore, only partially regulated in some of its aspects, namely assisted reproduction, legal parenthood and adoption. Since the United Kingdom is often mentioned as one of the possible sources of inspiration for the future Czech legal regulation of surrogacy, British law concerning this phenomenon is considered in the following part of this thesis - especially in the light of the extensive case law. In particular, issues such as surrogacy arrangements, assisted reproduction, legal parenthood and transfer of legal parenthood (that is adoption and parental orders) are analysed. These are then subjected to critical assessment. In its last chapter, the thesis returns to the...

Over the past decade, a ‘gayby boom’ (Richman, 2002) has occurred in the Israeli male-gay community: hundreds of gay couples became fathers through cross-border commercial surrogacy. This rise was accompanied by political struggles over access to surrogacy for same-sex couples within Israel. This study explores first, the causes of this sudden rise in ‘gay surrogacy’; and second, the social implications, especially pertaining to the alteration of family norms in the 21st century. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), surrogacy is analysed as an 'assemblage', consisting of the interaction between socially shaped practices and desires, the medical and legal technologies involved, and the overarching state apparatuses. To draw out the complexity of the different components of this assemblage (individual, medical and legal, and state), 31 gay surrogacy fathers were interviewed, along with Israeli surrogacy industry representatives (n=6) and policy makers (n=13). Media coverage of ‘gay surrogacy’ and documentation from relevant court appeals and state committees on reproductive technologies were incorporated into the analysis to provide a contextual framework. Three themes were identified. First, surrogacy provides Israeli gay men a unique combination of novelty and sameness: surrogacy offers ‘biological’ fatherhood, similar to that enjoyed by heterosexual couples, but also facilitates the creation of a new family model, the ‘two-father-family’. The contradiction between the application of technology and the idea of ‘procreation’ disappeared through a discursive normalising and neutralising mechanism, in which surrogacy serves as a stand-in for ‘natural procreation’. Through this process, assisted reproduction facilitated the normalisation of the gay family. Second, despite the fact that surrogacy markets operate globally, the State emerged as a significant force in shaping the specific mechanisms of the surrogacy process, as well as the procreative desires of the Israeli surrogacy fathers – who were geared towards both genetic procreation and reproducing the nation. Gay fatherhood through surrogacy was found to be part of the new ‘gaystream’ (Duggan, 2002), expressing desires towards a new (homo)normativity and participating in homonationalist (Puar, 2007) struggles. Finally, cross-border surrogacy operates in a global market, based upon the commerce of gametes and reproductive services involving third-party women, often from impoverished parts of the world (Vora, 2015). This creates a moral dilemma for commissioning fathers, regarding the commodification of women and children in the market for reproductive services, and the related harm and exploitation within surrogacy markets. Surrogacy fathers negotiated these moral conflicts by forming ideas and ideals of reciprocity, intimacy and shared commitment towards and with the surrogate. However, the realisation of these values is heavily dependent upon the regulatory regimes in the surrogacy state and the outcomes of the medical and physical procedures – that is, the birth of a live healthy child. In conclusion, surrogacy offers a site for making families and remaking ‘the family’. It is based on already existing familial norms, but at the same time partially unsettles these; it is shaped by state regulations and national desires; and it is deeply implicated in unequal global markets, while explicitly harbouring ideals of intimacy and reciprocity. As surrogacy becomes the normative familial form for gay men in Israel, the need arises for collective critical reflexion on the impacts of surrogacy practices on global ‘others’, and on minorities within the Israeli queer community.

This thesis intends to demonstrate why commercial surrogacy is not morally justifiable. In order to display the implication of the aim, a normative argumentative method is applied. In the analysis, arguments, and possible counter-arguments of ethical issues of exploitation, commodification, individual freedom and estranged labor in context to surrogacy arrangements is outlined. To strengthen the content of the arguments presented the concept of exploitation, commodification together with the harm principle and the Marxian framework of estranged labor will act as the theoretical framework of the thesis. In the analysis, it is shown that global economic inequalities, and social structures of class and gender make the practice of surrogacy exploitative per se and that the surrogate becomes objectified as she as a person and her body is treated as a commodity. Based on these factors, it is concluded that surrogacy cannot be morally justified.

This thesis focuses on the problematic nature of art valuation, more specifically concerning the ideas of use-value and exchange-value in Honoré de Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Written in nineteenth-century France, Balzac’s novel paints a bleak portrait of what he believes to be a morally corrupt society obsessed with the lesser things in life such as money and status rather than what is truly important: culture and art. In her novel, which bears a striking resemblance to Balzac’s, Tartt presents her perception of present-day United States, also plagued with moral corruption and disregard for the cultural significance of art, but ultimately attempts to convey the message that art will prevail and transcend not only time but human weakness as well. This analysis will attempt to trace the evolution of the value of the collections of art in these two novels. Through the examination of the themes of legitimacy, surrogacy and betrayal, I will analyze the paradoxes of value of both art and family structure.