Suchergebnisse

Resumen Los bienes culturales son cada vez más significativos bajo las condiciones neoliberales de la restructuración regulatoria que favorecen la inversión en capital informacional en las llamadas "economías del conocimiento". La argumentación de este artículo se presenta como un análisis crítico y multiescalar de la reciente investigación etnográfica en contextos latinoamericanos en los cuales podemos reconocer las maneras y medios a través de los cuales el comercio internacional, la propiedad intelectual y los regímenes de la biodiversidad han influido en las representaciones y la administración del conocimiento efectuando nuevas formas de espacialización. Colectivos sociales indígenas constituidos como comunidades autogerenciadas han adoptado actitudes de posesión, si no necesariamente de propiedad, respecto del conocimiento tradicional, los recursos genéticos de las plantas y las fuentes alimentarias, y han aprendido a marcar los bienes y los servicios de modo que se puedan identificar las condiciones culturalmente específicas de su origen. Pero en la medida en que las comunidades culturizadas se convierten en súbditos del gobierno neoliberal, son invitadas a proyectar sus capacidades distintivas de modo que se vuelvan económica y políticamente legibles para los nuevos interlocutores. Esto ha provocado nuevas formas de reflexión en torno a las capacidades, bienes, valores y normas, y ha provisto nuevas fuentes de luchas fundadas en los derechos en un campo emergente de políticas culturales, en el cual el multiculturalismo se vernaculariza en mercados más arraigados y sitios políticos más pluralistas. Palabras clave:Biodiversidad, Propiedad cultural, Propiedad intelectual, Conocimiento tradicional, América Latina. Abstract Cultural goods are increasingly significant under neoliberal conditions of regulatory restructuring that favor investments in informational capital in so-called "knowledge economies." The argument is presented through a critical multiscalar survey of recent ethnographic research in Latin American contexts in which we can trace the ways and means through which international trade, intellectual property, and biodiversity regimes have influenced representations and management of knowledge to effect new forms of spatialization. Indigenous social collectives constituted as self-managing communities have embraced possessive, if not necessarily proprietary, attitudes toward traditional knowledge, plant genetic resources, and food sources, learning to mark goods and services to indicate culturally specific conditions of origin. As culturalized communities become subjects of neoliberal government, however, they are called upon to project their distinctive assets so as to make them politically and economically legible to new interlocutors. This has provoked new forms of reflexivity around assets, goods, values, and norms, and provided new resources for rights-based struggles in an emerging field of cultural politics in which neoliberal multiculturalism is vernacularized in more embedded markets and more pluralist polities. Key words:Biodiversity, Cultural Property, Intelectual Property, Traditional Knowledge, Latin America.

Under conditions of neoliberalism legal claims to protect, preserve, maintain, and to exploit culture have assumed a new urgency. Cultural diversity has become a matter of state concern and fears of cultural homogenization animate movements to promote a revitalized realm of cultural policy. Municipal governments see cultural amenities, attractions, and social values as important resources to attract labor and capital and engage in cultural planning exercises as they seek to brand urban space. Rural spaces become culturalised as traditions are constructed to establish market distinctions for local goods and traditional knowledge is valorized in international environmental treaties. But if culture is clearly delineated for the purposes of state management and the creation of new intellectual properties, it is also evoked in anti-globalization movements that contest growing forms of corporate hegemony. Finally, we witness the emergence of a new cultural politics of difference in place-based movements that draw upon international indigenous and human rights traditions to establish their claims to livelihood resources, territories, and cultural survival. Critical scholarship is needed to explore the conditions under which neoliberal regimes of govern-mentality are supported and challenged by the legal recognition of cultural assertions and the stakes and limitations of cultural claims.