Part 1: Introduction
Part 2. The Collection of Nature and the Nature of Collecting
Revealing the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting
Collecting as Simple Acquisition: Decontextualization and Exoticization
Collection as Concentration and Control
Collection as Recirculation and Regulation
New World Collectors
Part 3: Speedup: Accelerating the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting
Retheorizing Life Forms: Material and Informational?
The Rise of the Information and Bio-Information Economies
Emerging Markets: The Regulation of Trade in Bio-Information
Part 4: New Collectors, New Collections
"When the world was a kinder and gentler place": Early Players and Vacation Pursuits
"An historic revival of collecting"
Impetus for the Revival: Technological Change
The Biodiversity Convention: New Protocols and New Rationales
GATT TRIPs: New Protections, New Incentives
The Practice and Process of Collecting
Part 5: The Fate of the Collections
From Reproduction to Replication
"Build it for us"
Combinations and Permutations
The Diminishing Role of in situ Collecting
The Advent of Microsourcing
Re-mining ex situ Collections
The Emerging Trade in Collected Genetic and Biochemical Materials
Hire Plants: Renters and Brokers
Transacting Bio-Information: Licensing and "Pay-per-View"
Part 6: Taming the Slippery Beast: Regulating Trade in Bio-Information
Compensatory Agreements: The Rise of a Proto-Universal Culture of Regulation?
Networks, Capillaries, and the Geography of Knowledge Systems
Compensatory Agreements: Investigating Terms and Conditions
Infrastructural Support and Technical Training
Future Benefits: Royalty Payments
Taming the Slippery Beast
Regulating the Unlicensed Copying of Bio-Information
Concentration and Control: Patenting Collected Materials
The Complexities of "Co-Inventorship"
Part 7: Back to the Future

In a groundbreaking work that draws on anthropology, history, philosophy, business and law, Parry links firsthand knowledge of the operation of the bioprospecting industry to a sophisticated analysis of broader economic, regulatory, and technological transformations to reveal the complex economic and political dynamics that underpin the new global trade in bio-information.