When Nature Goes Public

The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-691-09557-8
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 496 g

Reihe: In-Formation

Bioprospecting--the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance--has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But can pharmaceutical profits really advance conservation and indigenous rights? How much should companies pay and to whom? Who stands to gain and lose? The first anthropological study of the practices mobilized in the name and in the shadow of bioprospecting, this book takes us into the unexpected sites where Mexican scientists and American companies venture looking for medicinal plants and local knowledge.Cori Hayden tracks bioprospecting's contentious new promise--and the contradictory activities generated in its name. Focusing on a contract involving Mexico's National Autonomous University, Hayden examines the practices through which researchers, plant vendors, rural collectors, indigenous cooperatives, and other actors put prospecting to work. By paying unique attention to scientific research, she provides a key to understanding which people and plants are included in the promise of "selling biodiversity to save it"--and which are not. And she considers the consequences of linking scientific research and rural "enfranchisement" to the logics of intellectual property.Roving across UN protocols, botanical collecting histories, Mexican nationalist agendas, neoliberal property regimes, and North-South relations, When Nature Goes Public charts the myriad, emergent publics that drive and contest the global market in biodiversity and its futures.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hayden, Cori

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Unternehmensorganisation, Corporate Responsibility Unternehmensethik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Fertigungsindustrie Pharmaindustrie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Angewandte Ökologie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltschutz, Umwelterhaltung
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Religionsethnologie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Botanik
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltmanagement, Umweltökonomie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Angewandte Ethik & Soziale Verantwortung Wirtschaftsethik, Unternehmensethik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Entwicklungspolitik, Nord-Süd Beziehungen
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltüberwachung, Umweltanalytik, Umweltinformatik
• Rechtswissenschaften Internationales Recht und Europarecht Internationales Recht Internationales See-, Luft- und Weltraumrecht
• Technische Wissenschaften Verfahrenstechnik | Chemieingenieurwesen | Biotechnologie Kosmetische Technologie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Pharmazie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures and Tables ix List of Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xiii Author's Note xvii Introduction 1 PART ONE: NEOLIBERAL NATURES Chapter 1: Interests and Publics: On (Ethno)science and Its Accountabilities 19 Chapter 2: Neoliberalism's Nature 48 Chapter 3: Prospecting in Mexico: Rights, Risk, and Regulation 85 PART TWO: PUBLIC PROSPECTING Chapter 4: Market Research: When Local Knowledge Is Public Knowledge 125 Chapter 5: By the Side of the Road: The Contours of a Field Site 158 PART THREE: PROSPECTING's PUBLICS Chapter 6: The Brine Shrimp Assay: Signs of Life, Sites of Value 191 Chapter 7: Presumptions of Interest 213 Chapter 8: Remaking Prospecting's Publics 230 Notes 237 Bibliography 255 Index 275