Session 16

Class discussion

Rashmi and Keya

Our last and final session of this seminar addresses questions on the everyday life of infrastructures - what is infrastructure and why do need to examine it?

The context of such questions was established by looking back at the larger theoretical interests of the discipline of Anthropology. We discussed how enquiries into material culture went out of fashion after the intense interest it generated in the 1970s - anthropologists studying the 'social' did not pay enough attention to material aspects of social life - till Appadurai and others revived it towards the close of the 80s through a focus on the social life of things.

This renewed interest subsequently provided the impetus to address questions of materiality that underlay the social - in the form of infrastructure - and we see the emergence of new objects of inquiry such as traffic, roads, water distribution etc.  A question that was raised was whether and how such explorations were any different from the earlier approach on the social life of things. As a way of answering it, the discussion focused on changes in methodology, which break the distinction between the material and the social or begin investigations of sociality of things as in earlier approaches, but juxtapose material and social to see how they are enmeshed with each other.  We debated the nature of methodological difference flagged here by pointing to the shift that has happened from semiotics of infrastructure to its pragmatics. 

Our discussion on Larkin's piece led us to the view that studying infrastructures enables the study of 'relations among relations' and that this approach is not limited to the idea of a 'commodity'. The point of this new mode of inquiry was to allow us to see the political economy in which infrastructures are embedded - not just in terms of its materiality but semantically as well  (here an example from Chu's Cosmology of Credit was cited where the road as a piece of infrastructure had symbolic significance for the people of the village).

This was followed by a discussion on McGuire’s piece that allowed for us to rethink the concept of agency in relation to infrastructures and how people get entangled in the same.

Discussing Maurer’s ideas on mobile banking, we discussed how the project feeds into the global discourse of financial inclusion and the politics of global financial institutions. A criticism that was directed towards Maurer was his celebration of financial inclusions without any reflection on the politics of such inclusion. We opined that this inclusion is partly about disciplining unruly and socially marginal subjects to operate within the market economy. Mobile money comes close to the model of microfinance championed by big financial institutions globally. Further, we began to think of the possible reasons why mobile banking has not taken off in India. In this regard, we discussed how RBI has stricter injunctions on banking in India. The Indian financial climate is such that we are constantly plagued by the fears of illegal remittances that often fund terrorist projects.

We concluded the session with an examination of Elyachar’s article. Elyachar's piece highlighted the importance of the 'knowledge society' where capital is not limited to materiality and looks to extract a different kind of value from society. While complex machines are doing away with the social, the automated technologies everywhere are maximizing on the communicative labour and the surplus generated there. This is especially true of the Internet economies and the business models of many platform service-providing companies after Web 2.0.

We also discussed Elyachar’s ideas in the context of post feminist discourse, which celebrates entrepreneurialism while being blind to the oppressive structures that underlie it.  Practices of companies such as Amway, Avon and Oriflame were discussed as examples of multilevel marketing that facilitate women entrepreneurship and also build themselves on existing communication networks - a practice that characterizes the post industrial economy.

Session 15 - class discussion

Session 15 – Circulating subjects:

This session reviewed the circulation of people / bodies and its links to the circulation of objects. The class discussion largely revolved around Chu’s ethnography. There was general consensus that the book was an excellent read, a good balance of theory and ethnography. Carol suggested that we could maybe read Chu’s thesis as a comparison with the book to inform ourselves on approaches to ‘data, theory and methods’. Another takeaway in terms of research methods was how Chu dealt with the issue of standpoint and methodology.

The book discusses ‘migration’, a topic that is the subject of inquiry in a number of disciplines. However such literature tends to view the process of migration as an instrumental and migrants as agents of development. They are perceived to be a group of people who make rational decisions on the basis of a cost – benefit analysis of staying at home versus emigrating. On the contrary Chu demonstrates that migration as a social process in its own right.

