Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix List of Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xiii Author's Note xvii Introduction 1 PART ONE: NEOLIBERAL NATURES Chapter 1: Interests and Publics: On (Ethno)science and Its Accountabilities 19 Chapter 2: Neoliberalism's Nature 48 Chapter 3: Prospecting in Mexico: Rights, Risk, and Regulation 85 PART TWO: PUBLIC PROSPECTING Chapter 4: Market Research: When Local Knowledge Is Public Knowledge 125 Chapter 5: By the Side of the Road: The Contours of a Field Site 158 PART THREE: PROSPECTING's PUBLICS Chapter 6: The Brine Shrimp Assay: Signs of Life, Sites of Value 191 Chapter 7: Presumptions of Interest 213 Chapter 8: Remaking Prospecting's Publics 230 Notes 237 Bibliography 255 Index 275

Promotional Information

This is an innovative and fascinating study that powerfully illustrates what the new generation of anthropologists trained in science studies can do. Using a combination of textual, historical, and above all ethnographic methodology, Hayden has produced a thought-provoking analysis of bio-prospecting as it plays out in real time. Her energetic writing and strong story line make this a compelling book. -- Rayna Rapp, New York University Skillfully negotiating politically charged terrain, When Nature Goes Public challenges romantic views of biodiversity and the associated reification of local communities. In so doing, Cori Hayden illustrates how the science of plant genetic resources and the markets for them emerge as contingent products of specific cultural and political practices. With admirable critical balance, she explores the shifting and unpredictable lines between private rights and public properties in global environmental politics and illustrates the law of unintended consequences at work in neoliberal efforts to value indigenous knowledge. -- Rosemary J. Coombe, York University

About the Author

Cori Hayden is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews

"Winner of the 2003 Diana Forsythe Prize, American Anthropological Association"