Anthropological Perspectives: On the Management of Knowledge Simon Harrison Anthropology Today, Vol. 11, No. 5. (Oct., 1995), pp. 10-14.Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0268-540X%28199510%2911%3A5%3C10%3AAPOTMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 Anthropology Today is currently published by Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/rai.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Sun Feb 17 08:53:29 2008 Joan Huntley and I agree that it is not necessary to think in eitherlor terms. film. a matter of culture. for one reason or another.and imagining creative ways to re-present them. Lindstrom 1990). Such material was particularly well suited to a CD ROM format. The first we might envisage as a system of rationing or sumptuary regulation in the field of ideas. I find that exciting! To assist ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY readers reflect upon some of the advantages and disadvantages of the new technology from the perspective of teaching as well as research. more recent contracts take this into account. At least since the seventeenth century philosopher Francis Bacon. industrial designs. I do not. interviews . a free-for-all struggle for survival between ideas. but one can also support natural inquisitiveness and move from point to point. He argued that an economy is emerging based less on the production of material resources than on the production of knowledge or information. 'Information societies' have probably existed for a very long time. songs. subscribe to the view promoted by proselytizers of the 'virtual campus' who maintain that the arrival of electronic publishing forecasts the end of the book as we know it. for example. Daniel Bell published The Coming of the PostIndustrial Society. scientific knowledge has been regarded as belonging to this category. and perhaps increasingly so in our own.in which the production and distribution of information were vital to the economy (Harrison 1990. An anthropologist might perhaps respond that there are. are usually kept out of the public domain. At the opposite extreme. pictures. publicity and freedom of access. sound tape. and so our unfortunate disjuncture need not be repeated. many societies . are best served by encouraging the freest possible circulation of ideas (see. local digital (e. in a way I find both liberating and challenging. photographs. but rather to divide the labour so that books do the work they do best. hardcopy print. then conducting fieldwork with a C D ROM in mind means collecting data in as many forms as possible .g. in which only those that are in some sense the 'best' will succeed and spread.000. of course. maps. in which he envisaged society moving beyond the industrial stage. This sum covered only the costs of research assistance. Looking back upon the process now.Northern Ireland. Coleraine. what is the best way of managing it? In particular. software and mastering. C D ROM). audiotape. Narratives that tell a story from beginning to end (be it via live human. people may operate with contrasting theories of the correct management of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 11 No 5. bearing in mind that the ethnography so produced will be struc- tured somewhat differently each time. assets or resources. Anthropological perspectives on the management of knowledge SIMON HARRISON The author rs Reader rn Anthropology at the Universrty of Ulster. This is. I realize just how radically it has altered my conception of doing ethnography. drawings. the maximum regulation of the circulation of information and. how ought universities to manage the knowledge they produce? For of course. advantages and disadvantages. Internet). the management of other kinds of information seems to call for the greatest possible openness. owned as values. To describe trademarks or cartoon characters as 'knowledge' may appear to stretch the meaning of the term. The question I should like to pose is this: if knowledge is an important and valuable resource in many economies. military intelligence. any answer to my first. Keen 1994. Most of us would probably agree that the proper management of certain kinds of information involves restricting their circulation in some way. An additional consideration that relates as much to design and purpose as it does to physicalltechnical constraints is whether to provide a linear narrative or allow for interactivity. at least in part. Joan Huntley has prepared the table on page 7. works of literature or art. If the results of scholarly production can be almost as multi-media as cultural events themselves. on the other.video. The traditional assumption is that the interests of science. for example. not computer hardware or basic video and sound studio equipment. however. or have been. for instance. We estimate this entire project to have cost somewhere in the region of $15. and of society. That is. the maximum deregulation of it. But the forms of knowledge I wish to discuss encompass any sorts of mental products that are. videotape. however.further experience. was one of supporting motion analysis (in this case. We might then imagine two extreme choices in the management of knowledge: on the one hand. but it is a cautionary tale for any one