Mother Nature and the Nature of Motherhood. Gestational Surrogacy and Ecospirituality as Two Postmodern Forms of Sacralization

In this paper, I try to highlight some similarities and differences between the contemporary imagery of motherhood and that of ecospirituality. Apart from apparent differences, both these imageries are based on a peculiar alliance with nature. Demonstrating why these phenomena have to be considered postmodern forms of sacralization, is the goal of this paper. For this purpose, in the first section, I will briefly reconstruct some socio-historical stages of the imagery of the body and how this has changed from Christian to contemporary societies. The second section analyses the concept of health, focusing on the changes that affect the idea of death. The third section identifies the main features of gestational surrogacy as a characteristic phenomenon of late modern society. In the fourth section, I will show the postmodern nature of gestational surrogacy. The fifth section compares the imagery of gestational surrogacy to the one of ecospirituality, detecting some differences and similarities. In the conclusion, through an approach close to the sociology of religion, I suggest that both these phenomena respond to same demand for meaning and they are the product of a radical change of the relationship between human being, nature and sacred.