The Bridging of Emotional Capital
From the above analysis, this research finds that it is challenging to
convert any of the surrogate’s portfolio of Bourdieu ’s capital
from one to another, meaning that surrogates are more inclined to remain
in Sen’s capability poverty. Therefore, understanding how surrogates
support and sustain themselves mentally and psychologically across the
contracted pregnancy is imperative. Being the variant of social capital
from feminists’ critique, and specifically confined with affective
bonding within private sphere, the emerging and accumulating of
“emotional capital” (Nowotny, 1981: 148) is the key.
Judging from the disadvantageous circumstances that surrogates inhabit,
such as their tendency to be poor11According to Wilkinson
(1995), the emotional wellbeing is much easier to be taken care of in
privileged circumstances, while people living in poverty are easier to
suffer due to the “emotionally draining experience” (Oppenheim and
Harker, 1996)., emotional capital serves as the resource for women to
respond to and even confront against barriers in adversities (Reay,
2004). As the capital-forming process itself is self-reflexive and
self-struggling, it can be regarded as, for one, the reluctance of
surrogates portraying themselves as vulnerable victims, and secondly, as
mothers and wives keen to take back control of their lives (Rozée et al
2020). The denial of viewing less-privileged groups like surrogates only
with dichotomous portrayals (i.e., immobility vs. mobility; power vs.
resistance) is also supported by Deomampo (2013: 521), who states that
poor women may argue to have the autonomy over their reproductive
rights.
Understood as a form of capital to be built up over time, it provides
surrogates with not only abstract feelings like care, concern, and
attention (Allatt 1993) to self-reflect upon, but also competencies to
self-overcome and offset the effect of the negatively accumulated
cultural capital (i.e., reduce the stigmatisation), at the same time
self-supporting the forming of positively obtained social capital.
Nevertheless, while accumulating emotional capital, as Pande (2020: 971)
cautiously points out on unintended outcomes of surrogates’
self-affirmation on sense of self-worth and dignity, the “gender
inequalities” on non-or-low paid female informal workers may be
reinforced, and such consequence may push even more women back into
poverty.
Struggle for Agency:
Relational Autonomy and Autonomy Competency in Poverty
With emotional capital, the extent to which surrogates can strive for
agency and escape from poverty requires further understanding on the
multi-faceted aspects of autonomy.
As agency represents individuals’
means to act and of self-achievements (Gooptu, 2013),
it entails the idea of
“relational self-autonomy” (Millar, 2014), of which is widely used by
individuals to distance or detach themselves from specific power
relations for liberation, even if that indicates lived realities in much
more fragile times (Graeber, 2009). For surrogates, women bodies were
agencies both undergoing normalization of social experience and
resistance to politics (Harcourt 2009).
As relational autonomy highlights
the context of “oppressive socialisation” and the connection of
agent’s self-conception and capacity within the social context
(Mackenzie & Stoljar 2000: 3-4), when viewing Bourdieu’s Habitus, surrogates are
leveraging the autonomy against the power of structure, in particular
attempting to offset the negatively accumulated cultural capital caused
by stigma. Being members of a
modern and knowledgeable society, surrogates develop strategies to
overcome the negative representation of surrogacy by leveraging the
classic “Condemnation of the condemners (Ashforth & Kreiner,
1999)” to counterbalance the social stigma attached to dirty and sinful
work.
Despite being deeply constrained by socioeconomic and gender frames, as well
as practices within institutions22The constraints embedded
within the social context bring forth a two-way understanding of
surrogates: One being intrinsically relational (i.e., their
self-conceptions are constituted by elements of social context), and
the other being causally relational (i.e., their nature is influenced
by socio-historical conditions) (Mackenzie & Stoljar 2000: 21-22),
surrogates facing a limited degree of “reproductive liberty (Roberts,
1995)” and available options (Raz, 1986) often reveal a degree of
“autonomy competence (Meyers, 1987)” as a central part of the struggle
for agency. Based on the oppressive social and medical settings where
relational autonomy functions, autonomy competency takes a step forward
in proving women as surrogates are de-facto “partially autonomous” in
their lives (Meyers 1987: 627-628), corresponding also with “dynamic
autonomy (Keller, 1987)” as a competency growing under “domination,
denied connectedness, and defensive separateness (Mackenzie & Stoljar,
2000: 9-10)”. To escape from capability poverty, Indian surrogates
living under domination with limited resilience and autonomy competency
tend to leverage emotional capital to avoid being reduced to
a “status of a pure alienated victim” (Falquet 2008: 53), to balance the
“mother-worker identity” considering all possible conflicts of
interests (Pande 2010: 969), and most critically, to disrupt gender
hierarchies privileging genetic ties but not maternal bonds established
by bodily substances and reproductive labour (Pande, 2009a).