Co-chairs: Rosemary J. Coombe (York University) & Patricia Goff (Wilfred Laurier University)
Applications of intellectual property law to cultural heritage have attracted attention and controversy, yet provoked advocacy for alternative models to protect, promote, and maintain cultural and heritage goods. This Working Group focuses on themes and issues in this emerging field of legal pluralism. A number of legal systems coexist and often intersect with conventional intellectual property protections, including customary law, international law, informal or “vernacular” intellectual property, and moral economies. Many stakeholders thus face an inter-jurisdictional geography of cultural rights, consisting of indigenist social movements, NGOs, development agencies and institutions, multilateral institutions, and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples. Members of this Working Group work to facilitate IPinCH’s awareness of these complex legal and political landscapes. To influence cultural heritage policy, IPinCH must consider all legal and normative resources available to communities. Cross-disciplinary approaches broaden our understanding of legal and customary processes in cultural heritage protection. We can also connect with IPinCH’s community research studies as they work within these systems, perhaps, in a topical case study, tying together themes emerging from other Working Groups. Initial questions being purused address the history of, and differences, parallels, and conflicts among constitutional, customary and normative systems, as well as internationally for lessons and consequences, and the impacts of international bodies on communities in non-signatory states.
Selected Activities and Output:
• A roundtable on “Intellectual Property and Indigeneity: International Policy Making between Neoliberalism and Human Rights” was held at York University, September 2010, with co-chairs Coombe and Goff and Catherine Bell (IPinCH Steering Committee member); and
• A workshop on “Customary Law, International Politics and Cultural Heritage: Fragmentation of Regimes or Pluralism in the Multiversity” at York University in January 2012.
Publications:
Coombe, R. 2009. The Expanding Purview of Cultural Properties and their Politics. Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences 5: 393-412.
Coombe, R. 2010. Der zunehmende Geltungsbereich von Cultural Properties und ihrer Politik. In Die Konstituierung von Cultural Property: Forschungsperspektiven, edited by R. Bendix, et al. pp. 235-256. University of Göttingen Press.
Coombe, R. 2010. Honing a Critical Cultural Studies of Human Rights. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7(3): 230-246 (Special issue on Human Rights).
Coombe, R. 2011. Possessing Culture: Political Economies of Community Subjects and their Properties. In Ownership and Appropriation, edited by M. Busse and V. Strang. pp 105-127. Berg.
Coombe, R. 2011. Cultural Agencies: ‘Constructing’ Community Subjects and their Rights. In Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property, edited by M. Biagioli, et al., pp. 79-98. University of Chicago Press.
Coombe, R. and N. Aylwin. forthcoming 2012. Rethinking Cultural Heritage using International Human Rights Norms. In Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Cultural Heritage Online, edited by R. Coombe, et al. University of Toronto Press.
Presentations:
Bell, C. 2011. Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in the Canadian Constitution: Current Research on Consultation and Métis Rights. Department of Canadian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Apr. 13.
Brown, D. and G. Nicholas. 2010. Protecting Canadian First Nations and Maori Heritage through Conventional Legal Means. Canada and New Zealand: Connections, Comparisons and Challenges Conference. U. of Wellington, Wellington, NZ, Feb. 9.
Coombe, R. 2008. Cultural Subjectivities and Neoliberal Regimes. Plenary Panel on Law and Global Minorities. Cultural Studies Association Meeting, New York, Apr. 22.
Coombe, R. 2008. Law and the Geography of Cultural Rights. South African Research Chair in Property Group Symposia, Stellenbosch University. Stellenbosch, South Africa, Nov. 23.
Coombe, R. 2008. Cultures, Communities and Properties in a New Neoliberal Geography. Keynote Address, Commonwealth Association for Social Anthropology Meetings, Dec 8.
Coombe, R. 2009. Intellectual Property and its Cultures: Informational Capital and Cultural Resources in a Neoliberal Era. Plenary Panel, Law and Social Sciences in South Asia, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Jan 10.
Coombe, R. 2009. Worlds we have inherited: Tradition and its knowledge within Modern Law. At: Inheriting the World: Concepts and Practices of Intergeneration Transfer in Global Cultural Policy, a Workshop at the Zentrum fur Literature-un Kulurforschung. Berlin, Germany, Apr. 22.
Coombe, R. 2010. Intellectual Property, Heritage, and Cultural Rights: Alternative Paradigms. In Intersections: Intellectual Property, Cultural Heritage & Indigenous Peoples, organized by Daniel Sherman* and Jessica Facciponti. Society for Applied Anthropology, Merida, Mexico, Mar 27.
Coombe, R. 2010. Property Forms and Heritage Politics. In the session Critical Heritage Studies: Knowledge, Identity and Power, organized and chaired by M. Baird. American Anthropological Association. New Orleans, LA, Nov. 21.
