Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T04:13:23.644Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liquid regulation: the (men's) business of women's water music?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2021

Miranda Forsyth Open the ORCID record for Miranda Forsyth [Opens in a new window]  and
Thomas Dick
Miranda Forsyth*
Affiliation:
RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance, College of Asia & the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Thomas Dick
Affiliation:
Ethos Global Foundation, Mullumbimby, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Complexity and uncertainty often animate the desire for regulatory approaches seeking to fix, limit and constrain. But what if, instead of doubling down on ‘solid’ regulation, we also make room for ‘liquid’ regulatory approaches? We interrogate this question through deep empirical analysis of the developing regulatory framework around a form of Melanesian cultural property known as water music. We argue that, although both solid and liquid regulatory forms exist in all normative orders, we have recently seen an increasing emphasis on solid forms of regulation (legislation, registers, etc.) with respect to cultural property. As an effort to consider alternative approaches, we identify a range of liquid regulatory strategies drawing from our case-study. We show how attention to temporality, relationality and situatedness can impact upon the degree of liquidity of individual regulatory approaches, and how they can cumulatively impact the solidity or liquidity of the overall regulatory system. Finally, we identify the different ways in which gendered power and forms of accountability emerge in contexts of solid or liquid regulatory strategies.

Keywords

regulationcultural propertyliquidcomplexity gender
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 133 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allam, L (2020) ‘Devastated’ Indigenous owners say Rio Tinto misled them ahead of Juukan Gorge blast. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/12/devastated-indigenous-owners-say-rio-tinto-misled-them-ahead-of-juukan-gorge-blast (accessed 29 October 2020).Google Scholar
Anderson, J and Geismar, H (2017) Introduction: the many faces of cultural property. In Anderson, J and Geismar, H (eds), The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bar-Siman-Tov, I and Harari-Heit, G (2019) The legisprudential and political functions of temporary legislation. In Ranchordas, S and Roznai, Y (eds), Time, Law and Change: An Interdisciplinary Study, published online 26 May 2019. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3394420 (accessed 27 October 2021).Google Scholar
Bar-Yam, Y (2004) Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World. NECSI: Knowledge Press.Google Scholar
Bauman, Z (2012) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bolton, L (2003) Unfolding the Moon: Enacting Women's Kastom in Vanuatu. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Bovensiepen, J (2020) Can oil speak? On the production of ontological difference and ambivalence in extractive encounters. Anthropological Quarterly 94, 33–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowrey, K (2011) Indigenous culture, knowledge and intellectual property: the need for a new category of rights. In Bowrey, K, Handler, M and Bowrey, DN (eds), Emerging Challenges in Intellectual Property. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 46–67.Google Scholar
Braidotti, R (2006) Affirmation versus vulnerability: on contemporary ethical debates. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 10, 235–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braithwaite, J (2002) Rules and principles: a theory of legal certainty. Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 27, 47–82.Google Scholar
Branlat, M and Woods, D (2010) How Do Systems Manage Their Adaptive Capacity to Successfully Handle Disruptions? A Resilience Engineering Perspective, Complex Adaptive Systems –Resilience, Robustness, and Evolvability: Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium, 10 January 2010. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286581322_How_do_systems_manage_their_adaptive_capacity_to_successfully_handle_disruptions_A_resilience_engineering_perspective (accessed 27 October 2021).Google Scholar
Brown, MF (2004) Who Owns Native Culture? Boston: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, JL and Comaroff, J (2009) Ethnicity Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, RW (2007) Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global Dynamics of Knowledge. Michigan: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Coombe, RJ (2009) The expanding purview of cultural properties and their politics. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 5, 393–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deacon, H and Smeets, R (2019) Intangible heritage safeguarding and intellectual property protection in the context of implementing the UNESCO ICH convention. In Akagawa, N and Smith, L (eds), Safeguarding Intangible Heritage: Practices and Politics. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 36–53.Google Scholar
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Carnival Australia and International Finance Corporation (2014) Assessment of the Economic Impact of Cruise Ships to Vanuatu Report. Canberra, DFAT. Available at: (accessed 27 October 2021).Google Scholar