contemplating the idea. The term 'intellectual property' refers to rights asserted in the products of the mind (Phillips 1986): in Western economies. Each possesses different strengths and weaknesses. or movies on CD ROM) certainly have their place. commercial brand names. October 1995 . and was recently appornted Hon Edrror of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (incorporating Man) Introduction In 1973. Confidential information of a personal nature. these may include such diverse products as inventions. and distributed digital (e. I would like to suggest that choices of this sort are. while multi-media interactive formats enrich the possibilities. and commercial secrets are just a few examples of the sorts of information which. a value system with which universities have often identified themselves. but no one form is universally superior in all contexts. depending upon the inquisitive choice of the user. in which a number of traditional and contemporary forms of representation and transmission are compared: a human lecturer. and even fictional personages such as Superman or Sherlock Holmes. scanners and the like. Dicks 1865). pornography. more general question must depend to some extent on the particular type of knowledge one is considering. or can be. The major problem we were addressing in designing the W ~ Y U T A CD ROM. Plains Indian Sign Talk) along with linguistic analysis in both aural and textual modes.including some of a sort at one time called 'primitive' . with rigid controls on the distribution and consumption of information. Information with economic value can become a focus of proprietary claims.g. The second alternative we could picture as an intellectual free market. trade secrets. This name was quite fictitious. RAI photo archive no. information must be conveyed in hushed tones in private. After giving it away. the giver still possesses it (see Gambetta 1994a: 207). and made a similar observation of the Iatmul (1958: 231). hoarded. not by broadcasting it. The value of these intangible assets can be maximized simply by maximizing their ppblic exposure and this is. This seems to begin from the premise that something known only to a few people is inconsequential. as a ghost in a performance o f a high nalawarl (men's association) ceremony. one important purpose of the advertising industry. clothed in a tunic of spider's web. the value of any information is inversely proportional to the number of people who possess it. the more people it is distributed among. draws a contrast of a similar kind between two fundamentally different ways of managing specifically religious knowledge. whose role is to initiate novices into the mysteries of secret cults. knowledge. the connection they posit between the value of knowledge. the assumption is that 'the value of knowledge is enhanced by veiling it and sharing it with as few as possible' (Barth 1990: 64 I). And conversely. representatives met with indifference because he made the mistake of giving this information to them in public. A firm's brand-names and trademarks are an important part of its assets because they embody its reputation and 'goodwill'. This. Knowledge has to be shared in order to acquire value at all. Valuable information must be restricted because dispensing it freely would be a senseless waste of an important social resource. an unusual property of information. with artificial hands and arms. Moreover. a certain Italian television programme regularly featured a satirical sketch in which dancers performing a samba sang an advertising jingle in pidgin Portuguese. opposed approach to managing knowledge. here. Malekula. In an earlier work. One is exemplified by the Asian guru. This seems to me to make the management of knowledge potentially rather different from the management of most other resources. An example is knowledge of commercial brandnames and products. 1994b: 359360).xplain and instruct.Above: male dancer. e. the name Cacao Meravigliao began to acquire a very real commercial value to Italian chocolate producers. In particular. and vote for. Let me try to contrast this with the other. Gregory Bateson carried out anthropological fieldwork in New Guinea in the 1930s. information is a limited resource to be carefully conserved. then. c. New Hebrides (photo by Bernard Deacon. In the late 1980s. like an area of land or a sum of money. and assume that knowledge widely shared must have little or no significance. A Patrol Officer of Barth's acquaintance had tried to introduce representative local government to the area. His role is to educate. unless he imparted it confidentially as a weighty secret intended to create a special bond of trust. knowledge of any value is scarce and difficult to acquire. The Iatmul assume that any knowledge disseminated in public must either be trivial or untrue. they seem to treat it as an almost concrete finite good. For the Baktaman. In such societies. 