The Inscription of Life in Law

<strong>CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> SEMINAR SERIES <strong>Rajshree Chandra</strong> Associate Professor of Political Science at Janki Devi Memorial College &amp; ICSSR Post Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Policy Research on <strong>The Inscription of Life in Law</strong> <strong>Abstract : </strong>To bring the realm of "biology" within the ambit of intellectual property, to juridify aspects of the biological as products of human invention is to bring new epistemic objects into visibility. While these are revealed through the practice of biotechnology, law translates it into a capacity for monopolistic appropriation for biotech innovators . The new correlatives of innovation and intellectual property re-engineer not just the biology of an organism, but the very categories that organized property and intellectual property. What instrumentalities of technology, law, and moral-economy frames co-produce biotic property? While the existence of property has always been underwritten by law in general, the aim here is to reveal science as a social practice, so that it can then be evaluated both as a political and a cultural enterprise and as a mode through which power is exercised and stabilized. <strong>Friday, 20 March 2015</strong> <strong>About the Speaker: </strong>Rajshree Chandra is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi. Currently, she is a ICSSR Post Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Policy Research (New Delhi). Her research interests include political theories of rights, intellectual property and their intersections with health rights, biocultural claims of indigenous and farming communities. She is the author of a monograph titled "Knowledge as Property: Issues in the Moral Grounding of Intellectual Property Rights" (OUP: 2010). Her forthcoming book is titled: The Cunning of Rights: Law, life, Biocultures (OUP: 2015).