Amy Speier

“Cycling Overseas”: Care, Commodification, and Stratification in Cross-Border Reproductive Travel

Cross-border reproductive travel involves the movement of patients to undertake assisted reproductive treatment through technologies, such as in vitro fertilization and associated procedures otherwise denied to them due to cost, access, or regulatory restrictions. Based on fieldwork in Thailand, the United States, and the Czech Republic, we explore the commodification of reproductive bodies within this trade and the reduction of the nurturing affective labor of reproduction to exchange value. Second, we examine the intensification and globalization of the stratification of reproduction. These inequalities are illustrated though discussion of the trade in poor womens bodies for surrogacy and ova donation. Even reproductive body parts, ova, sperm, and embryos are stratified—marketed according to place of origin, the characteristics of their donors, and gender.

Health tourism in a Czech health spa

This paper is about the changing shape of health tourism in a Czech spa town. The research focuses on balneotherapy as a traditional Czech healing technique, which involves complex drinking and bathing therapies, as it is increasingly being incorporated into the development of a Czech health tourism industry. Today, the health tourism industry in Mariánské Lázně is attempting to ‘harmoniously’ combine three elements – balneology, travel and business activities. One detects subtle shifts and consequent incongruities as doctors struggle for control over the medical portion of spa hotels. At the same time, marketing groups are creating new packages for a general clientele, and the implementation of these new packages de-medicalizes balneotherapy. Related to the issue of the doctors authority in the spa, the changes occurring with the privatization of tourism entails the entrance of ‘tourists’ to Mariánské Lázně who are not necessarily seeking spa treatment but who are still staying at spa hotels. There is a general consensus among spa doctors and employees that balneotherapy has become commodified. Thus, while balneotherapy remains a traditional form of therapy, the commercial context in which it exists has created a new form of health tourism.