1920's. But as a totally unintended consequence of this publicity. is that one does not lose it when one dispenses it. To be considered true. or religious teacher. he adopted the tactic of divulging the workings of local democracy in great secrecy to a few selected individuals. In this view. and its secrecy. His status depends on his ability to withhold and conceal knowledge. knowledge is perhaps one of those few resources whose value to their possessors can actually be increased by conveying them to other people. an attitude exemplified by the Balinese guru who told Barth (1990: 641) that there is 'no merit from even the deepest religious knowledge unless you teach it'. Bateson found that very little he himself said was taken seriously by any Iatmul individual. and these theories are culturally constructed. Knowledge distributed universally would be worthless. for instance. and his status depends on this ability continually to dispense religious knowledge. to restrict information can in itself make it important and desirable. and dispensed parsimoniously. of course. and it grows in significance as more people share it. scarcity or difficulty of access. supposedly promoting a brand of chocolate called Cacao Meravigliao. Unfortunately. His attempts to persuade the population of their rights to nominate. the lesser the value of each person's share. They started pressing the makers of the programme to sell the 11 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 11 No 5. works in both directions. and kept it so secret. is a way that people in some cultures manage knowledge as a resource: namely. important or valuable. Barth (1975: 217) shows how the Baktaman of New Guinea regard knowledge as worth something only if it is restricted to a select few. Actually. or attractiveness to customers. October 1995 . considered as a good or resource. 3851). The way that trademarks acquire value through publicity is illustrated by an intriguing case described by Gambetta (1991: 72. that elections became impossible anyway (Barth 1975: 217). and the aim of the sketch was simply to poke fun at commercial sponsorship. On Barth's advice. but with little success. Models of knowledge-management Barth (1990). The opposed mode of managing religious knowledge is exemplified by the Melanesian ritual adept. they regarded this knowledge as having so profound a significance. a group of islands called the Admiralties were populated in precolonial times by about twenty ethnic groups. craft specialisms and so forth. they treated them as intangible yet vital assets needing protection from piracy. depend on disseminating knowledge of the objects they possess. levels of religious knowledge. The contrast I am seeking to draw is perhaps particularly clear when we compare Western and tribal religions. the power and status of ethnic groups has often been measured by their success in spreading their beliefs and practices and forcing them on often unwilling recipients. quite possibly even their livelihoods. I mention this case because it illustrates one approach to the problem of assigning value to ideas and information. The greater part of Yolngu art consists of relatively fixed designs owned by clans. in the Admiralties they were those most able to kecp others from adopting their practices. knowledge increases in value by being shared. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 1 1 No 5. purloin them. Each group treated its emblematic practices as precious possessions it jealously had to safeguard from being usurped or appropriated by outsiders (Schwartz 1975). one might arguably discern a contrast of just this sort in the way they characteristically manage knowledge. than with drawing them in.rights to the name. The Admiralties exemplify the exact opposite of this sort of cultural imperialism: far from seeking to universalize their cultures or expand their boundaries. dominant ethnic groups are those most successful at disseminating their cultural practices. In Aboriginal society. for fear that outsiders who discovered the names could invoke or control these beings for their own ends and so. historically. art. The preoccupation of such religions is more with keeping potential converts out. the believers seem to treat their gods as virtually their property. in effect. Western and tribal systems of knowledgemanagement If one were to draw a broad distinction. children and other outsiders are strictly excluded. No group allowed outsiders to copy its special practices 'without securing the right to them through kinship. and more sacred. On the contrary. as a particular problem in the management of ideas. in many Melanesian societies. it may depend rather on how few people know it (Morphy 1991: 21-26). Characteristically. To them. One particular striking shared feature was their deep preoccupation with preserving their differences in language. These clan designs are considered so sacred that they can never be displayed in public. and two incompatible theories of its value. it became a valuable commodity simply by becoming well-known and highly publicized. the value of a painting is likely to depend on its fame. This was a technique used by Christian missionaries to subvert and discredit the men's cults: they would take cult objects and sacra from their sanctuaries. for instance. their reputations. In this approach. a tribal religion altogether lacks the evangelical and proselytizing drive of religions such as Christianity or Islam. the power of a social group seems to have been imagined as the power to keep its cultural practices to itself. ritual. marriage. In