As quebradeiras de coco babaçu e o mercado: Dilema entre proteção do conhecimento tradicional e a sujeição jurídica

Abstract

This research aims to understand the social and legal relationship between the babassu coconut breakers and the company Natura Innovations Ltda under the contract for benefit sharing for access to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. Specifically the paper studies the relationship of the traditional community, Center Coroatá with the market, from the extraction of babassu coconut and household economy, based on field research in four (04) municipalities of the State of Maranhão, namely: São Luís, Esperantinópolis, Pedreiras and Lago do Junco. To understand the legal relationship between the parties the research seeks to show the real differences between the subjects involved and uncover the often hidden meaning of legal categories fundamental to the reproduction of civil law, as the subjects rights and contracts, which assumes a formal equality between the parties in such way that all as a subject of rights can contract obligations through of individual and private relations aimed at the movement of goods. Thus, the traditional knowledge of peoples and traditional communities has become the object of contract, making possible for cosmetic or pharmaceutical industries to appropriate it as a private good, or a commodity. The research with reference to the contract for benefit sharing analyzes the possible consequences of this process for social groups recognized by the Constitution of 1988 as subjects with ethnic and collective identities carrying different ways of doing, creating and living collective and their different ways of doing, create and live. Keywords: Babassu coconut breakers, Market, Subject of law, contract, legal recognition, peoples and traditional communities, traditional knowledge.