Thus ‘migration’ is not a homogenous entity though it may look like one from a macro-level perspective. At the micro level a migrant’s social and cultural background has a bearing on the process of migration, both before and after emigration. Chu’s Chinese (Fuzhonese) subjects represent an entanglement of the provincial and global - they nay seem worldly and cosmopolitan but their value systems are very much traditional.

We then discussed how the concept of transnationalism as highlighted by Appadurai and Akhil Gupta no longer seems tenable. Migration as a process that contributes to de-stabilisation of place bound cultural identity is no longer seen as an indicator of globalisation. Chu plays with the perception of ‘cosmopolitan subjects’ as those not tied to any particular cultural identity as opposed to ‘transnational migrants’ who are rooted to their culture and create ethnic enclaves at their destination. 

Chu’s work ties the concepts of mobility and migration to older anthropological concepts of value, kinship and gender. For the Fuzhonese, desire plays out at multiple levels and kinship and community remain central concepts. As typically assumed migration does not displace but just modify family structures. Thus ‘migrants’ are not independent agents but very much part of the social structure and the current focus is on how they navigate this structure.

Session 14 Class Discussion- Circulation of Substances: body, relationality, personhood

We began our discussion by considering the relationship between the body and personhood within the ‘secular tradition’ of science and law. There seem to be contesting ideas about this relationship, and neither law nor science seem to have a clear conception of who (or what) constitutes a living person. While bodily (biological)-materiality of the person seems emphasized in this recognition, the non-material is central to notions of free- will, morality and agency that are central in law, thus bringing in the need to account for consciousness. Ethical dilemmas about abortion or assisted death are debated on this terrain of seeking to determine what constitutes a ‘living person’- is it the body, a well-functioning body or a person who can make choices about her or his own body? Even as science moves to areas such as cryogenics which demand new ways to think about the body and personhood, ethical frameworks derived from law (which in turn derive from rationalist principles as well as remnants of religious moralities) take time to alter. Also, science which claims to function in a realm of ethical neutrality is deeply embedded in socio-political contestations.

Commodification of the human body (including its parts or substances) raises ethical concerns, not only about self-commodification but the circumstances within which such commodification occurs. As Hughes forcefully argues, to see the trade in human organs merely as a transaction would elide the structural inequalities within which it occurs. How then do we understand these transactions and what they represent? Is there a way to account for ‘choice’ within such transactions? Can there be an ethic that pits the value of persons against capitalist humiliation?

We also discussed how Strathern’s notion of the partible person may compare with Hughes notion of the person. While Strathern conceptualized the possibility of a personhood in which the individual and social were not dichotomous entities, Hughes seems to emphasize individual-rights over her or his body. Even as we recognise the political urgency of Hughes demand to make ‘choice’ problematic, how do we consider the idea of individual-rights over the body in the context of neoliberalism which seeks to impose this as a ‘natural’ or given idea?

Questions about who controls knowledge, and how knowledge may be utilised came up for discussion. Ethics, in the modern bio-pharmaceutical industry has become a highly malleable term. While companies constitute ethical committees and express commitment to ethics, this malleability allows it to remain a largely perfunctory exercise. In this context, fields like bio-ethics/law which have recently sprung up seem to have to keep up with, and more importantly perhaps, seem to evolve their conceptions of persons / ethics, in response to scientific developments, often, perhaps even favouring them.

In the last part of the class, we discussed the role of metaphors in cultural anthropology, and the attempt to unpack what these metaphors stand for. Apart from expressions of relationality or disruption, the metaphor of blood also stands for the kinds of circulation we see in contemporary capitalism- which is not just prices, goods, services going one way – but also body, body parts that are mobile and are being circulated; and have human costs – but stand erased in the abstract /scientific / metaphoric representation of the working model of the economy.


-Maithreyi and Savitha

Link to term papers

Dear All,

Link to papers - Please note I have renamed the folder critical reviews as Anthro seminar submissions

Regards
Krupa

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B80EssmI64t4Rnh5dGRxZUI3Ulk&usp=sharing

From Anthropologist to Actant (and back to Anthropology): Position, Impasse, and Observation in Sociotechnical Collaboration

by Anthony Stavrianakis

http://culanth.org/articles/768-from-anthropologist-to-actant-and-back-to

Back to the origins of coinage

link to an interesting book dealing with the origins of coinage in embedded/disembedded economies...