their initiations. The Romans. where the fundamental assumption is that art is a public phenomenon. October 1995 . to ornament the prows of canoes in a particular way . and publicly expose them to the view of women and children (see. it decreases in value by being shared. and they are produced and seen as paintings only by initiated men in the highly restricted context of secret ceremonies. and shared many basic features of culture in common. In the West. For instance. as anthropologists once habitually did. In some religions. such as the Baktaman studied by Barth (1975). the test of a group's strength was that it could stop its customs from being stolen by outsiders. In New Guinea. let us take Morphy's (1991) discussion of the art of an Australian Aboriginal people called the Yolngu. . or some form of purchase or licensing' (Schwartz 1975: 117). men have cults in which they are initiated during the course of their lives into a series of ritual grades. Museums and galleries seek to give their collections the widest possible public exposure. Morphy contrasts this with the underlying principles of the Western art world. In the other approach. or reproduced in books. Women. There seem to be two contradictory models here for managing knowledge. but every one of them assiduously guarded its own distinctive identity and uniqueness. between Western societies and the small-scale societies which they themselves traditionally studied. for cultural or ethnic identity can be viewed. but harmed or even destroyed by this sort of public exposure (Moiphy 1991: 25). There were cases in which the infringement of a group's proprietary rights . exemplified by the tribespeople in New Guinea. its patent consisting fundamentally in the right to control its culture's diffusion. the islanders' attitudes to their cultures were highly proprietorial and exclusionary. and a fierce competition erupted within the Italian chocolate industry to acquire the name of this non-existent but nonetheless highly prestigious chocolate. These were fragile religions because they could be demolished just by being forced into the public domain. it belongs to a narrow and exclusive social group whose members want to confine its perceived benefits very much to themselves. knowledge of important works of art is therefore confined to an elite of religious adepts. but they were all intensely significant to the islanders as markers of identity. There is a radical contrast here with the West where. for instance. In the West. architecture.The mere public exposure of the mysteries of a religion of this sort can be enough to destroy it. or that biotechnology companies have with their innovations: namely. These objects and designs are simply too important and too sacred to be revealed to people at large. from one perspective. on how many people know it. It does not seek to spread its message and gain new converts. Some of these groups were tiny. These groups seem to have had much the same relationship with their 'cultures' that medieval craft guilds had with their trade secrets. Many of these diacritical features might well have appeared unimportant to a de- tached observer. These differences between Aboriginal and European conceptions of the value of art often give rise to difficulties nowadays. They may keep the names of their gods secret (Cassirer 1953: 48. its value is not enhanced by being exhibited in galleries. warfare and intermarriage. A similar contrast between Western and tribal societies might be made in the field of ethnicity. Frazer 1967: 342-345). Tuzin 1988). Aborigines may see their art as being thereby profaned and damaged. because Aboriginal paintings are increasingly finding their way into the Western art world and are treated there as public objects. In Aboriginal society.resulted in warfare (Schwartz 1975: 117). For instance. men are introduced to successively more secret.its right. An ethnic group 'owned' its culture as a kind of patented possession. In the Admiralties. Although the name signified nothing. The groups interacted with each other through trade. A problem that software companies face is that their pro- ducts are vulnerable to reverse engineering. -1990. a people called the Manambu are divided into some sixteen clans. Nowadays. I hope. The Coming of the Post-Industrial Soc~ety: a Venture in Social Forecasting London: Heinemann. this gives rise to many conflicts between theory and practice. and are known in full only to a small handful of the clan's senior men. treated the god of their city in this way.T. This would amount. as a matter of course. At one time. firstly.132. it is perhaps rather that universities are under conflicting pressures to make themselves accessible to an ever-wider public on the one hand and. Rome itself. the other a name made valuable by being kept secret. in their own ways. A Manambu clan and a software company are similar in that both are institutions depending for their existence on the successful management of knowledge and ideas. and other religious knowledge. and made many of its products into industry standards.anrages Which Would Result From a More General Dissemination o f Universities. 