Abstract

Chris Hamilton focuses on the use and significance of the term 'biopiracy'. He analyses how biopiracy is used to index a divergence of conflicting views about the ramifications of increasing technological and legal encroachments into the realm of knowledge and nature. He argues that biopiracy brings together in one term the ambivalent promises that emerge at the intersection of science, nature and intellectual property rights (IPR), as well as at the intersection of the developed and the developing worlds.