Episode 105: The Science of Sociology and Surrogacy - Zsuzsa Berend
Professor Zsuzsa Berend teaches sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the academic administrator of the sociology departmental Honors program. For over a decade, she has been doing ethnographic research on an online surrogacy support forum and published on surrogacy-related topics in Medical Anthropology, Sociological Forum, and American Anthropologist.
Zsuzsa’s book, “The Online World of Surrogacy” presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates’ views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.
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