Reinventing Hoodia. Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa. 2017. XXII, 209 p. gr8vo. Hardcover.

Native to the Kalahari Desert, Hoodia gordonii is a succulent plant known by generations of Indigenous San peoples to have a variety of uses: to reduce hunger, increase energy, and ease breast feeding. In the global North, it is known as a natural appetite suppressant, a former star of the booming diet industry.

In 'Reinventing Hoodia', Laura Foster explores how the plant was reinvented through patent ownership, pharmaceutical research, the self-determination efforts of Indigenous San peoples, contractual benefit sharing, commercial development as an herbal supplement, and bioprospecting legislation. Using a feminist decolonial technoscience approach, Foster argues that although patent law is inherently racialized, gendered, and Western, it offered opportunities for Indigenous San peoples, South African scientists, and Hoodia growers to make unequal claims for belonging within the shifting politics of South Africa.