Biocultural Community Protocols and Boundary Work in Madagascar

Abstract

This chapter is the result of an ethnographic survey and a theoretically informed study of the Biocultural Community Protocol (BCP) of the farming communities of Analavory (Madagascar). Focusing on the development of the protocol, our analysis draws on the concept of “boundary work” to describe how the various actors involved strove to negotiate the boundaries between different social worlds and why this fell short of producing any anticipated or expected results. We argue that attention needs to be paid to how the many stakeholders, including funding entities, NGOs and State agents, introduce “scripts” as stories and their associated non-discursive elements (e.g. objects, conducts and institutions), which can “define actors” (Akrich). This chapter shows how through the practical implementation of a BCP and the unintended competition between the different actors, these scripts end up compromising the successful completion of the boundary work and push further apart the reconciliation of social worlds. The chapter illustrates this by revealing significant misunderstandings surrounding the exact scope of the protocol and the mismatches between vernacular representations of plants and traditional knowledge; and the definitions of plant genetic resources as enshrined in the international regime on Access and Benefit Sharing.