"Cori Hayden tracks bioprospecting's contentious new promise–and the contradictory activities generated in its name. Focusing on a contract involving Mexico's National Autonomous University, Hayden examines the practices through which researchers, plant vendors, rural collectors, indigenous cooperatives, and other actors put prospecting to work. By paying unique attention to scientific research, she provides a key to understanding which people and plants are included in the promise of 'selling biodiversity to save it'–and which are not. And she considers the consequences of linking scientific research and rural 'enfranchisement' to the logics of intellectual property."
