Impact of Globalization and the Commodification of Indigenous Knowledge

Sangaralingam Ramesh ()
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Sangaralingam Ramesh: University College London and University of Oxford

Chapter 3 in The Political Economy of the Indigenous Peoples of the World, Volume II, 2026, pp 101-154 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter explores globalization as a deeply contradictory force in Indigenous political economy, demonstrating how transnational integration has expanded both opportunities for visibility and mechanisms of dispossession. It argues that globalization intensifies not only the extraction of natural resources from Indigenous territories, but also the appropriation of knowledge, medicines, symbols, and cultural practices through market systems and intellectual property regimes that rarely acknowledge collective ownership or consent. Through case studies ranging from oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon to mining in Papua New Guinea and biopiracy involving medicinal knowledge, the chapter shows how global capitalism converts Indigenous life-worlds into commodities for external accumulation. It also examines the effects of mass media, tourism, and digital circulation on language transmission, authority, and intergenerational continuity, emphasizing the pressures of cultural homogenization. Yet, the chapter resists portraying Indigenous peoples as passive victims of globalization. It highlights Indigenous adaptation through digital activism, transnational organizing, legal advocacy, and community-based enterprises that selectively engage global markets on self-determined terms. The chapter concludes that globalization must be understood as a terrain of struggle in which commodification and erasure coexist with visibility, alliance-building, and new forms of Indigenous economic agency within the contemporary world economy.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-032-24129-0_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-24129-0_3

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