1953. would both equally expose the clan to the risk of being dispossessed of its territory (Harrison 1990: 127. Microsoft Corporation gained intellectual and market leadership of the software industry. but it is also raising concerns about its implications for academic freedom and impartiality. and both can perish if they fail to carry out this function adequately. let me point out some similarities . On the one hand. The Romans had a very real concern that their own god might in turn be stolen by their enemies through some similar perfidious means (Fustel de Coulanges 1963: 215). universities seem under expectations now to operate as though education were both a public good and also a commercial product or commodity. Bell. after all. particularly the most successful. Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. Bateson. both. New York: Dover. by this sort of shrewd mixture of possessiveness and liberality with its inventions (Economist 1989). Barth. Nevertheless. it might only take the deaths of one or two of the clan's elderly men for all of its sacred knowledge to be lost forever. and also on the assumption that it decreases. the clan needs to disclose its myths to some trusted outsiders as a way of insuring the myths against loss. and the other by promoting the circulation of ideas.not. actually a false one because the management of knowledge always in practice entails . The fictitious chocolate was an entity as imaginary as ancient Rome's god. Rather. 1958. among other reasons. Now. precarious and difficult task of trying to operate with both of these two theories at the same time. to the catastrophic loss of all title to its land. Morphy 199 1: 98-99). They cannot give this acknowledgement unless they know something of the mythological justification of the clan's land-rights. the 'management' of knowledge is the complicated. appropriated the gods of any cities it conquered. cf. New Haven: Yale U. no matter how technically innovative a product may be. Otherwise. In other words. I would like to thank Dominic Bryan. they are the basis of the clan's land-rights. Language and Myth. On the Improvement of Socrety by the Drffusion of Knowledge: or.using both of these strategies in some kind of combination. and too little. It is as though they must operate on the assumption that the value of knowledge increases with openness and accessibility. It must do so. for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. and the behaviour of corporations in the computer software industry. The Guru and the Conjurer: Transactions in Knowledge and the Shaping of Culture in Southeast Asia and Melanesia. to redefine education as a sort of merchandise they must market to consumers.even in the cases I have just discussed . these institutions seem in their behaviour to be trying to act simultaneously upon both of the two conflicting theories I outlined earlier. in effect. they try to protect their software by keeping secret much of their technology and also by safeguarding it with patents. For instance. The contradiction is perhaps particularly acute in the case of universities because they. each of which owns a corpus of origin-myths. clans and software companies I have tried so far to draw a contrast between two opposed ways of managing ideas and information. If some other clan were to gain possession of these myths.for instance. I seem at this point to have come full circle from my discussion of the non-existent Italian chocolate. Inevitably. G.P. Man (N. on the other. a clan cannot maintain too tight a grip on its sacred lore. In New Guinea. have realized that it is very much to their advantage to release some knowledge of their technology into the public domain. 1973. the creation of animals. T. Seen in this light. It would therefore be an oversimplification to say that a clan restricts access to its religious knowledge.P. too far-fetched . This involvement may offer mutual benefits. a company too miserly and secretive risks marginalizing itself and letting its competitors take centre stage.) 25(4): 640-653. many of them. I want to suggest that this contrast is. On the other hand. 1865. Dick. an Illustration of the Ad~. One way seeks to generate value by restricting the circulation of ideas. these two requirements are in some respects contradictory. unlike software companies or Manambu clans. They cannot be openly disclosed to outsiders because. and therefore inimical to the long-term interests of research itself (Nelkin 1984). Stanford: U. Secondly. most companies pursue a kind of double-edged strategy. One was a name made valuable by being publicly exposed. These myths are largely secret. a company too open and generous with its ideas risks having them stolen and its products pirated. and its generals prepared for battle by calling on the enemy gods to turn renegade and defect to the Roman side.between the behaviour of certain business corporations and tribal clans. and appears also to be creating in some fields of research an atmosphere of commercial competition inimical to the free. Naven. Harvey Whitehouse and two anonymous referees for A. but just as surely. The growing involvement of the private sector in funding and controlling research gives rise to similar conflicts. Of course. But my point is that all institutions producing and managing knowledge are faced with the same basic dilemma in one