Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:38:42.627Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Placing the “Gift Child” in Transnational Adoption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Barbara Yngvesson
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In this article I focus on discourses of freedom and exclusive belonging that structure the conventions of giving in transnational adoption, and I examine state practices for regulating the production and circulation of children in a global market economy. I argue that while the gift child, like the sold child, is a product of commodity thinking, experiences of giving a child, receiving a child, and of being a given child are in tension with market practices, producing the contradictions of adoptive kinship, the ambiguities of adoption law, and the creative potential in the construction of adoptive families.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 2: Special Issue on Nonbiological Parenting , 2002 , pp. 227 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Research on which this paper is based was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. SBR-9511 937) and by faculty development grants from Hampshire College. I am grateful to the individuals who agreed to be interviewed for this project, to staff of Stockholm's Adoption Centre, without whose support and assistance it would not have been possible, and to Susan Coutin and Bill Maurer, with whom I have been collaborating on a related project.

References

References

Centre, Adoption (1997) The Child's Right to Grow up in a Family: Guidelines for Practice in National and Intercountry Adoption and Foster Family Care. Bangalore, India: Adoption Centre.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Andersson, Gunilla (1991) “Intercountry Adoptions in Sweden: The Experience of 25 Years and 32,000 Placements.” Sundbyberg, Sweden: Adoption Centre.Google Scholar
Aronson, Jaclyn C. (1997) Not My Homeland: A Critique of the Current Culture of Korean International Adoption. Unpublished senior thesis, Dept. of Social Science. Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne (1991) “Racism and Nationalism,” in Balibar, E. & Wallerstein, I., eds., Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Bogard, Howard E. (1991) “Who Are the Orphans? Defining Orphan Status and the Need for an International Convention on Intercountry Adoption,” 5 Emory International Law Rev. 571–616.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouvard, Marguerite Guzmán (1994) Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.Google Scholar
Brown, Jane (2000) “Abandonment: What Do We Tell Them?” 2 Adoption Today 5:32–34.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Calvache, Jaime Eliecer (1992) “Caso de un niño conmueve a habitantes del Javeriano,” Diario del Sur, Pasto, Colombia, 17 Dec., p. 1.Google Scholar
Calvache, Jaime Eliecer (1995) “Abandonado en Pasto y hallado en Suecia,” Diario del Sur, Pasto, Colombia, 1 Sept., p. 12a.Google Scholar
Carlson, Richard R. (1994) “The Emerging Law of Intercountry Adoptions: An Analysis of the Hague Conference on Intercountry Adoption,” 30 Tulsa Law J. 243–304.Google Scholar
Carp, E. Wayne (1998) Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Chandler, Nahum D. (1996) “The Figure of the X: An Elaboration of the Duboisian Autobiographical Example,” in Lavie, S. & Swedenburg, T., eds., Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Coontz, Stephanie (1992) The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan (2000) Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan, & Yngvesson, Barbara (2002) “Roots, Trips, and Deportations: Reconfiguring Belonging, Place, and Return” (unpublished ms.).Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1978) Writing and Difference. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1992) Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money. Peggy Kamuf, trans. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1975) [1940] Dusk at Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept. CPW. H. Aptheker, ed. Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson.Google Scholar
Duckham, Janet (1998) “Letter to the editor,” New York Times, 27 Oct., p. A28.Google Scholar
Dugger, Celia W. (1999) “India Offers Rights to Attract Its Offspring's Cash,” New York Times, 4 Apr., p. 4.Google Scholar
Duncan, William (1993) “Regulating Intercountry Adoption: An International Perspective,” in Bainham, A. & Pearl, D. S., eds., Frontiers of Family Law. London: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Fein, Esther B. (1998) “Secrecy and Stigma No Longer Clouding Adoption,” New York Times, 26 Oct., pp. 1, 30–31.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1973) The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Faye D. (1989) Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Avery F. (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gosh, Amitav (1988) The Shadow Lines. Delhi, India: Ravi Dayal.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Carol J., Yngvesson, Barbara, & Engel, David M. (1994) Law and Community in Three American Towns. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth (1995) Space, Time, and Perversion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart (1996) “Who Needs 'Identity'?,” in Hall, S. & Gay, P. du, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart (1997) “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities,” in King, A. D., ed., Culture, Globalization and the World System. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Hollinger, Joan H. (1993) “Adoption Law,” 3 The Future of Children 43–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Dae Jung (1998) “President Kim Dae Jung's Speech: October 23, 1998, at The Blue House,” 1 Chosen Child 5:15–16.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor (1986) “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in Appadurai, A., ed., The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Liem, Deann Borshay (2000) First Person Plural. Ho-He-Kus, NJ: Mu Films.Google Scholar
