My work challenges arguments that have been advanced against granting such knowledge protection within intellectual property regimes, especially those arguments that place so-called “traditional knowledge” and “modern art and science” in separate and unequal spheres. By pointing to the culturally and historically contingent nature of intellectual property law, my book demonstrates that such arguments often have more to do with the relative power of different groups of cultural producers, than with the nature of what they actually produce. In making this argument, my work also challenges the premises of intellectual property law as well as the increasing use of intellectual property regimes to advance the interests of industrialized nations over those of Third World nations and indigenous peoples. Finally, it underscores the need to radically re-think the ways that cultural production is conceptualized for the purposes of protection and circulation.