Reinventing Hoodia : Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa Hardback
by Laura A. Foster
Part of the Feminist Technosciences series
Hardback
Description
Native to the Kalahari Desert, Hoodia gordonii is a succulent plant known by generations of Indigenous San peoples to have a variety of uses: to reduce hunger, increase energy, and ease breastfeeding.
In the global North, it is known as a natural appetite suppressant, a former star of the booming diet industry.
In Reinventing Hoodia, Laura Foster explores how the plant was reinvented through patent ownership, pharmaceutical research, the self-determination efforts of Indigenous San peoples, contractual benefit sharing, commercial development as an herbal supplement, and bioprospecting legislation. Using a feminist decolonial technoscience approach, Foster argues that although patent law is inherently racialized, gendered, and Western, it offered opportunities for Indigenous San peoples, South African scientists, and Hoodia growers to make unequal claims for belonging within the shifting politics of South Africa.
This radical interdisciplinary and intersectional account of the multiple materialities of Hoodia illuminates the co-constituted connections between law, science, and the marketplace, while demonstrating how these domains value certain forms of knowledge and matter differently.
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:232 pages, 5 b&w illus.
- Publisher:University of Washington Press
- Publication Date:18/09/2017
- Category:
- ISBN:9780295742175
Other Formats
- Paperback / softback from £21.45
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:232 pages, 5 b&w illus.
- Publisher:University of Washington Press
- Publication Date:18/09/2017
- Category:
- ISBN:9780295742175