Dick, T (2014) Vanuatu water music and the Mwerlap diaspora: music, migration, tradition, and tourism, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 10, 392–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dick, T (2015) Chorographing the Vanuatu aquapelago. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 9, 1–22.Google Scholar
Dick, T (2016) Place-taking performances: tourism and touring with the Vanuatu women's water music. Journal de la Société des Océanistes 142–143, 37–54.Google Scholar
Drahos, P (2014) Intellectual Property, Indigenous People and Their Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forsyth, M (2016) Making the case for a pluralistic approach to intellectual property regulation in developing countries. Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 6, 3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forsyth, M and Farran, S (2015) Weaving Intellectual Property Policy in Small Island Developing States. Cambridge: Intersentia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukuyama, F (2018) Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Fuller, LL (1964) The Morality of Law. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gelfand, MJ (2018) Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Haraway, DJ (1988) Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14, 575–599.10.2307/3178066CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, B (1998) Polarity Management: A Summary Introduction. Available at: https://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/14-06-19.barry_johnson.polarity_management.pdf (accessed 9 November 2021).Google Scholar
Jolly, M (1992) Specters of inauthenticity. The Contemporary Pacific 4, 49–72.Google Scholar
Jolly, M (1997) Women of the Place: Kastom, Colonialism and Gender in Vanuatu. Amsterdam: OPA.Google Scholar
Kalsakau, K (2020) Need for a traditional knowledge authority. Daily Post, 18 September. Available at: https://www.dailypost.vu/news/need-for-a-traditional-knowledge-authority/article_7b04da5a-f933–11ea-8b24-ef1a77f0e2d0.html (accessed 27 October 2021).Google Scholar
Kleinhans, M-M and MacDonald, RA (1997) What is a critical legal pluralism? Canadian Journal of Law and Society 12, 25–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knodt, M and Schoenefeld, JJ (2020) Harder soft governance in European climate and energy policy: exploring a new trend in public policy. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 22, 761–773.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krisch, N (2017) Liquid authority in global governance. International Theory 9, 237–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, J and Stern, M (2019) The value of music in Melanesia: creation, circulation, and transmission under changing economic and intellectual property conditions. In Morcom, A and Taylor, TD (eds), Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lindstrom, L (2010) Settling and Unsettling Disputes: A Village Perspective, paper presented at Law and Kastom Conference, University of the South Pacific, 8 August 2010. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/8605225/Settling_and_Unsettling_Disputes_A_village_perspective (accessed 27 October 2021).Google Scholar
Manning, E and Massumi, B (2014) Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molisa, GM (1987) Colonised People. Port Vila: Black Stone Publications.Google Scholar
Mondragón, C (2009) A weft of nexus: changing notions of space and geographical identity in Vanuatu, Oceania. In Kirby P, Wynn (ed.), Boundless Worlds: An Anthropological Approach to Movement. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Neimanis, A (2017) Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Picart, CJS and Fox, M (2013) Beyond unbridled optimism and fear: Indigenous peoples, intellectual property, human rights and the globalisation of traditional knowledge and expressions of folklore: part 1. International Community Law Review 15, 319–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahaman, M (2019) The cunning rights: law, life, biocultures (review).’ Social & Legal Studies 28, 421–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Randeria, S (2006) Entangled histories of uneven modernities: civil society, caste solidarities and legal pluralism in post-colonial India. In Keane, J (ed.), Civil Society: Berlin Perspectives. New York: Berghahn, pp. 213–242.Google Scholar
Rodman, MC (1987) Masters of Tradition: Consequences of Customary Land Tenure in Longana, Vanuatu. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Rodman, MC (1992) Empowering place: multilocality and multivocality. American Anthropologist 94, 640–656.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegel, R (1992) Reasoning from the body: a historical perspective on abortion regulation and questions of equal protection. Stanford Law Review 44, 261–381.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shiva, V (2016) Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
Taylor, JP (2008) The Other Side: Ways of Being and Place in Vanuatu. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, JP and Thieberger, N (2011) Working Together in Vanuatu: Research Histories, Collaborations, Projects and Reflections. Canberra: ANU Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J, Miller, DA and Olsen, TE (2020) Rational contracting, negotiation, and external enforcement. American Economic Review 110, 2153–2197.10.1257/aer.20180427CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wessergo, WW, Dick, T and Sur, S (2014) The History of the Leweton Cultural Village. Sydney: Wantok Musik Foundation.Google Scholar