form or another. were nothing more than names. Like Manambu clans. competitors may be able to reconstruct its desigr? and so market rival versions of their own. highly sought after by many would-be proprietors. in one sense. that is. The radical difference between them lies in the way their value was created and maintained. and has to make its myths at least in part known to outsiders. the ideals of knowledge as a collective human good were in contradiction with the actual restriction of university education largely to an elite. are officially committed to an ideal of knowledge as public resource available for the common good. Universities too seem to show in their behaviour the same contradictory necessity of combining openness with protectiveness. D. plants and the landscape. Cassirer. F. concerning the acts of its ancestors.S. in order to have these outsiders acknowledge the legitimacy of its territorial possessions. Yet both of these nominal entities were. circulation of knowledge among researchers. The cause 13 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 11 No 5. 2nd ed. To put it differently. Another institution in the same general category is the university. it could use this knowledge to claim title to its land (Harrison 1990). 1975. The dilemma is that they depend for their existence both on producing and communicating knowledge and on keeping this knowledge in some respects their property. there are instructive parallels between the behaviour of these clans. That is to say. Clearly. Too much openness. and the proper conduct of ceremonies. E. October 1995 . it tries to maintain a delicate balance between restricting it and circulating it. D. Rationality and Socrety 6(3): 353-368. respect and social credit. The secretiveness with which a Manambu clan manages information may seem the complete reverse of the openness with which a university research centre does so. A complex debate with moral. in the concepts of ownership they use. or an over-fished lagoon. that it owns the magic and ceremonies necessary for its growth. Tuzin. The Manambu conceive of these property rights essentially as the guardianship of species. do not yield commercial profit but other. Rather. Cambridge: U. that their interests can be harmed by too much openness and by too little. 1991. Primitive and Modem'. 1991. -1994a.e~ Europkennes de Sociologie 35: 199-233. The clan owning the species would perform magic to make it scarce or. 'In the Beginning was the Word. the ethical dilemmas that property rights in life-forms provoke in Western society do not arise because the Manambu do not have to choose between treating life as a commodity and treating it as a collective resource belonging to some universal entity such as society or the human race. 109-112. but contradictory. In neither situation is knowledge wholly privatized and restricted. To describe it as private property means. Glasgow and London: William Collins. as the responsibility for their welfare. There is no necessity for them to employ the categories of contemporary Western commerce. economic and other dimensions has arisen over the creation and ownership of life-forms by business corporations and. Nuffield Council on Bioethics 1995). London and Toronto: Macmillan. In Ethnic identity (eds) G. The Symbols of the Mafia. and their overall effect is to tie together the various groups in the community in a network of mutual indebtedness and interdependence. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution P. as the Manambu define them. 1975. Universities. J. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 11 No 5. that the clan shares kinship or substance with the species. The Ideas Business: Economy of the Mind. Academic researchers. Human Tissue: Ethical and Legal Issues. Let me give an example of how concepts of ownership can vary across cultures. and it would surely be appropriate for them to develop innovative definitions of the ownership of ideas.F. a difference in the relative emphasis of two contrasting strategies. let me ask what models of ownership they should employ. we know these beliefs are illusory. Recent advances in biotechnology have led to the patenting of genetic material by private companies. Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion: Yolngu of North-East Arnhem Land Oxford: Clarendon P. over the ownership of both human and non-human genetic information (see. above all. Conclusion I have argued that all organizations producing and disseminating knowledge inevitably seek in some sense to own. Romanucci-Ross. Of course. H. and is called by a term which means to vandalize someone's property or treat someone's belongings in an insulting or threatening way. Fustel de Coulanges. L. London: Butterworths. Schwartz. Introduction to Intellectual Property Law. The 'management' of knowledge seems therefore to consist in a sort of balancing act. Nelkin. Harrison. 1990. I pose this question because anthropologists have found that Western definitions of property rights are by no means universal.J. But it is more a matter of degree. These people have concepts of property that rest on assumptions of a custodianship of the natural environment quite extraneous to Western conceptions of private property. Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society. or crops one has grown. there is at least one matter in which they do have a degree of choice: namely. Morphy. For them. I have also suggested. S. Oceania 59(2): 81-104. D. Science as Intellectual Property: W h o Controls Research? New York: Macmillan. their existence is likely to become increasingly dependent upon their securing proprietary rights in the knowledge they produce and exploiting this knowledge commercially. J. the Enlightenment conception of scientific knowledge as a universal free good. for instance. To 'own' some life-form is to be its steward or trustee on behalf of the community. This relationship will probably be more proprietorial than it was in the past. Nuffield Council on Bioethics. 'Cultural Totemism: Ethnic Identity. models of the value of knowledge at the same time. regard virtually every species of plant and animal known to them as belonging to one or other of their clans. 1963 [1864]. I. October 1995 . and looks after their welfare in quite pragmatically effective ways as well. The nature of ownership and the ownership of nature Universities and other organizations involved in research seem to be facing increasing difficulties with sustaining. For the Manambu. 1967 [1922]. Palo Alto: Mayfield. All parties to this debate. Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Know~ledge. In other cultures.'. Archi1. or to waste fish one has caught. fertility and well-being. If these organizations will in the future not just produce and disseminate knowledge but will inevitably be forced in some sense seek to exercise 'ownership' of it. people may make very different assumptions about the nature of ownership. 1990. anthropologists might make an important contribution: namely. it is unlikely to be of the purely commercial sort characteristic of business corporations. My point is that living species can rightly be described as property in Manambu society. Chicago and London: U. December 23rd. A clan has more than just ritual responsibilities towards the plant and animal species it owns. this means that the ancestors of that clan brought the animal or plant into existence in mythical times. Godfather's Gossip. or restrict the use of this knowledge as well.. Let us try to clarify precisely what it means to describe as private property an organism whose genetic material is owned by some biotechnology company. these property rights have a moral dimension lacking from the Western law of industrial patents. more intangible and diffuse rewards such as status. whose standing in their society depends on the knowledge they withhold and conceal. 1986. New York: Doubleday. 1995. N. Their own property rights in living organisms. Phillips. letting them rot uneaten. seem to share this same assumption about the nature of property rights: namely. The Manambu people of New Guinea. Prospects of Village Death in Ilahita.. in an attempt to function with some combination of two equally credible.P. Stealing People's Names: Hlstoly and Politics in a Seplk River Cosmology. In Manambu society it is a serious religious offence to kill an animal without using it for food or for some other valid purpose. DeVos and L. and that it performs these rituals at the proper times for the benefit of all other clans (Harrison 1990). Economist 1989. The Golden Bough: a Study in Magrc and Religion.G. And in neither situation is it wholly free and unowned. of this apparent inconsistency is the underlying dilemma faced by all these institutions: namely. 1994. Inscrutable Markets. perhaps. pp. Their concepts of property are framed in terms that do not give rise to these sorts of antinomies. laying a taboo on the land or lagoon until the stocks of game or fish are replenished. Keen. Abridged ed. whom I referred to earlier.e~ EuropCennes de Sociologie 32(1): 53-77. than a difference in kind. In short. that to 'own' the genome of some organism means the entitlement to control its use for financial gain. their own knowledge of the culturally diverse ways in which knowledge can be 'owned'. On the other hand. It is treated as an injury against the clan owning the species concerned. D. T. Here. 1988. whether they argue that life cannot be owned in this way or that it can. more generally. are having to redefine their relationship with the knowledge they produce. Universities are organizations dedicated to innovation in ideas. that the patent holder has the exclusive right to exploit the organism commercially. as the Manambu say. Gambetta. however. In other words. Frazer. but they do shape the way that Manambu people exploit their natural environment. until the wrongdoers have made amends. the rewards of possessing these property rights are commercial profit. and therefore have entirely real consequences for their ecology. Archi1. even as an ideology. 1984. or protect.D. London: Nuffield Foundation. may seem the diametrical opposite of Australian Aboriginal ritual leaders. of Chicago P. The Ancient City. ----1994b. to 'send it away'.Rational and Screntific Information Among all Ranks. Lindstrom. for instance. It can interdict an area of land being overhunted. whose standing depends on the knowledge they produce and disseminate.
Report "Anthropological Perspectives - On the Management of Knowled.pdf"