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Culture: Anthropology’s Old Vice or International Law’s New Virtue?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2017

Rosemary J. Coombe
Rosemary J. Coombe*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
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Type
Culture
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 93 , 1999 , pp. 261 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1999

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References

1 Coombe, Rosemary J., Contingent Articulations: Critical Cultural Studies of Law, in Law in the Domains of Culture 21–64 (Sarat, Austin & Kearns, Thomas eds., 1998)Google Scholar. See also Coombe, the Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law (1998).

2 Coombe, Rosemary J., Intellectual Property, Human Rights and Sovereignty: New Dilemmas in International Law Posed by the Recognition of Indigenous Knowledge and the Conservation of Biodiversity, 6 Ind. J. of Global Legal Stud. 59-115 (1998)Google Scholar.

3 The concept of informationalization is borrowed from M. Castells, the Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (3 vols., 1998).

4 A similar but theoretically and ethnographically distinct project was initiated in J. Boyle, Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society (1996), to whom I am indebted for the term “political economy of authorship” and for inspiring my own project.

5 Varieties of environmentalism, various forms of ecological distributional conflicts and the resistance movements they have spawned are delineated in Martinez-Alier, J., Environmental Justice (Local and Global), 8 Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 91 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For an excellent discussion of French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of “phrasing injustice,” see Pavlich, George, Phrasing Injustice: Critique in an Uncertain Ethos, 18 Stud. In Law, Pol. & Soc’y 245–269 (1998)Google Scholar.

7 For a longer discussion of this process, see Roht-Arriaza, Naomi, Of Seeds and Shamans: The Appropriation of the Scientific and Technical Knowledge of Indigenous and Local Communities, in Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation 255 (Ziff, B. & Rao, P. eds., 1997)Google Scholar, and Laurie Whitt, Ann, Indigenous Peoples, Intellectual Property and the New Imperial Science, 23 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 211 (1998)Google Scholar.

8 Mooney, Pat Ray, The Parts of Life: Agricultural Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Role of the Third System (1-2), Development Dialogue 7-181 (special issue, 1996)Google Scholar.

9 V. Shiva, Biopiracy: the Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (1997).

10 Raghaven, C., Recolonization: Gatt in Its Historical Context, 20(6) The Ecologist 205 (1990)Google Scholar. This is a summary of the argument presented in C. Raghaven, Recolonialization: Gatt, the Uruguay Round and the Third World (1990).

11 Whitt, supra note 8.

12 I am providing a composite summary of some of the main features of a rhetoric drawn from hundreds of published sources. Representative examples include Roht-Arriaza, supra note 8; the Crucible Group, People, Plants, and Patents (1994); Haverkort, B. & Millar, D., Constructing Biodiversity: The Active Role of Rural People in Maintaining and Enhancing Biodiversity, 2(3) Etnoecologica 51 (1994)Google Scholar; Mooney, supra note 9; V. Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology (1993); all issues of Rafi Communique (1990-1999); many articles in the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor (1990-1999); and various volumes published by London-based Intermediate Technology Publications.

13 See Kadidal, S., Plants, Poverty and Pharmaceutical Patents, 103 Yale L. J. 223 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For a brilliant discussion of the continuing need for indigenous cultural traditions in the Australian legacy and social imaginary, see Povinelli, Elizabeth, Settling Modernity and the Quest for an Indigenous Tradition, 11 Public Culture 19 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 P. Fitzpatrick, the Mythology of Modern Law (1992).

16 For another discussion of the colonial and racial foundations of the culture concept, see R.J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (1995).

1 A longer discussion may be found in Coombe, the Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties, supra note 1, at 11-18, 24.

18 Hastrup, Kirsten & Olwig, Karen Fog, Introduction, in Siting Culture: the Shifting Anthropological Object 1, at 11 (Olwig, K.F. & Hastrup, K. eds., 1997)Google Scholar. See also Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (A. Gupta & J. Ferguson eds., 1997).