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-historical-origins-of-coinage-in-the-democratic-polis-against-the-aristocratic-gift-economy/2015/01/15

Week 16

Rashmi and Keya

The set of readings this session focus on infrastructures, the foundations which enable the functioning of systems of circulation and exchange. Throughout the seminar we have looked at the processes of exchange, objects that move in different regimes of value, meanings those objects accrue as they circulate among people, relationships that are forged as a result. We have engaged with the classical anthropological theories on gift and exchange, we have discussed contemporary systems of exchange and circulation and also the alternatives to them. The readings on infrastructure coming towards the end of the seminar are encouraging us to recognize and critically engage with the material structures on which all the above things are standing. The readings make us think about these material structures not only as enabling conditions for other kinds of exchange to take place but look at them as having their own meanings, politics and poetics. The connecting thread running along all these readings is a Latourian idea that objects have agency too and they are not just acted upon.They bring to the fore the old theoretical dichotomy between structure and agency and problematize it in productive ways.

Larkin’s review article covers a range of studies which engage with infrastructures not only as ‘things but relations among things’. Infrastructure is not considered in the limited sense of the term as ‘material and physical infrastructure’ but it is defined broadly to include built things, people, language/communication and knowledge. This collapses the neat separation we often make between people and things and make us reflect and think of ‘the social’ in material terms and ‘the material’ in social terms. Also Larkin’s article points to the social meanings that material structures come to acquire. Thus infrastructure is not something that has material existence which social theorists can take for granted as necessary preconditions to think about things social but infrastructure itself acquires aesthetic and political meanings and has a social function to serve especially in those nations which are invested in the projects of progress and development. The ‘infrastructure fetishism’ he speaks about reflects the current Indian climate and it is also representative of other developing countries. The dysfunctional infrastructure often has an aesthetic and poetic function even though it is not functional. We wonder whether this particular reading of infrastructure by Larkin can be made only of third world infrastructure. 

While breakdowns are common to infrastructures everywhere, the argument that dysfunctional infrastructure serving aesthetic and poetic function could be made only in the context of the third world. Can we speak about first world infrastructure in similar terms?

Mcguire's reading of the wall separating the borders of the US and Mexico puts into perspective the need for anthropology to study the impact of infrastructure as well as how it came to be - he uses the term archaeological assemblage to account for the latter. He articulates his point quite beautifully when he states that even though humans create things, once created, materiality has the ability to affect humans and constrain and enable different and unexpected forms of agency. Thus the presence of a steel wall as a means of controlling the agency of the transgressors/ undocumented migrants crossing over to the US simultaneously engenders new and different agency in non state actors who continue to find ways to cross over and inhabit the border space. An interesting contradiction that he highlights over the presence of the wall is the fact that while it attempts to curb and control the movement of  a "certain kind" of people it must also allow for the the expansion of the produce trade, other commodities, objects and wealth  (between the two states) that  global capitalism depends on.

The dependence global capitalism has on forms of infrastructure is taken a step forward by Elyachar when she demonstrates how women's phatic labour and sociality came to be recognised as a resource/ infrastructure within the political economy of Cairo in the course of developmental attempts at empowering and creating women entrepreneurs. Women's social practices came to be recognised for its potential and thus transformed into channels or infrastructure that could be accessed by people outside of the semiotic community for new kinds of economic projects and to build further infrastructure,

Maurer’s article also looks at social relationships and networks people build as infrastructures which support systems of circulation and exchange when he examines mobile money as a system of micro finance that serves as an alternative to branch banking. Discussing a technologically mediated financial system such as mobile money, he demands that we recognize the social relationships (MSO agents and their networks) that underlie it. It examines the nature of the agency as commonly understood in business circles, and juxtaposes that with the idea of agency prevalent in social theory. The most central question asked here is - are agents acting on behalf of others or are they acting for themselves? What is the difference between the two and how can we understand them? In this technologically mediated system, are MSO agents intermediaries or mediators or both depending on the context in which they act? Maurer argues that there is nothing fixed about relations. Intermediaries can become mediators, and mediators intermediaries depending on the ecology within which relations are embedded.

