Epilogue: Anxieties About Culture and Tradition--Property as Reification

Abstract

The articles in this special issue on intellectual property in the Pacific document anxieties about culture and tradition, and about the intrusion of ideas of property into previously uncommodified areas of peoples’ lives. These include fears that traditional knowledge and skills are not being passed on to young people (Nason and Peter; Pigliasco); that migrants in a globalized world will take aspects of culture with them when they leave (Nason and Peter); that anthropologists and other scholars will wrongfully appropriate and use aspects of the cultures they study for their own benefit (Van Meijl); and that profits from the commercialization of traditional knowledge, practices, and products will not go to the people who consider themselves their owners and caretakers (Lindstrom). In addition, Jo Recht’s contribution provides a discussion of attempts to protect culture and tradition through international conventions and national laws. Finally, Andrew Moutu and Michael Goldsmith describe claims of ownership over aspects of nature to reflect on fundamental aspects of intellectual property and ownership more generally.