Ownership and Appropriation

Description

In a world of finite resources, expanding populations and widening structural inequalities, the ownership of things is increasingly contested. Not only are the commons being rapidly enclosed and privatized, but the very idea of what can be owned is expanding, generating conflicts over the ownership of resources, ideas, culture, people, and even parts of people. Understanding processes of ownership and appropriation is not only central to anthropological theorizing but also has major practical applications, for policy, legislative development and conflict resolution.Ownership and Appropriation significantly extends anthropology's long-term concern with property by focusing on everyday notions and acts of owning and appropriating. The chapters document the relationship between ownership, subjectivities and personhood; they demonstrate the critical consequences of materiality and immateriality on what is owned; and they examine the social relations of property. By approaching ownership as social communication and negotiation, the text points to a more dynamic and processual understanding of property, ownership and appropriation. Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword • Chris Hann 1 Introduction: Ownership and Appropriation • Mark Busse and Veronica Strang Part One – Subjects, Personhood and Peoplehood 2 Sharing, Stealing and Borrowing Simultaneously • Marilyn Strathern 3 On Having Achieved Appropriation: Anak Berprestasi in Kepri, Indonesia • Nicholas Long 4 Appropriating an Authentic Bodily Practice from Japan: On ‘Being There’, ‘Having Been There’ and ‘Virtually Being There’ • Tamara Kohn 5 Dreaming in Thread: From Ritual to Art and Property(s) Between • Katie Glaskin 6 ‘Possessing Culture’: Political Economies of Community Subjects and their Properties • Rosemary J. Coombe Part Two – Materiality and Immateriality 7 Cultural Appropriation • The Honourable Sir Edward Taihakurei Durie KNZM 8 One Hundred Years of Land Reform on the Gazelle Peninsula: A Baining Point of View • Colin Filer and Michael Lowe 9 Fluid Forms: Owning Water in Australia • Veronica Strang 10 Appropriating Fish, Appropriating Fishermen: Tradable Permits, Natural Resources and Uncertainty • Monica Minnegal and Peter Dwyer 11 Can’t Find Nothing on the Radio: Radio Spectrum Policy and Governance in Nepal • Michael Wilmore and Pawan Prakash Upreti Part Three – Ownership as Social Communication 12 The Village That Wasn’t There: Appropriation, Domination and Resistance • Adam Kaul 13 ‘Not Just Pretty Pictures’: Relative Autonomy and the Articulations of Yolngu Art in its Contexts • Howard Morphy Index