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Title Inventing Hoodia: Vulnerabilities and Epistemic Citizenship in South Africa
Full text http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5qd3z4hr
Date 2011
Author(s) Foster, Laura A.
Abstract In studying Hoodia patent law struggles, I am interested in how sovereign power, in the service of neoliberal bioeconomies, values some forms of knowledge over others. I examine how techniques of governmentality such as patent law, benefit sharing contracts, bioprospecting permits, and prior informed consent agreements are being used to structure inequitable forms of citizenship based upon whose knowledge and intellectual labor matters more to the neoliberal project of the nation-state. In particular, I ask how relevant social actors make claims for rights, benefits, and protection under the law based upon a vulnerability to their processes and ways of knowing in order to participate more fully within global market economies. In addition, I examine how social actors articulate, position, and rework concepts of nature and culture as they describe their practices related to the plant in order to secure rights under patent law and benefit sharing legislation.
Subject(s) Hoodia; South Africa; Patent Laws; Bioeconomics; Citizenship; Global Markets; Epistemic Citizenship; Arts and Humanities; Law
Language english
Publisher eScholarship, University of California
Type of publication article
Format application/pdf
Source Foster, Laura A.(2011). Inventing Hoodia: Vulnerabilities and Epistemic Citizenship in South Africa. UCLA: UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5qd3z4hr
Rights public
Identifier qt5qd3z4hr
Repository Berkeley - University of California
Added to C-A: 2014-04-04;14:02:09