How trinkets became piracy: Intellectual property discourse and its impacts on informal economy in Brazil by Rosana Pinheiro-Machado
The global enforcement against piracy has become a major narrative in the 21st century, impacting and criminalizing the informal street markets in Brazil. Drawing upon a longitudinal anthropological research, this talk will present the everyday dynamics of a street market (in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil) and its connections with the Paraguayan border, from where the traders used to import/smuggle their goods. In addition, it examines the impacts of the formalization of the traders’ activities, which is a result of a policy that fights against informal economy and piracy.
Rosana Pinheiro-Machado is a social scientist and an anthropologist. She is a Departamental Lecturer in the Department of International Development at University of Oxford. As a Wenner Gren grantee, she received her PhD from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS/Brazil). Prior to joining Oxford, she has held visiting positions at Harvard University and UCL. Her PhD thesis – based on a longitudinal research across three countries (China, Paraguay, and Brazil) over 15 years – was awarded several prizes, including Best PhD Thesis in Brazil, by the Ministry of Education. Her Book Made in China published in Brazil (Hucitec, 2011) is currently being translated into English.