The New WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge:
The Relevance of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation in Evaluating its Significance

By Graham Dutfield and Uma Suthersanen

Karl Polanyi’s classic 1944 work The Great Transformation postulates that societal values were disembedded from the economy during the Industrial Revolution. This disembeddedness when viewed from an intellectual property angle explains the commodification and propertisation of human creative labour as carving out discrete units of marketable value. He also considered that society’s non-economic values will eventually get re-embedded into the economy.

According to his theoretical framework, societies are constituted by two opposing movements: the expansion of the scope of the market, and the protective ‘double-movement’ to resist the disembodiment of the economy which entails greater state intervention in favour of societal 'pushback' against unbridled market powers. Polanyi’s theory is realistic enough to regard markets as a vital aspect of every society. And yet, while some types of market economy foster innovation at all costs, others temper this function with socialist or humanist (including global) concerns, at least to a limited extent. The debate on whether vaccinations for pandemics should constitute global public goods with no IP rights attached or with waivers attached is a good example of conflict between the two movements with a very uneasy compromise ensuing in that particular case.

International intellectual property instruments since the Paris and Berne Conventions, attaining a high point with the WTO TRIPS Agreement, represent the dominance of the unbridled pro-market movement. Disembeddedness in IP might appear to be hegemonic globally and impossible to counter. And yet two recent intellectual property treaties, the 2013 Marrakech VIP Treaty and the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge, suggest that re-embeddedness is finally having its day in intellectual property rule-making post-TRIPS. Or is that overoptimistic? This presentation focuses on the latter treaty, whose conclusion was the culmination of many years’ effort on the part of Indigenous peoples and low and middle income countries especially the African Group. Is its re-embeddedness authentic? Or is it merely symbolic or even an illusion?

This event will be held in the Edgar Graham Room, School of Law, QUB (MST.02.002)