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Zsuzsa Berend, Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm By Rene Almeling University of California Press. 2011. 240 pages. $24.95 paper, Social Forces, Volume 94, Issue 3, March 2016, Page e78, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou032
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Is the commodification of eggs and sperm a troubling expansion of the market into the “sacred” realm, or is a market in bodily goods and services a beneficial development that enables both donors and recipients to have more choices? This question is frequently asked by both journalists and social critics, but luckily it is not the one Rene Almeling's Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm is asking. Sex Cells takes up more thought-provoking and useful questions about markets, participants, and the interconnections between the institutional organization and private experience of bodily commodification. This well-researched and well-written book sidesteps not only normative evaluations but also the dichotomous distinction between economy and society, treating the market in sex cells as a complex social phenomenon.
Almeling situates her empirical study of the market for bodily goods and services in the context of the growing scholarship on commodification, siding with those who see it as a varied social process infused with many different meanings rather than a uniform development brought about by ever-expanding monetization. This is not simply a scholarly debate about how to conceptualize markets and commodification; meanings have far-reaching consequences for our actions and policies. Almeling asks two interrelated questions: How is the market for bodily goods and services organized, and what is the experience of the participants?
