Cultural Capital
The formation of cultural capital is relatively complex and often negatively accumulated. Before the bill was revised, despite the legal permissibility of commercial surrogacy, surrogates claim that they often face dilemmas and social condemnation for surrogacy being easily imagined as and associated with extra-marital relationships for “sexualized care work” (Pande, 2010: 142). Unaware by the public of the fact that surrogacy could occur without sexual intercourses, surrogacy is often mislabelled as sinful “dirty work” (Pande, 2014: 155) trapped with “moral taints” (Hughes, 1951). Having recognized that cultural capital accumulation is a historical process, for a patriarchal society like India, surrogacy is never an accepted practice in the community, and women are often not welcomed to engage with renumerated activities outside the home. Married women are required to conform traditionally to their husband and their body is only acceptable for childbearing and nurturing of the family. To protect and preserve the reputation of their family, some surrogates also tend not to notify their larger family of their pregnancy commitment (Pande 2009b), while others, in the very last months of pregnancy, choose to seclude themselves in the medical facilities’ dormitories temporarily avoiding criticism.
In short, the deeply rooted cultural constraints have negatively affected the forming and accumulating of the “embodied” form11Indicating the long-lasting dispositions of surrogates’ mind and body. of cultural capital for surrogates, and the commercialization of the motherhood aligning with moral condemnation on “cultural knowledge and practices” has indeed contrasted surrogates’ rights towards surrogacy (Rozée et al, 2020: 10). Meanwhile, it creates a high threshold to barricade the convertibility of cultural capital to economic (i.e., increase income) and social capital.