Half title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Collection of Nature and the Nature of Collecting -- Revealing the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting -- Collecting as Simple Acquisition: Decontextualization and Exoticization -- Collection as Concentration and Control -- Collection as Recirculation and Regulation -- New World Collectors -- 3. Speedup: Accelerating the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting -- Retheorizing Life Forms: Material and Informational? -- The Rise of the Information and Bio-Information Economies -- Emerging Markets: The Regulation of Trade in Bio-Information -- 4. New Collectors, New Collections -- "When the world was a kinder and gentler place": Early Players and Vacation Pursuits -- "An historic revival of collecting" -- Impetus for the Revival: Technological Change -- The Biodiversity Convention: New Protocols and New Rationales -- GATT TRIPs: New Protections, New Incentives -- The Practice and Process of Collecting -- 5. The Fate of the Collections -- From Reproduction to Replication -- "Build it for us" -- Combinations and Permutations -- The Diminishing Role of in situ Collecting -- The Advent of Microsourcing -- Re-mining ex situ Collections -- The Emerging Trade in Collected Genetic and Biochemical Materials -- Hire Plants: Renters and Brokers -- Transacting Bio-Information: Licensing and "Pay-Per-View" -- 6. Taming the Slippery Beast: Regulating Trade in Bio-Information -- Compensatory Agreements: The Rise of a Proto-Universal Culture of Regulation? -- Networks, Capillaries, and the Geography of Knowledge Systems -- Compensatory Agreements: Investigating Terms and Conditions -- Infrastructural Support and Technical Training -- Future Benefits: Royalty Payments -- Taming the Slippery Beast.

Regulating the Unlicensed Copying of Bio-Information -- Concentration and Control: Patenting Collected Materials -- The Complexities of "Co-Inventorship" -- 7. Back to the Future -- Appendix: Methodology -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.