Biopiracy in India: Seed diversity and the scramble for knowledge

Abstract

Background: Biopiracy has usually been discussed mostly in the context of the life sciences, sometimes in dialogue with legal debates or political implications. This paper provides a humanities perspective on contemporary discussions of biopiracy and biopatenting. HypothesisIt proceeds from the hypothesis that contemporary debates and practices of biopiracy can be understood as harking back to colonial legacies, which systematically disregard “native” knowledge or seek to appropriate it for their own purposes. ResultsDrawing on the work of Vandana Shiva, the present article seeks to redefine the notion of ownership of knowledge from a cultural studies perspective. Exploring the 2016 documentary film Seed: The Untold Story, it analyses counter-discourses to practices of biopiracy. ConclusionThe paper concludes that given the roots of biopiracy in colonial legacies, forms of resistance may need to appropriate colonialist epistemologies. One example of such appropriation is Vandana Shiva's own campaign, which casts seed ownership in the imagery and rhetoric of Mahatma Gandhi's fight against British colonialism in India. Finally, the article ends by suggesting that issues of biopiracy need to be seen in larger context. Drawing on the work of cultural philosopher Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, it argues that the problem of the twenty-first century may be a scramble for natural resources such as the right for clean water. Biopiracy is hence far from a debate linked only to specific cases in particular locales, but is part of a global epistemological and political framework, which has systematically disenfranchised communities of color and countries of the global South.