Food, Health and the Knowledge Economy

The State and Intellectual Property in India and Brazil

verfasst von: Dr. Valbona Muzaka

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Buchreihe : Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book opens a window into how two ambitious countries – India and Brazil – are seeking to become knowledge powers in the 21st century. As the knowledge economy became the preferred way of conceptualising the economy and its future direction, in the more economically-advanced countries, our search for understanding also followed the same direction. This generated a body of work that has neglected countries that, like India and Brazil, are attempting to make the leap into knowledge economies. Muzaka explores these motivations and the ways in which they have inspired a number of institutional reforms in India and Brazil. The author offers an investigation of the role the state in shaping the respective intellectual property systems pertaining to the pharmaceutical and agro-biotechnology sectors and the multiple social conflicts that have unfolded as a result.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction

Abstract

The introduction places the intention of India and Brazil of becoming ‘knowledge powers’ in the context of broader changes occurring in the global political economy since the 1970s and, more specifically, in the shift of sources of wealth creation towards the manipulation of knowledge and information and towards rents accrued from titles which include intellectual property titles such as patents. It argues that a focus on how the state in both countries is dealing with intellectual property is crucial to understanding the manner in which these countries envision their becoming the knowledge powers of the twenty-first century.

Valbona Muzaka

Chapter 2. Catching Up in the New Knowledge Economy

Abstract

Drawing from various approaches, this chapter has the dual purpose of offering a conceptual framework in which to embed the subsequent analysis and that of locating the emergence of the knowledge economy as an imaginary that came to be embraced by the Indian and the Brazilian state from the late 1980s onwards. The chapter is primarily concerned with explaining the international context in which India and Brazil found themselves in the 1980s, paying particular attention to the changes brought about by the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism in advanced economies, the rise of the competition state orientation, the debt crisis and the rise of the knowledge economy as one of the dominant ways of conceptualising the economy and its future direction. The chapter concludes by explaining why and how intellectual property titles have become central to the way in which the knowledge economy functions today.

Valbona Muzaka

Chapter 3. Financialisation and the Emergence of Biotechnology

Abstract

Constituting one of the core technologies of the knowledge economy, the development of biotechnology in the US reveals many of its dynamics: the intensification of the subsumption of labour and nature in order to generate value, the use of IP to protect the capability of certain actors to appropriate such value, and the way in which high expectations about its imagined potential to resolve a wide array of problems legitimised measures that helped secure the basis on which this sector could consolidate and expand in practice. This chapter focuses on the pioneering institutional changes undertaken in the US to establish the basis on which its commercial biotech sector would be built, paying particular attention to the manner in which finance came to colonise this new technological frontier. Under heightened competitive pressures, other developed countries and catch-up contenders, including Brazil and India, would attempt the transformation of their own institutional arrangements so as to capture part of the economic value created by the opening of this new technological frontier.

Valbona Muzaka

Chapter 4. Intellectual Property for Pharmaceuticals and Plant Genetic Resources in Historical Perspective

Abstract

As this chapter shows, intellectual property protection for pharmaceuticals and plant genetic resources developed separately and only came together with the entry into force of the WTO TRIPS agreement in 1995. Likewise, disagreements between developed and developing states regarding the international patent system and the flow of genetic resources had also followed somewhat separate trajectories until TRIPS entered the scene, following the entry into force a year earlier of the Convention on Biodiversity. This chapter follows these trajectories, paying particular attention to the substantive issues and the role played by India and Brazil.

Valbona Muzaka

Chapter 5. Intellectual Property for Pharmaceuticals and Agro-Biotech in India

Abstract

This chapter starts with the shift in India’s economic direction during the late 1980s and early 1990s towards a more open economy. A central element of this new orientation was the apparent necessity of India becoming capable of successfully competing in world markets, not least through building on the industrial, scientific and technological base built up since independence. The state moved to reform the intellectual property system to fit this new orientation and, importantly, that of making India amongst the top knowledge economies by 2020.The second part of the chapter analyses the social conflicts that have accompanied changes to the IP system related to pharmaceuticals and plant biotechnology, focusing in particular on the role of the state and some of their most visible consequences so far.

Valbona Muzaka

Chapter 6. Intellectual Property for Pharmaceuticals and Plant Genetic Resources in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil’s embrace of the ‘information society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ project is located in the tumultuous period that followed the debt crisis and the fall of the military regime in the mid-1980s. As Brazil’s economic performance improved during the first decade of the new century, the vision of Brazil as the most advanced technological and environmental power of the new century came to orient state activities more purposefully, including those related to reforming the domestic IP system. As in India, these efforts were met with strong resistance by civil society groups and conflicts over IP in the pharmaceutical and agro-biotechnology sector are still ongoing. The second part of the chapter analyses some key conflicts and turning points, once again focusing on the role of the state and some of their most visible consequences until now.

Valbona Muzaka

Chapter 7. Looking Ahead: The Emerging ‘Knowledge Powers’?

Abstract

Due to their very different pasts and presents, the concluding chapter does not provide a comparative analysis of India’s and Brazil’s attempts towards becoming competitive knowledge economies. Instead, this chapter discusses some of the main challenges these countries face in the task ahead, as well as problematising the manner in which this task was adopted and has been carried out so far.

Valbona Muzaka

Backmatter

Titel: Food, Health and the Knowledge Economy
verfasst von: Dr. Valbona Muzaka
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-59306-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59305-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59306-1