| This dissertation analyzes how "life itself" has taken shape as an object of struggle in the context of contemporary environmental politics in Costa Rica. In so doing, it seeks to understand why environmental activists were uniquely positioned as key civil society actors within a broader social movement against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2007 and 2008, briefly directing a popular struggle against the application of intellectual property rights to biological life forms such as biodiversity, seeds, and transgenic organisms. To develop this analysis, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork with the Biodiversity Coordination Network, an alliance of NGOs, environmentalists, academics, farmers, and, at times, peasant and indigenous leaders. They have tailored their vision of environmentalism to a critical, anti-neoliberal politics, and over the years have successfully established themselves as a recognized civil society sector. The story of the Biodiversity Coordination Network is interwoven with the historical processes that have constituted biological life as a cultural and political site of contestation in Costa Rica. Through ethnographic description and analysis, I aim to distill the coproduction of civil society and distinct topographies of life itself (biodiversity, transgenic organisms, and intellectual property) amidst a tumultuous period in Costa Rican history characterized by ongoing and contested political economic changes associated with market-oriented reforms and neoliberalization. |