Lifton, Betty Jean (1994) Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Mahoney, Maureen A., & Yngvesson, Barbara (1992) “The Construction of Subjectivity and the Paradox of Resistance: Reintegrating Feminist Anthropology and Psychology,” 18 Signs 44–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkki, Lisa (1992) “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of Identity among Scholars and Refugees,” 7 Cultural Anthropology 24–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansnerus, Laura (1998) “Market Puts Price Tags on Priceless,” New York Times, 26 Oct., pp. 1, A16–17.Google Scholar
Martens, Peter (1997) “Immigrants, Crime, and Criminal Justice in Sweden,” M. Tonry, ed., Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration: Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Massumi, Brian (1993) “Everywhere You Want to Be. Introduction to Fear,” in Massumi, B., ed., The Politics of Everyday Fear. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Melina, Lois R. (1989) Making Sense of Adoption: A Parent's Guide. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Melina, Lois R. (1998) Raising Adopted Children. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Modell, Judith S. (1994) Kinship with Strangers: Adoption and Interpretations of Kinship in American Culture. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Modell, Judith S. (1999) “Freely Given: Open Adoption and the Rhetoric of the Gift,” in Layne, L. L., ed., Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Nancy, Jean-Luc (1991) The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Nordin, Sara (1996) “Mer eller mindre svart” [More or less black]; 1 SvartVitt 4–6 (Stockholm, Sweden).Google Scholar
Pilotti, Francisco (1993) “Intercountry Adoption: Trends, Issues, and Policy Implications for the 1990s,” 1 Childhood 165–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radhakrishnan, R. (1996) Diasporic Mediations: Between Home and Location. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radin, Margaret Jane (1996) Contested Commodities. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, David M. (1968) American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Serrill, Michael S. (1991) “Wrapping the Earth in Family Ties,” Time International, 4 Nov., pp. 41–46.Google Scholar
Stanley, Alessandra (1997) “Hands Off Our Babies, a Georgian Tells America,” New York Times, 29 June, pp. 1, 12.Google Scholar
Stephens, Sharon (1995) “Children and the Politics of Culture in 'Late Capitalism',” in Stephens, S., ed., Children and the Politics of Culture. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn (1988) The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn (1997) “Partners and Consumers,” in Schrift, Alan D., ed., The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Therborn, Göran (1996) “Child Politics: Dimensions and Perspectives.” 3 Childhood 29–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trotzig, Astrid (1996) Blod är tjockare an vatten [Blood is thicker than water]. Stockholm, Sweden: Bonniers Förlag.Google Scholar
Varenne, Hervé (1977) Americans Together: Structured Diversity in an American Town. New York: Teacher's College Press.Google Scholar
Verhovek, Sam H. (2000) “Debate on Adoptees' Rights Stirs Oregon,” New York Times, 5 Apr., pp. A1, A14.Google Scholar
von Melen, (1998) Samtal med vuxna adopterade [Conversations with adult adoptees]. Stockholm, Sweden: Raben Prisma.Google Scholar
Wadia-Ells, Susan (1995) “The Anil Journals,” in Wadia-Ells, S., ed., The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers and Adoptive Daughters Tell their Stories. Seattle, WA: Seal Press.Google Scholar
Wegar, Katarina (1997) Adoption, Identity and Kinship: The Debate Over Sealed Birth Records. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (1997) “Negotiating Motherhood: Identity and Difference in ‘Open’ Adoptions.” 31 Law & Society Rev. 31–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (2000) “‘UnNiño de Cualquier Color’: Race and Nation in Intercountry Adoption,” in Jenson, J. & de Sousa Santos, B., eds., Globalizing Institutions: Case Studies in Regulation and Innovation. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (2003) “‘Going Home’: Adoption, Loss of Bearings, and the Mythology of Roots,” Social Text 74, Special Issue on Transnational Kinship.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara & Mahoney, Maureen A. (2000) “‘As One Should, Ought, and Wants to Be’: Belonging and Authenticity in Identity Narratives,” 17 Theory, Culture and Society 77–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A. (1985) Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Zizek, Slavoj (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Codigo del Menor, Decreto 1310 del 1990 (junio 20). Codigo del Menor, Decreto 1310 del 1990 (junio 20): Ecoe Ediciones..Google Scholar
Hague Conference on Private International Law, Final Act of the Seventeenth Session, May 29, 1993, 32 I.L.M. 1134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakshmi Kant Pandey Vs. Union of India (Writ Petition Crl. No. 1171 of 1982. Decided on 27 Sept. 1985).Google Scholar
United Nations (1986) Declaration on Social and Legal Principles Relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with Special Reference to Foster Placement and Adoption, Nationally and Internationally, G.A. Res. 41/85, U.N. GAOR, 41st Sess., Annex at art. 5.Google Scholar
United Nations (1989) Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. GAOR, 61st plen. mtg., Annex at art. 21.Google Scholar