19 Hastings & Fog Olwig, id at 3.

20 Id.

21 Bentley, J.W., Untitled Commentary on P. Stilltoe, The Development of Indigenous Knowledge: A New Applied Anthropology, 39 Current Anthropology 223, 235 (1998)Google Scholar.

22 See Stilltoe, id. at 223.

23 Id. at 229.

24 See Peet, R. & Watts, M., Introduction, in Liberation Ecologies 5 (Peet, R. & Watts, M. eds., 1996)Google Scholar.

25 Three significant and influential texts addressing development within the field are A. Escobar, Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995), J. Ferguson, the Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (1994), and A. Gupta, Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (1998). See also Ferguson, J., Anthropology and Its Evil Twin: “Development” in the Constitution of a Discipline, in International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge 150 (Cooper, F. & Packard, R. eds., 1997)Google Scholar.

26 See Agarwal, A., Dismantling the Divide between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge, 26 Development and Change 413 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Ferradas, Untitled Commentary on P. Stilltoe, supra note 21, at 239-40.

28 D. Posey, Untitled Commentary on P. Stilltoe, supra note 21, 241-2.

2 For interdisciplinary discussions of the various issues thereby posed, see Valuing Local Knowledge (S. Brush & D. Stabinsky eds., 1996) and Protection of Global Biodiversity: Converging Strategies (L.D. Guruswamy & J. A. McNeely eds., 1998).

30 Brush, S., Whose Knowledge, Whose Genes, Whose Rights? in Valuing Local Knowledge 1, 3 (Brush, S. & Stabinsky, D. eds., 1996)Google Scholar. Brush issues a corrective caution, here, however (at 4):

Conserving culture and language is fundamentally different and more problematic than conserving biological resources. While indigenous people, their advocates, and social scientists are acutely aware of the loss of cultural and linguistic diversity, there is no political consensus on how to address this problem or how to conserve cultural knowledge. The dynamics of political and social systems make it far more difficult to design programs of cultural conservation than to lay out biological preserves or to create botanical gardens, zoos, or seed banks. Nevertheless, the value of cultural diversity and its relevance to conserving biological resources warrant an effort to address the loss of cultural knowledge. Cultural knowledge cannot adequately be conserved by setting it aside in a museum, or by recording it on paper or electronically. Like biological diversity, cultural knowledge can only be conserved by keeping it alive and in use. Intellectual property possibly opens a way to harness market forces to this objective.

31 Conklin, B. & Graham, L., The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics, 97 American Anthropologist 695 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 There is now a large literature disputing the proposition that indigenous peoples are always natural conservationists. See, for example, Parker, E., Fact and Fiction in Amazonia: The Case of the Apete, 95 American Anthropologist 715 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But extensive surveys of the available published evidence suggest that indigenous knowledges and skills are nonetheless of immense value in the preservation and ongoing production of biological diversity. See Tropical Deforestation: the Human Dimension (L. E. Sponsel, T.N. Headland & R.C. Bailey eds., 1996).

33 R. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: the Remaking of Social Analysis (1989).

34 For an excellent discussion of the complexities of indigenous identity in international human rights law, see Kingsbury, B., “Indigenous Peoples” in International Law: A Constructivist Approach to the Asian Controversy, 92 AJIL 414 (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See Beyond Intellectual Property: Towards Traditional Resource Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (D. Posey & G. Dutfield eds., 1996).

36 See, for example, Gupta, A., Rewarding Local Communities for Conserving Biodiversity: The Case of the Honey Bee, in Guruswamy & McNeely 180 Google Scholar, supra note 29.

37 Brown, M., Can Culture Be Copyrighted? 39 Current Anthropology 193 (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Dove, M., Centre, Periphery and Biodiversity: A Paradox of Governance and a Developmental Challenge, in Brush & Stabinsky 41 Google Scholar, supra note 29.

39 Koptiuch, K., Cultural Defense and Criminological Displacements, in Displacement, Diaspora, and the Geographies of Identity 215 (Lavie, S. & Swedenburg, T. eds., 1997)Google Scholar.