Laura Foster's book, Reinventing Hoodia: Peoples, Plants and Patents in South Africa, examines how a patented plant found in Southern Africa historically circulates and changes meaning through colonial botanical sciences, patent law rules, ethno-pharmaceutical research, contractual benefit sharing, and sustainable fair trade practices.
This research produces ethnographic understandings of how the plant and Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and identity are co-produced through narratives of indigeneity, race, and gender, while novel modes of unequal citizenship are emerging within post-colonial, post-apartheid South Africa.
This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant.
The College of Arts