A roundtable on "Intellectual Property and the Productivity of Spatial Difference" will be held at Victoria University of Wellington on Tuesday, 2 December 2008. The roundtable is the inaugural launch event of the New Zealand node of the Spaces of Democracy and Democracy of Space research network. The PEST Group has a particular interest in research aimed at democratisi
ng accounting and business law, and its interrelationships with ‘business culture’. This roundtable is part of a series of events at Victoria University of Wellington including Professor Rosemary Coombe’s seminar on Wednesday, 26 November entitled “Culture as a Resource: Limits and Possibilities of Capitalizing upon Spatial Difference”, the 2008 Australasian Contemporary Critical Theories Summer School involving Dr Alejandro Groppo, Dr Mark Devenney, Dr Aletta Norval, and Dr David Howarth, and the Conference on Contemporary Critical Theories on Saturday, December 13, 2008.
The roundtable discussion is centred on presentations by Professor Rosemary Coombe entitled “Traditional Knowledge: Questioning Intellectual Property’s Places in Rights and in Development” and Dr Mark Devenney entitled “The Cultural Politics of Patent Law”. The purpose of the roundtable is to provide a forum to understand tensions and contradictions between 'universalist' stories of intellectual property protections based on Enlightenment conceptions of 'modernization and development' and 'place-based' social movements adv
ocating alternative forms of development around concepts of traditional knowledge, local autonomy and negotiated market relationships. Of particular interest are the ways in which varieties of traditional knowledge integrally linked to territory are rhetorically cultivated and institutionally located by diverse actors and institutions to meet extraterritorial demands. As such, the forum provides an opportunity to argue for more pluralistic and spatialized ways of thinking about intellectual property. In casting intellectual property into a more pluralist world of multiple modernities, this forum provides space to consider environmental, indigenous human rights laws, and nongovernmental organisations as key actants and actors.
5.00 pm Welcome
5.30pm to 7.00pm: Roundtable: "Intellectual Property and the Productivity of Spatial Difference"
Chair: David Carter (Victoria University of Wellington)
With Professor Rosemary Coombe (York University) and Dr Mark Devenney (University of Brighton)
7.00pm to 7.30pm: Discussion
7.30pm to 9.00pm: Launch Function