The concept of agency as deployed in the context of mobile money is not surprisingly new. It is how life insurance and other companies have historically been deploying as one of the distribution strategies to reach the masses. The question, we feel should be asked in this context is - How is mobile phone different from other forms of storing value? How is it different from corporate coupon systems in India such as Sodexo? Or plastic money? Instead of reducing it to mediator and intermediary level a richer analytical account could have been given of the way mobile money works within the sociality of agent networks that Maurer describes.  His argument that cash is becoming merchandise that is bought seems too simplistic. Banking is about merchandising cash, so are all kinds of financial business. There is no physicality to money – whether it is paper or electronic form, it always stands in for something else. What should have been the focus instead is – how does the circulation of money improves in electronic money connected to local business setups as against money in its conventional form of notes and coins? The question is about the relation of the materiality of money to its flow and circulation, not just conversion from one form to the other.

Anthropologist David Harvey on a world without money

http://truth-out.org/news/item/28879-looking-toward-a-moneyless-economy-and-sleeping-well-at-night?utm_content=buffer3a8f9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Chu review - folder link

Hello everyone,
You can access the Chu reviews in the shared folder below.
Regards
Krupa

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B80EssmI64t4Rnh5dGRxZUI3Ulk&usp=sharing

Notes on Session 14: Circulation of substances: body, relationality, personhood

The readings, together, bring focus to the body, and ideas of personhood, and some of the fundamental epistemological problems it has created for the ‘Western’ secular systems of knowledge, particularly with respect to science and law.  The body becomes a source of tension and contestation for these domains particularly because ideas of ‘personhood’ come to be located in its biological substratum, substances, and processes, in a bid to delink it from earlier religious and non-material explanations, as Farman suggests. However, while both science and law base their practices on a materialist conception of the person/self, with science (and/or law) not having been able to go the full distance in explaining phenomena such as consciousness, free will, reason, morality, Farman explains that it has resulted in the development of divergent conceptions of the person (i.e., materialist- scientific, and rationalist-legal, which itself is based on non-materialist assumptions), which come into contestation in the practice of science and law. Within the domain of the everyday, these differences constantly bring challenges and questions on how to conceptualise persons and the relationships between them (e.g., the relation between the body and body-parts; their partitioning; whether individual organs/substance have the same status and rights as the whole body, or constitute the person in the same way that the whole does; whether miniscule substances from the body are enough to answers questions of cultural variation, etc. These various questions come up in the light of practices such as cryogenics discussed by Farman; organ donation, discussed by Scheper-Hughes;blood donation discussed by Carsten, and SNPs by Reddy). They also throw up questions on ‘rights’ (e.g., rights over the body and the knowledge that may be determined from its, as discussed by Reddy in describing the HGDP and HapMap project). Within these contexts made possible by scientific advancements, the body is constantly imbricated in ethical dilemmas over the capitalist / neoliberal exploitation of persons, and the commodification of the self, which all throw light on the social-political constitution of identities and status of personhood, unlike what materialist conceptions of science would like to believe. They also raise metaphysical questions about what can be accepted as a ‘free gift’, under such conditions of exploitation (not only of third world, poor populations as in the case of organ donation discussed by Scheper-Hughes, but also in the case of more elite and educated subjects, such as the Indian gujaratis discussed by Reddy, who may be subjected to a restricted access to the knowledge derived from their own bodily substances).

