Bioprospecting and Contraception in the Highlands: Modern Science, Plant Classification and the Global Marketplace

The paper centers on contemporary biotechnological efforts to manage indigenous knowledge of contraceptive plant properties in the Guatemalan highlands and activism and protest surrounding intellectual property and pharmaceutical development in the region.  It uses a feminist-materialist methodological approach toward concepts of natural knowledge and knowledge production and begins from field-defining works in Feminist Science Studies.  The paper considers the culture and politics of colonial knowledge of particular plants from the Americas and their current properties of interest to university scientists and the pharmecutical industry, highlighting one abortifacient plant used in the Guatemalan highlands.  It investigates the centrality of Latin American natural knowledge among women to the development of pharmacueticals and considers transnational activism surrounding the right to maintain communal natural knowledge and indigenous resistence to the patenting of life forms. 

            The paper reflects on fieldwork with Ajpu, a women’s group in the highlands of Guatemala that is working to maintain knowledge of plant life and protect plant knowledge in the community.  It attempts to articulate the reasons behind community opposition to the use of plant knowledge and answer the question: in what way do efforts to protect Maya women’s knowledge reflect a global struggle against forms of knowledge production that both heighten the control over women’s bodies and commodify natural knowledge?