Intellectual and Cultural Property: Between Market and Community

This book explores the complex relationship between cultural heritage and intellectual property, arguing that heritage should be seen as a dynamic process of community formation that is distinct from intellectual property. It proposes a critical distinction between the market and the community, advocating for a basis for expressing and controlling value that is based on community norms and identity rather than market value.

Format: Hardback
Length: 218 pages
Publication date: 13 November 2020
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book delves into the intricate and often contentious relationship between cultural heritage and intellectual property, as both fields grapple with the creative arts. The competing discourses in international legal instruments surrounding copyright and intangible cultural heritage are the most visible manifestation of this troubled encounter. However, this characterization of the relationship between intellectual and cultural property is itself problematic, as it reflects a fossilized concept of heritage, divided between things that are fixed and moveable, tangible and intangible.

Instead, the book proposes that heritage should be conceived as part of a dynamic and mutually constitutive process of community formation. It argues for a critically important distinction between the fundamentally different concepts of intellectual and cultural heritage/property, as well as the market and the community. While copyright, as a private property right, locates all relationships in the context of the market, the context of cultural heritage relationships is the community, of which the market forms a part but does not – and, indeed, should not – control the whole.

The concept of cultural property/heritage is thus a way of resisting the reduction of everything to its value in the market, a way of resisting the commodification and creeping propertization of everything. And as such, the book proposes an alternative basis for expressing and controlling value according to the norms and identity of a community, rather than according to the market value of private property rights.

An important and original intervention, this book will appeal to academics and practitioners in both intellectual property and the arts, as well as legal and cultural theorists with interests in these fields. It offers a fresh perspective on the complex dynamics between culture, property, and the law, and provides valuable insights into the ongoing struggle to preserve and protect cultural heritage in the face of contemporary challenges.

Weight: 500g
Dimension: 158 x 241 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781138388062