Full Description
Africa is known for its multi-faceted immaterial culture, manifested in highly original music, oral texts, artistic performances and sporting events. These cultural expressions are increasingly regulated by intellectual property rights, as orally transmitted stories are written down, traditional songs broadcast and ownership claimed, and sporting activities once part of village life become national media events. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary team of legal experts, anthropologists and literary scholars to explore, from an African point of view, what happens to intangible cultural goods when they are confronted with large-scale commodification and distribution through media technologies, and globalized and divergent judicial systems, institutions and cultural norms. These transformations are observed in contexts that range from Senegalese wrestling contests to beauty pageants in Mali, from Kenyan hip-hop to the Nigerian novel, from the vuvuzela horn to Cameroonian masks. Contributors address the role of the state and the legacy of the European origination of IP laws, as well as the forms of ownership, technologies of mediation and degrees of commercialization that existed pre-colonially in different African societies. Resisting a single narrative of the imposition of a Western legal regime displacing older African modes, a more complex picture is revealed of the intricate interconnections between pirates, artists, communities, governments and international organizations. It is only when local actors embrace technologies and regulations in a specific historical situation that these become influential forces for change. The question raised is not whether international IP norms conform to African practices, nor whether media impose Western styles, but rather what local actors do with these regulations and how both local and Western practices and technologies impact on each other and co-exist.
Contents
CONTENTS:
Preface and acknowledgements; List of contributors; Introduction: African intellectual worlds in the making - Ute Roeschenthaler and Mamadou Diawara; PART I - PROTECTING IMMATERIAL CULTURAL GOODS: AUTHORS, ARTISTS AND THE LAW: Chapter 1: The colonial legacy of the international copyright system - Alexander Peukert; Chapter 2: Whose text is it? Writing the oral - Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi; Chapter 3: Lion's share: Intellectual property rights and the South African music industry - Veit Erlmann; PART II - CREATING NORMS AND GENRES: MODELLING, QUOTING AND MIXING: Chapter 4: Authorship, copyright and quotation in oral and print spheres in early colonial Yorubaland - Karin Barber; Chapter 5: In whose image or likeness?: Publishing and the literary order in early post-colonial Nigeria - Patrick Oloko; Chapter 6: Covers, remixes and mash-ups: Locating African hip-hop in intellectual property rights discourse - Caroline Mose; PART III - TRANSFORMATIONS OF CULTURAL GOODS: IMITATION, APPROPRIATION AND PIRACY: Chapter 7: 'Be faster than the pirates': Copyright and the revival of 'traditional dances' in south-west Cameroon - Ute Roeschenthaler; Chapter 8: From communal practice to intellectual property: The Ngqoko Cultural Group, political claim-making and the judicialization of performance in South Africa - Neo Musangi; Chapter 9: Breaking the contract?: Handling intangible cultural goods among different generations in Mali - Mamadou Diawara; Chapter 10: Music for everyone: The dynamics of piracy in Cameroon - Alexie Tcheuyap; Chapter 11: Regulating mobility, reshaping accessibility: Nollywood and the piracy scapegoat - Alessandro Jedlowski; PART IV - MARKETING CULTURE AND THE BODY: PERFORMANCE, COMPETITION AND IDENTITY PRACTICES; Chapter 12: Between transnational and local aesthetic standards: Beauty pageants in Mali - Dorothea E. Schulz; Chapter 13: Wrestling, the media and marketing: When folklore meets show business - Ibrahima Wane; Chapter 14: Who owns the vuvuzela?: Local interests, intellectual property and the football World Cup in South Africa - Matthias Gruber; Index.
