Creole Interferences: a conflict over biodiversity and ownership in the South of Brazil

Delgado and Rodríguez-Giralt report on how traditional local seeds became a legal entity under the name of ‘Creole’, and had to co-exist with commercial seeds. Creole seeds, which have been developed, adapted, or produced by farmers and landless and indigenous peoples in situ, are by definition not standardized. Because of their ‘ecology’, they remain always adapting and changing as open objects. This chapter details a number of attempts at including Creole seeds within national legal, scientific and bureaucratic systems. It reports on how new forms of ownership and dependencies emerged in the conflictive relations between the State and the Brazilian rural movements. Drawing on Moreira’s discussion of interferences, the authors describe how Creole seeds constantly disrupt what is considered a legally valid entity in the Brazilian context and propose the notion of transient standardizations to conceptualize the disruptive nature of those relations.

Delgado, A; Rodríguez-Giralt, I. (2015). Creole Interferences: a conflict over biodiversity and ownership in the South of Brazil. In Medina, E. Holmes, C. Marques, I. (Eds.). Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology and Society in Latin America (pp. 331–48). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.