Counterfeit Itineraries in the Global South

From a global perspective, intellectual property is a powerful discourse that governs the world system by framing the notion of piracy as a criminal activity. But at the national level, how do nation-states resist and/or endorse, interpret, and apply a global perspective? And what effect does that have on how ordinary people organize their lives around this system? Interweaving discourse on transnational flow of small capital, petty capitalism, non-hegemonic globalization and globalization from below, the book presents low-income traders not as passive victims of globalization, but as active actors in the distribution of cheap goods across borders in the Global South.

Rosana Pinheiro-Machado is a social scientist and anthropologist in the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, UK, a Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy, and a columnist of Brazilian magazine CartaCapital. Previously, she has held visiting positions at Harvard University, USA, and University College London, UK.

Part 1: Introduction Introduction 1. A Global Chain Before TRIPS and BRICS Part 2: South America 2. Stone Years: Informal and Moral Regimes 3. Cleaning Goods and Selves: Local Belonging, International Displacement and Global Enforcement 4. The Chinese Diaspora on the Brazil-Paraguay Border: A Migratory Process in Transformation Part 3: China 5. Celebrating the New China: Elites and Their Commodified Guanxi Networks 6. The Human Cost of the China Price 7. The Red Flag(TM): Intellectual Property, Copies and Enforcement in China Part 4: Conclusion 8. A Global Chain After TRIPS and BRICS