What seems to appear strongly across these set of articles that discuss the commodification of the body in different ways, is the way in which law and science are forced to engage with alternate concepts of the ‘gift’ (as gift of ‘greater good’, gift of  knowledge or gift of life), within these gray areas, where science, yet, has no answers (e.g., the possibility of immortality with cryoscience, or the knowledge to be gained from HapMap), and where the law has, yet, no object/subject to regulate (e.g., the head, detached from the body, which is seen to contain all information vital to living, as discussed by Farman). Thus, in this context, as Farman, Scheper-Hughes, and Reddy show, science constantly skirts around the edges of law, leading to a constant making and re-making of itself, as well as of law (based on ‘bio-ethics’), as Reddy argues, challenging the Western myth of  the ‘gift’ as ‘pure’, itself.

The idea of the gift appears in these new configurations of bio-ethics as a gift of life (e.g., in the organ-donation case or cryogenics case), or as a ‘greater good’ through a gift of knowledge (as in the HapMap case). This idea of genetic mapping and organ donation as a gift itself needs to be invoked in order to hide its commercial and ethical implications. However, this idea of the gift is also not the one that is held by the West that separates the person and thing, and understands the gift  to be wholly ‘pure’ and unreciprocated. Rather, only by drawing on alternate conceptions of the gift as not ‘pure’, but ‘unencumbered’ in its circulation, as not ‘free’, but ‘ought to be’, and linking this to the idea of science as not free, but ought to be, can legal issues, problems of bio-ethics, and the demand and supply for commercial transactions based on the body be managed, and a motivation for sacrifice for the larger good be created. The larger concerns of ethics (understood as general principles that must guide human behaviour on matters such as representation of knowledge, right to knowledge, the inherent dangers and risks of such research, or consequences of these scientific practices) can then give way to moral concerns (understood as local ways of being and worldviews that inform action). Thus, addressing ethical questions can become questions of research design and sample efficacy, ethical protocols for dealing with human cases can be addressed by partitioning the body (with individual parts not receiving the full status of the whole), and practices such as organ trafficking can completely escape questions about the power differentials and exploitation couched within medico-legal definitions and frameworks of the body that don't take into account the social relations that make up the person, and his ‘free will’.  

In a slightly different vein, but still drawing on these questions of the materiality of the body and its relation to the self, seeking to understand how blood as a bodily substance is( or is not) linked to kinship systems, Carsten shows us how bodies are mutable as are the relationships between them as persons.The transfer of particular body substances can mark the boundaries of relationality( thus, concerns of incest may be raised if children who have breastfed from the same mother seek to marry later and deep discomfort arises when bodily fluids are transferred outside of permissible domains as in the making of ‘mommy cheese’).  Blood as a substance whose transfer may occur in the everyday as well as on ritual occasions or as a marker of sacrifice lends itself to several medical, political and religious associations.  Given the multi-layered entanglements of the act of donating blood, it seems impossible to separate out the altruistic from the instrumental. Considering blood as a substance that moves between domains that are otherwise kept separate, she compares it to two non-bodily substances that share the property- money and ghosts. As blood cannot sustain life by itself, ghosts are ‘incompletely dead’. With money, blood shares the association of traversing domains as well as holding metaphorical potential to represent life and vitality.  Materiality of bodily substances( softness, fluidity, contexts of occurrence) is important in invocations of relationality and yet, this does not mean the registers of nature and law( or substance and code as proposed by Schneider) are clearly distinguishable in practice. Even if blood as a metaphor of relationality is used in diverse cultures with considerable consistency, Carsten asks for a reflective anthropological engagement with the specificities of locution in the usage of phrases such as ‘blood-relative’ or ‘blood-relations’.

