Managing, Manipulating and Manuevering Biology in the Early 21st Century: Reflections on Discursive Practice, Empirical Events and Power in Pursuit of Bio-Commerce

Abstract

This paper reviews and offers a meta-analysis of more than a decade of literature that explicitly considers both bioprospecting and biopiracy. I do so with a judgment sample of the literature, primarily from American academic writing in English and with some sources from Latin American colleagues in Spanish. The point of this meta-analysis is twofold: (1) to elaborate the ways in which certain individuals treat the subject matter that is the focus of attention; and (2) to discern critical gaps left out of the literature explicitly dealing with bioprospecting and biopiracy. Additionally, I step back from the authors shaping discourses of bioprospecting and biopiracy in order to discern the underlying power dynamics in this debate, and the implications for biocommerce.

Keywords: bioprospecting, biopiracy, biocommerce, Ecuador, Latin America, access and benefit sharing, ABS, Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD

JEL Classification: B14,B22,F21,F23,F42,F43,L3,L31,L33,N26,P1,P12,P16