Indigenous Intellectual Property.

Riccardo Mazzola

Indigenous Intellectual Property.

A Conceptual Analysis

The volume shares the (today) common idea that a conceptualization of Indigenous knowledge and culture as “intellectual property” is essentially an inaccurate one. With specific reference to Yolngu people of North-East Arnhem Land (Australia), this study aims precisely to explain why Western “property-ownership” constructs and categories do not fit Indigenous cultural objects and performances.

Pages: 160

ISBN: 9788891777485

Edizione:1a edizione 2018

Publisher code: 1525.57

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Format: PDF con DRM for Digital Editions

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Pages: 160

ISBN: 9788891783882

Edizione:1a edizione 2018

Publisher code: 1525.57

Can print: No

Can Copy: No

Can annotate:

Format: ePub con DRM for Digital Editions

Info about e-books

Indigenous Intellectual Property. A Conceptual Analysis shares the (today) common idea that a conceptualization of Indigenous knowledge and culture as "intellectual property" is essentially an inaccurate one. With specific reference to Yolngu people of North-East Arnhem Land (Australia), this study aims precisely to explain why Western "property-ownership" constructs and categories do not fit Indigenous cultural objects and performances.
This research refers more generally to the theoretical framework of anthropological metalanguage borrowings from legal theory, possibly conveying false representations of non-Western societies. Its crucial premise is that, in order to address the contemporary debate on the protection of socalled "traditional knowledge" held by native communities, a full understanding of the "connection" between Indigenous land and cultural expressions seems an inescapable task to be accomplished. The first part of the book explains Yolngu view of land as a "territorial cosmos": namely, a "physical-cosmological continuum" where ancestral subjectivity inhabits the landscape and shapes a web of "cosmological connections". The second part enlightens the inability of Western "property" (or "land property") archetype to conceptualize Yolngu "territorial cosmos", mainly due to a (non-Indigenous) narrative of land as an abstract and "dephysicalized" space. The third part of this study argues that the culturally different conceptualization of land determines a fundamental clash also in the conception of cultural objects and performances, whose "propertization" provokes their detachment from territorial cosmos along with the severance of their "cosmological" bonds to humans and land. Lastly, the book provides an analysis of how this fundamental shift has been transposed in Yolngu judicial dialectics before the Australian Courts.

Riccardo Mazzola
recently earned his PhD in Legal philosophy at the University of Milan (2018). He was Visiting Researcher at the University of Geneva (2015), the University of Cambridge (2016), the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) of the Australian National University, College of Asia & the Pacific (Canberra, 2016) and the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (2017). Among his recent publications: Copyright and Tjuringa: Can Australian 'Dreaming' Be Owned? (2018), Il diritto aborigeno come manufatto: La prova del native title in Australia (2018).

Acknowledgments
Ignasi Terradas Saborit, Foreword
Introduction
Indigenous "Intellectual Property": Legal Framework and Terminology
(Historical Roots; Global and Regional (Australian) Legal Frameworks; Different Regimes; Terminology)
Yolngu Society: A Concise Ethnography
(Defining Yolngu; Social Identity: Moieties, Mala and Ba:purru; Language: Matha; Ancestors: Wangarr; Cultural Objects and Performances: Madayin; Law: Rom, Madayin, Nga:rra)
Territorial Cosmos and Land Property: To Be (in) Place v. To Own the Space
(Connections: The Likan Concept; Territorial Cosmos: A Physical-Cosmological Continuum; Being Land: Subjectification, Polymorphism and Simultaneity; Owning Land: The Propertization of Territorial Cosmos; The Western "Property" Archetype; "Colonial" Property: Severing Connections)
Territorial Cosmos and Intellectual Property: "Placing" Cultural Objects and Performances
(What is IP?; Madayin as (Intellectual) Property; Madayin as "Inalienable Possessions"; Knowledge in Place)
Territorial Cosmos on Trial
(Negotiating Culture; Madayin and Copyright; Madayin as Title Deeds)
Concluding Remarks
References
Index.

Contributors: Ignasi Terradas Saborit

Serie: Sociologia del diritto

Subjects: Legal Sociology and Deviance

Level: Scholarly Research

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