|
" Knowledge, ownership and life : "
Hamilton, Christopher John
| Document Type
|
:
|
Latin Dissertation
|
| Record Number
|
:
|
1096775
|
| Doc. No
|
:
|
TLets485555
|
| Main Entry
|
:
|
Hamilton, Christopher John
|
| Title & Author
|
:
|
Knowledge, ownership and life :\ Hamilton, Christopher John
|
| College
|
:
|
London School of Economics and Political Science
|
| Date
|
:
|
2007
|
| student score
|
:
|
2007
|
| Degree
|
:
|
Ph.D.
|
| Abstract
|
:
|
This thesis describes and accounts for the contemporai-y politics that take shape around theemergence of new regimes of intellectual property ~hts (IPRs) seeking patents on life fonnsthrough an analysis of disputes that have been framed.in.tenns: ofbiopiracy. It studies biopiracyas a tenn which serves as a vector to gather to it a cascade. of concerns about the ambivalent.promises that emerge at the intersection of science, nature and IPR, but also at the intersection of,the developed and the developing· worlds. Though an analysis of the historical trajectory of thetenn coupled with a focused look at cases where allegations of biopiracy have been made byactivist groups, it analyses the consequences of the concept's deployment, thus clarifying thelines of contes!ation and identifying some of their economic, political, social, cultural, legal andethical underpinnings.The first component of this thesis builds on sociological work which addresses the nature/cultureseparation and extends this work to apply it to IPR regimes, thus making theoretical inroads intoemerging notions of biocapital, the bioeconomy and biosociality. As such, it contributes to anunderstanding of the role of IPR and of the nature/culture separation therein. The second part ofthis thesis analyses the use of the term 'biopiracy' in the, media and demonstrates how the use ofthe term has been characterized by a clustering around several key cases which were deliberatelychosen to exemplify the process of biopiracy. The third area addressed by this thesis deals withthe specific implications that the allegation of biopiracy has had. It shows that the allegation ofbiopiracy has been 'taken up' widely across multiple spectra, which has led towards thegeneration of a variety of proposed solutions to the challenges it generates, solutions inherentlybound to how biopiracy is itself problematized.
|
| Added Entry
|
:
|
London School of Economics and Political Science
|
| |