Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Social Archaeology
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Geismar, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Reproduction, creativity, restriction

Material culture and copyright in Vanuatu

Haidy Geismar

Program in Museum Studies, New York University, USA

Copyright legislation is often described in relation to a series of abstract legal and economic constructs, without due attention to the ways in which it may be constituted by the persons and artifacts that it legislates over. In this article, I focus in detail on some ways in which concepts of copyright are negotiated in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. I analyze copyright in relation to the technical, social and conceptual processes of copying, restriction and creativity, respectively, in order to draw out some of the diverse social and material processes that are built into the legal category. I draw specifically on my research with Ni-Vanuatu men and women using local resources to earn money through the production of artifacts for the market – an exemplary context for the emergence of discussions about ‘indigenous' copyright legislation. In describing copyright in one very local context, I emphasize that focusing on the materiality of different property forms can enable us to more sensitively understand the differential constitution of intellectual property rights in an increasingly global arena.

Key Words: indigenous copyright legislation • intellectual property rights • materiality • Vanuatu

Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 25-51 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1469605305050142
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?