   Finally, taking a slightly different route, Weston attempts to examine what the extension of metaphors drawn from the body/blood do/can do in informing our understanding and legitimising actions within the realm of the socioeconomic. Weston argues that for modern capitalist theories, there has never been a question about whether the economy is characterised by flows, but always about how best to capture this and its political implications.Drawing attention to how knowledge of the blood and circulation is drawn as a metaphor, analogy, synedoche, in conceptualising the economy, he points to how the economy is always conceptualised as a living, self regulating organism, that must be brought back to health, stimulated after a cardiac arrest, must be pumped with stimulus packages, in order to keep it fit, and alive. In drawing comparisons, he points to how ‘cadavers’, ‘corpses’, and ‘death’ never frame the understanding, even while alternate conceptions of ‘purging’ (drawn from Galenic understanding of circulation) may be used as a way forward to recovery. In this myth of a cyclic, self-recovering system that is created, what is hidden is often the violence and blood-shed that is left in the aftermath of economic expansion, foregrounding the economy as ‘lifeblood’ alone. The power of this metaphor lies in the manner in which our naturalised understanding of blood and the circulatory system has also naturalised our understanding of the economy, and the manner in which its imposition on to the economic provides a constant sense of flows and vitality attributed to the economic. However, drawing attention to  the meta-materiality of these metaphors, as in the case of the Thailand Red Shirt protesters, who sought to purge the government of its excesses after the Asian Financial crisis, he also points to the alternate possibilities of engagement opened up by the use of such metaphors, coupled with a careful anthropological analysis.

Thus, the readings together raise certain central questions about personhood, examining what constitutes a person and how this is related to the materiality of the body. Within the secular tradition of science and law, the question largely remains unresolved- with the ‘non-material’ being central to the epistemologies that create the secular person, and the hope to find it within the materiality of the body( as in the case seeing the brain as the center of preservation of personhood). Discourses of the body, which are articulated within the tradition that seeks to overcome the cartesian dualism finds itself located firmly within it. To understand gifts ‘from’ and ‘of’ the body requires again the resolution of the question of how the person may be distinguished from the body, and if at all such a distinction is possible. If gifts embedded within societies are never really ‘free’, how does the person(constituted, at least in part, by the body) seek social relationships through gifts?

- Savitha and Maithreyi

Class discussion- The gift today

In this seminar, modern manifestations of dan, both as individual philanthropic initiatives and corporate social responsibility, were discussed.

We began the discussion by considering whether all actions are embedded in instrumental rationality. However, we realised that instrumental rationality is itself embedded in culture. Thus, Bornstein’s reading of Weber seemed misplaced because Weber had also shown how instrumentality cannot be extracted from culture or religion. It is this cultural logic of instrumentality that is of interest to the anthropologist. Rather than individual motivation to engage in acts of philanthropy, it is the social contexts within which philanthropy is performed that is of interest to anthropology.

A question that emerged during the discussion was why there had been such a plethora of anthropological writing on Hindu dan when all religions encourage charity in different forms. This could be a product of early Sociology of India which saw caste and hierarchy based on notions of purity and pollution as fundamental structures within Indian society. These notions of purity and pollution perhaps influenced  how dan was viewed. 

The class also spent some time trying to understand how the dan of bio-medical substances is tied to notions of purity-pollution. Assuming caste is ‘carried in one’s blood’, how does pollution not pass through blood transfusion? Early anthropological work had assumed caste to be a fixed identity. However, the practice of dan in bio medical substances seems to suggest that caste is a more fluid entity as demonstrated by later ethnographic work. In this context, the class also raised the recent news of ‘re-conversions’ to Hinduism and the ability to choose one’s caste.

A question was raised about the difference between dan and seva. Is the distinction that of caste? The class did consider the question of whether dan as a category of anthropological inquiry was over determined. Did anthropologists hope to find the ‘pure gift’, despite recognising its non-existence, through dan? In this context, the class also considered the fact that Bornstein in particular maybe doing ex post facto rationalisation of kanya dan/rakta dan.

We also discussed the emergence of newer forms of dan through the internet. At a time when people are not embedded in traditional religious systems, they seek solutions on the internet to understand ‘correct’ practice of dan.

In understanding newer forms of gift, Cross considered the value of the corporate gift to workers. Seeking to look at practice within discourses, he unpacked different narratives to show us how the working class attached meaning to the corporate gift differently from the managerial class. By linking their understanding to the Jajmani system, workers demonstrate a particular cultural perspective and world view. Cross does not suggest that the corporate gift is akin to the Jajmani system. It might however work as the means of unpacking the cultural meanings of the gift for the workers. While receiving the gift, workers were referred to by a name and not just a number and this for them was a significant moment of social recognition. This could be seen as corporate hegemony or false consciousness but Cross insists that much more is at work. It is important to acknowledge how even in the most exploitative conditions, workers seek to make a life for themselves.

