Intellectual Property Rights and the North-South Contest for Agricultural Germplasm: A Historical Perspective
This article examines intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes as they apply to agricultural germplasm in the context of global North-South relations. The issue is pertinent particularly since TRIPs (Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) became enshrined in the statutes of the World Trade Organization in 1994, institutionalizing the notion of ‘germplasm as property’ throughout the globe. Yet, the idea of ‘germplasm as property’ is a notion culturally specific to the global North historically. It is perhaps no surprise that many germplasm patents are being held on biological matter that originated in the South–in the Vavilovian ‘centers of diversity’. This paradox situates the contest over biodiversity resources in a world-historic context and undermines the declared reasons for germplasm IPRs. Besides, more than just a North-South conflict over resources, this episode features also a confrontation between competing worldviews of nature-human relations.
Global agricultural trade and genetic resources as a point of contention
International agricultural trade has greatly altered the way food is grown, negatively affecting peasant livelihood and the natural environment. While the literature on this is extensive, efforts to understand how genetic variety is effected within such a process is limited. Wherefore, in this paper we explore the factors that determine the place of genetic resources in international trade. This is done by creating a conceptual framework to analyse different forms of power, a process necessary due to its contemporary fungible nature, in an attempt to asses how biotechnology can disclose power’s other characteristics. We demonstrate how the instrumental use of biotechnology has become an apparatus to control food production globally and a means by which the international market homogenises food production. Through the use of a bio/geopolical gaze we identify that this course occurs within the realm of bioecnomics and geoeconomics. 
Keywords: international agricultural trade; genetic resources; bio/geopolitics.
Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon
Thought to be the last "virgin" people, the Yanomami were considered the most savage and warlike tribe on earth, as well as one of the most remote, secreted in the jungles and highlands of the Venezuelan and Brazilian rainforest. Preeminent anthropologists like Napoleon Chagnon and Jacques Lizot founded their careers in the 1960s by "discovering" the Yanomami's ferocious warfare and sexual competition. Their research is now examined in painstaking detail by Patrick Tierney, whose book has prompted the American Anthropological Association to launch a major investigation into the charges, and has ignited the academic world like no other book in recent years. The most important book on anthropology in decades, Darkness in El Dorado will be a work to be reckoned with by a new generation of students the world over. A National Book Award finalist; a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year. 16 pages of b/w photographs. "In many respects, the most important book ever written about the Yanomami..."-Leslie Sponsel, University of Hawaii "An astonishing tale of scientific vainglory and blinding pride...Subtly argued and powerfully written. "-The National Book Award Foundation Judges' Citation "[A] tale of self-interested agendas carried to such extremes as to seem an anthropological Heart of Darkness."-Los Angeles Times "Best Books of 2000" "[W]ill become a classic in anthropological literature, sparking countless debates."-The New York Times Book Review, John Horgan "Its most immediate effect may be to provoke a needed dialogue on the crucial importance of informed consent in anthropology."-The Chronicle of Higher Education, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban "An enthralling and well-researched look at the unscrupulous practices of anthropology and journalism."-Booklist, Vanessa Bush "Copiously annotated and well documented...the culmination of a decade-long study of what Tierney claims is false science."-Publishers Weekly starred review "Nowhere is there a better case study of the effects of intervention on tribal peoples..."-Christian Science Monitor "[A] brilliant and shocking book...This book should shake anthropology to its very foundations."-Terrence Collins, Carnegie Mellon University "An extremely important contribution."-John Frechione, University of Pittsburgh "[C]arefully researched and documented...reveals an interlocking series of scandals that constitute the most flagrant violations of scientific ethics. .."-Terrence Turner, Carnegie Mellon University "[A] devastatingly truthful story of massive genocide in contemporary times."-Chief Wilma Mankiller, Board Member, The Ford Foundation "The case of Napoleon Chagnon, as harrowingly documented by Patrick Tierney, appears to be an archetypal and unbelievably appalling one."-Alex Shoumatoff, author of The Rivers Amazon, and The World is Burning