Works in Progress: Indigenous Knowledge, Biological Diversity and Intellectual Property in a Neoliberal ERA
in R.W. Perry and B. Maurer, eds., Globalization Under Construction: Governmentality, Law and Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) pp. 273-314
34 Pages Posted: 9 Jul 2014
Date Written: 2003
Abstract
In a rapidly changing era of globalization, ‘cultural rights’ have been garnered new attention in international law and policy making circles. Information becomes capital through processes of commodification, facilitated by intellectual property laws. Resistances engage in similar tactics but strategically point them in alternative directions. Indigenous peoples have put intellectual property ‘back’ in the human rights framework after its initial appropriation to the international trade domain. They have done so by utilizing the ambiguities associated with ‘culture’ found in international covenants, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). While anthropologists might feel unease or discomfort in the increasing institutional use of the idea of culture, they must also begin to recognize its power to express injustice. The ultimate value in culture then, may be its versatile ability to serve as a work in progress – to give new meaning and new voice to injustice.
Keywords: Cultural rights, International law, Convention on Biological Diversity, Neoliberalism
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