******************************************************
* http://www.anthropologymatters.com *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal, *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources *
* and international contacts directory. *
******************************************************
>
>
>
>> Please circulate
>>
>> Call for Papers / Proposed Session
>> Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association
>> San Francisco, CA, November 19-23, 2008
>>
>> "Social Movements and Intellectual Property Rights: Building a New
>> Intellectual Commons"
>>
>> This panel features research on social movements and Intellectual
>> Property Rights (IPR) to examine how movements resist or utilize
>> IPR while creating alternatives to private control over intangible
>> goods. Recent years have seen the extension of legal monopolies to
>> areas of life once considered beyond the private property system,
>> ranging from software codes to genetic codes. These monopolies
>> seek to "protect" intellectual property by granting the "right" to
>> exclude others from using, exchanging, transforming, improving, or
>> at times even understanding the intellectual property in question.
>> Such "enclosures of the mind" occur through copyright, patents,
>> trademarks, and industrial designs, for example, all of which fall
>> under the rubric of IPR. These rights to exclude are secured
>> through a growing web of national laws, free trade accords,
>> international treaties, and supranational institutions.
>>
>> The underlying processes of privatization, commodification, and
>> monopolization that accompany the expansion of intellectual
>> property rights, however, have not gone uncontested. Examples
>> could include such diverse movements and collective experiments as
>> the Free Software Movement; the Creative Commons licensing
>> project; the Wikipedia collective; music and file sharing
>> collectives; pirated CD/DVD vendors' movements; campaigns for
>> affordable, generic pharmaceuticals; opposition to bioprospecting;
>> movements against patents over seeds, biodiversity, genetically
>> modified and synthetic organisms; and struggles against corporate
>> control over genetic information. Some of these movements seek to
>> carve out a space to promote the exchange and development of
>> knowledge, often utilizing IPR mechanisms such as copyright in the
>> process, while others seek to fundamentally challenge the logic of
>> intellectual property altogether, perhaps struggling to keep "life
>> itself" beyond the reach of commodity exchange. Still others, such
>> as informal vendors of pirated DVD movies, sometimes organize to
>> confront the enforcement of IPR laws.
>>
>> This panel brings together research that on the surface may appear
>> to treat different topics, but which ultimately address similar
>> underlying processes. What insights do we gain into the
>> privatization and monopolization of knowledge, for instance, by
>> studying the diverse array of movements that challenge IPR? Under
>> what circumstances do social movements take shape to reject,
>> utilize, or change IPR in the construction of a new intellectual
>> commons? In what ways do social movements challenge not only IPR
>> but concepts such as "rights," "property," and "protection"? What
>> new languages and strategies are being developed to resist
>> dominant IPR regimes or to design less restrictive mechanisms for
>> exercising claims over intangible goods? Does anthropology
>> contribute to such movements, or is the discipline limited by
>> increasingly corporate academic settings that encourage IPR and
>> advance enclosures of the mind?
>>
>> Please send proposed abstracts of up to 250 words to Tom Pearson
>> at [log in to unmask] by March 17th.
>>
>> Thomas Pearson
>> Doctoral Candidate
>> Department of Anthropology
>> State University of New York, Binghamton
>> [log in to unmask] / [log in to unmask]
>
> _______________________________________________
> aarg mailing list
> [log in to unmask]
> http://mailman.creighton.edu/mailman/listinfo/aarg
*************************************************************
* Anthropology-Matters Mailing List *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous *
* messages visit: *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to: *
* [log in to unmask] *
* *
* Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new *
* CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com *
* an international directory of anthropology researchers *
***************************************************************
|