Plant-Based Contraceptives and Bioprospecting in the Americas

• In Event: Theory and culture in international relations

Abstract

This paper examines the political history of a plant used for fertility throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. I focus on how the botanical sciences have produced knowledge surrounding the plant, and how local communities maintain and develop this knowledge in their daily lives. I also highlight a relationship between colonial ‘discoveries’ of plants with contraceptive properties and the raced and gendered underpinnings of population control efforts across the globe. My field research in Mayan highland communities included interviews with health policy professionals, community-based herbalists and midwives, NGO workers, and local activists. I ultimately argue that scientific knowledge of plant properties leads both directly and indirectly to patenting natural knowledge and controlling indigenous communities in the Global South. My findings add to the political understandings of botanical exploration as an imperial process and demonstrate that the ‘raw materials’ for development are actually at the base of the global political economy. By linking bioprospecting to contemporary foreign policy, and bringing the framework of pharmaceutical development into the field of International Relations, this project highlights the false divide between science and politics. The expansion of the field to include the botanical sciences allows my research to address the particular neglect of local knowledge in Latin American politics. I have integrated work on community patents into ongoing projects on biotechnology in the Central American highlands, and I draw on accounts of rural indigenous women to demonstrate local resistance to Western forms of health care and population policy.

Author

• Rachel T O'Donnell, University of Rochester