When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico

Bioprospecting—the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance—has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But can pharmaceutical profits really advance conservation and indigenous rights? How much should companies pay and to whom? Who stands to gain and lose? The first anthropological study of the practices mobilized in the name a...