Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Significance, Exchange and Access: Mandinka Seed Systems and Concepts of Intellectual Property

乔治亚大学的研究生苏珊娜·查普曼将在弗吉尼亚·纳扎里亚博士的指导下，对传统自给自足的农民如何看待种子和植物的财产进行研究。在过去的二十年里，世界贸易组织（wto）通过知识产权法对作物品种进行私有化，引发了一系列关于农民权利、获得植物资源、利益分享以及植物财产和相关知识的跨文化概念的辩论。为了调查农民如何对植物产权进行概念化，查普曼将在冈比亚下游河段进行研究，那里的农民种植水稻和小米，用于家庭生计和商业销售。该研究利用了广泛的历史和民族志方法，包括档案研究、半结构化和生活史访谈、种子网络分析和焦点小组，以确定农民如何理解种子的财产以及农民如何获得不同的作物品种。本研究特别探讨了价值、交换和获取的概念，因为它们与冈比亚农民对作物资源的管理有关。这三个概念是产权理论研究和普通资源管理研究的核心。了解这些概念与种子系统之间的关系，将有助于对种子及相关知识的私有制、公共产品和开放获取等概念进行更细致的调查。这项研究将有助于社会科学理论对传统的法律程序，而不是通过解决冲突。从这个意义上说，该项目使人们能够更好地了解当今世界许多地区常见的习惯法和成文法制度之间的关系。更好地了解农民自己拥有、获取、评估和交换作物品种的制度也将有助于改善国家和国际知识产权法律。资助这项研究也支持了研究生的教育。

University of Georgia graduate student Susannah Chapman, with the guidance of Dr. Virginia Nazarea, will undertake research on how traditional subsistence farmers conceive of property in seeds and plants. Over the past two decades, the privatization of crop varieties through intellectual property rights law under the World Trade Organization has sparked a number of debates concerning Farmers' Rights, access to plant resources, benefit sharing, and cross-cultural concepts of property in plants and associated knowledge. To investigate how farmers conceptualize property rights in plants, Chapman will undertake research in the Lower River Division of The Gambia, where farmers cultivate rice and millet for household subsistence and commercial sale. The study draws on a wide range of historic and ethnographic methods including archival research, semi-structured and life history interviews, seed network analysis, and focus groups to determine how farmers conceive of property in seeds and how farmers access different crop varieties. In particular, this research explores the concepts of value, exchange and access as they relate to farmers' management of crop resources in The Gambia. These three concepts are central to studies in property theory and common resource management research. Understanding how these concepts relate to seed systems will enable a more nuanced investigation of ideas such as private ownership, public goods, and open access concerning seeds and associated knowledge.This study will contribute to social science theory on traditional legal processes that are not articulated through conflict resolution. In this sense, the project enables greater understanding of the relationships between customary and codified legal systems common in many parts of the world today. A better understanding of farmers' own systems for owning, accessing, valuing and exchanging crop varieties will also contribute to improving state and international law for intellectual property rights. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.