With regard to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) readings by Shamir and Rajak, the class acknowledged that capital has been continuously working towards recognising and co-opting newer discourses and resistances. Capitalism seems to have the ability to absorb and domesticate all forms of opposition within itself, and so today ‘doing good’ has become a market opportunity. It is important also to recognise that CSR has moved away from old fashioned philanthropy as demonstrated by the governance approach of World Bank reports which emphasise risks and opportunities.

Shamirs’ piece talked about how capital has taken over the role of the state and civil society leading to the emergence of ‘governance’ that encourages individuals to learn to ‘play the game’ in terms of neo-liberal rationality. Those that fall outside of this dominant discourse seem to get marginalised. However, a significant question remained where criticality can come from if all critical language is appropriated and made digestible to the mainstream? The class also acknowledged that these set of readings were not critical of the premise or ideology on which CSR is based.

Neo-liberal rationality that privileges the idea of governance seems to reduce the idea of the social and make the individual the agent of all forms of policy and practice. There is thus in policy discourse a de-politicisation and de-socialisation reducing the agenda merely to the cognitive and behavioural. In the process, the idea of the 'social being' seems erased. The focus of multi-lateral agencies is on understanding how individuals can be made to ‘follow’ policy.

The critical question we were left with was whether, despite the ability of neo-liberal logic to subsume resistances, the space for criticality remains.

- Keya and Savitha






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Session 13 class discussion - intellectual and cultural property

We opened our discussion with introductory remarks on the session readings noting how most of them (especially Hann) are attempts to situate anthropological discourse on property within the framework of legal theory. This legal discourse separates the individual from the social and we theoretically located this split in the moment that marked the demise of communal property rights and the subsequent rise of the possessive individual. Possessive individualism, we debated was a by-product of industrial revolution in Europe, specifically England. Before such legal institutionalization, property rights were subsumed within kinship systems and relations and individuals did not have independent identities outside of these systems. Ideas of ownership and property claims made within such systems did not rest with ‘autonomous individuals’ as conceptualized by post industrial revolution Western legal discourse. Thus, disposability as one such right of the individual in relation to property is connected more with a post industrial conception of the term. Finally that the notion of ‘individual’ as conceptualized by legal theoretical discourse was in effect ‘dividual’ and property claims made by such ‘dividuals’ were considered ‘bundle of rights’ in objects around them.

The discussion focus then shifted from classical ideas of property and property relations in the context of intellectual and cultural property to circulation and exchange. Property captures people’s relation between themselves and their material environment and thus plays an instrumental role in their attempts at self definition. We also discussed how earlier theoretical engagements with property were always on land whereas contemporary debates on intellectual and cultural property stretches the confines of such boundaries. Property claims and relations in the contemporary world primarily appear to be hegemonic and understood as either hindrances to or promoters of capitalism. We also spoke about how these new notions of IP / CP could be placed within the operational logic of capitalism and seen as powerful capitalist attempts to lay claims over the resources of the third world / Global South and bring them within the capitalist circuit of distribution and exchange of goods, commodities and resources.

 In the second half of the session we engaged with the question of territory and land and discussed how territory was much more than land. In trying to understand this ‘much more’, we grappled with the questions ‘what is territory?’ and ‘how is it different from land?’ Thus how does one attempt to understand territorial claims or cultural claims to territory within a broad and diffused notion of land? In this context we briefly referred to indigenous struggles for rights over land and territory in the face of State oppression and how property claims by indigenous communities seem to be different from territorial claims over land. The questions we asked ourselves while debating this difference were - Is there a difference between notions of place and territory? Can we say a nation state has property rights over its territory? Does a nation state have dispositionary rights over territory? Is territory an abstract concept in contrast with land which appears to be more concrete?

Krupa & Rashmi