Locating Biopiracy: Geographically and Culturally Situated Knowledges

Abstract

The issue of ‘biopiracy’ inevitably evokes a wide variety of responses and emotions. It is likely that, for this reason, few academic articles have adequately or fully explored the discourse and/or issue. In this paper I analyse the strategic employment of the term and counterarguments generated by different parties including activists, nongovernmental organisations, academics, industry, and government representatives. Using the concept of ‘situated knowledges’ I explore how epistemic communities with intellectual property (IP) interests have generated one set of powerful and even hypocritical rhetorics and ‘harmonised’ them as global and universal truths. I then illustrate the political and cultural contingence of these IP discourses through a discussion of biopiracy cases and politics in Thailand, where IP laws have been rapidly and coercively imposed. Ultimately, I argue that the cultural, historical, and geographical specifics have been lost and obscured in an international debate that all too often employs ubiquitous understandings of ‘traditional knowledge’, ‘genetic resources’, and ‘protection.’