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Vulnerability is a pivotal concept for understanding transnational commercial surrogacy and the ethics of reproductive travel. While implicitly recognizing vulnerability as important, existing scholarship falls short of understanding the dynamism of vulnerability. Placing our empirical analysis in conjunction with the rich theoretical literature on this concept, we explore vulnerability in surrogacy arrangements in India as a "mode of openness," defined by its multilayeredness and context specificity. We focus on two retellings of vulnerability. In the first narrative, we analyse the journey of an intended parent who becomes an agent, while in the second narrative, we focus on the trajectory of a surrogate and egg donor becoming an agent. In both narratives, the layers of vulnerability across different interconnected circuits of reproduction—of intended parent, agent, and surrogate—are explicated. Our analysis illustrates the complex and conflicting meanings of vulnerability and illustrates vulnerability as an instigator of agency and resistance; how it can propel upward social mobility and animate attempts to transform an unjust system, but also how such individual agency and empowerment may serve to uphold exploitative relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In seeking to explore the meaning of chronic and chronicity, the association with infertility is neither immediate nor evident. However, this paper explores this relationship by analyzing the idea of infertility in relation to chronicity. In the linkages that come forth the idea of chronic lifestyle emerging from certain ways of being and living, as well the imaginings associated with the chronic body become important nodes of exploring the relationship between infertility and chronicity. Most importantly, the role that time plays in marking the chronic state is seen to be especially potent in the practice of infertility treatment, and the narratives that emerge around its temporal inevitability. The rhetoric that marks the diagnosis and prescription of treatment is often based on the identification of the body as susceptible to reproductive decline and failure, due to the contingencies of modern living. This often translates into a more sustained involvement with ARTs, which may or may not fulfil the required desire for a child. In this paper I seek to analyse the ways in which practitioners of infertility medicine create an image of an affliction that borders on chronicity. In the process, I question the idea of both chronic diseases and chronicity by looking at how illness is imagined in narratives that IVF specialists create in public, and through the idea of a cure for infertility. By analysing data collected through ethnographic fieldwork, this paper aims to build on the idea of the chronic as inevitable within clinical discourse and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dance as an art form when applied therapeutically gives several physical and mental health benefits. The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of dance on adults' mental health that is associated with some form of dance. Hence, the aim of the present study is, i) To learn the Self-esteem (SE), Physical Aggression (PA), Verbal Aggression (VA), Anger (A), Hostility (H) and the level of Resilience (R) among the adult dancer, ii) To find out the level of association between Self-esteem, Aggression, and Resilience among the participants, and, iii) To find out a significant predictor of Self-esteem. This study is based on a non-probability sampling design technique with a total of 107 dancers. This study incorporated both qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. The scales used are Rosenberg's Self-esteem Scale by Rosenberg (1965); the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) (1992); and The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-25) by Kathryn et al. (2003) and also in-depth semi-structured interviews were taken from 12 participants to fulfill the aim of the study. This study reveals (Table 1) high self-esteem, high physical aggression, hostility, and high resilience power in adult dancers. The study also reveals a significant positive correlation between self-esteem and resilience, physical aggression and anger and a negative significant correlation between resilience and anger, self-esteem and hostility, resilience and verbal aggression, self-esteem and verbal aggression. Physical aggression and Resilience is found to be a significant predictor of self-esteem dancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dance movement therapy as a specific form of psychotherapy has its successful applicability in various psycho-social intervention programmes. However, the most common utilisation of this therapy has been observed in the clinical and rehabilitation fields. Its applicability in community mental health training, though not totally overlooked, but not empirically explored as well. The present work tried to bridge this research gap in relation to training and development in children. This study has focused on understanding dance movement therapy's role in training children with the concept of body privacy, at the same time developing healthy body image, and facilitating communication skills in them. Qualitative techniques were employed for data collection and analysis purpose. The findings were intriguing in terms of evaluating dance movement therapy as a training process to teach children body privacy concept, which can further find its application in school counselling and various other child training and intervention programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I focus on media narratives on older women bearing and birthing infants through the intervention of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in rural north India. I suggest that their portrayal as "outliers" within popular media narratives is gendered, and connected in particular to: the fear of older women past their reproductive prime becoming pregnant and birthing children through ART; the figure of the "rogue doctor," or the emergence of counter narratives around ART and its practitioners; and, the effort to quell anxieties around ART use amongst older women through the use of legitimating tropes such as conjugality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]