Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the soft power means by which the EU persuaded countries in the Global South that their rural development was best achieved by the adoption of geographical indications and some of the unintended consequences of this work in creating new rural territories and political imaginaries.

Paper long abstract:

During the early twenty-first century, the EU attempted to improve its competitive advantage in international trade by globally entrenching and extending the use of geographical indications (marks indicating conditions of origin). The paper explores the soft power means by which the EU persuaded countries in the Global South that their rural development was best achieved by the adoption of neoliberal technologies of government. Although the failures of some of these early projects should not be discounted, new transnational relationships were also forged which produced creative expressions of community aspiration when this soft power was articulated with a wider field of environmental and human rights policy norms. Drawing examples from Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, the authors consider the generativity of intellectual property in the social life of neoliberal technologies.