A New Class of Persons: Intercountry Adoptees and Postcolonial Theories of Cultural Hybridity

George R. Waddington, University of Maryland School of Law

Abstract

In A New Class of Persons, I argue that political and scholarly attempts to associate intercountry adoption with western hegemony affirm the paradigm of colonialism that these attempts seek to undermine. Specifically, recent efforts to limit the adoption of poor, non-western children by American or European parents perpetuate imperial views of European cultural and racial superiority. Opponents of intercountry adoption mimic imperial models of power and subordination: they view cultures as distinct entities that operate within a specific national and geographical context and, consequently, can be differentiated and placed within a cultural hierarchy. Far from exploiting developing nations, intercountry adoption facilitates lateral cultural and intellectual exchange, and so reflects a post-colonial paradigm. Indeed, intercountry adoption is emblematic of the important processes of cultural and intellectual exchange that shaped colonial society despite European efforts to segregate and subordinate non-western peoples.