Abstract:I will answer the question "What's in a copy?" by considering three sets of related issues: the importance of copies in academia; in cultural life; and in the economic world. In academia the current capability of making copies is challenging pedagogical practices and the trust of its members, plagiarism being the most immediate problem. The notion of authorship is also undergoing changes provoked by a proliferation of authors and new possibilities opened up by cyberspace. In cultural life, imitation and mimesi… Show more
“…Over time, Seeed engineers started to learn about alternative development and licensing practices by attending international conferences. Attribution, originality, and “proper copying” (Hayden ; Ribeiro ) assumed radically different moral connotations in the southern Chinese context, creating different conditions for Seeed to operate between gifts and commodities. Pan suggested: What [people in China] are trying to do now is to merge with the global open source world, but it is not so widespread.…”
Section: Chaihuo: An Experiments With Gifts and Commoditiesmentioning
Under the practical symbol of “hacking,” computer expertise has been translated into renewed forms of political action in the past two decades. In this article, I examine this phenomenon through the study of self‐organized collectives for technoscientific experts who identify as “hackers.” Based on multisited field research in global cities of the Pacific Rim, I describe the formation of a network of community spaces called “hackerspaces” with a focus on their exchange practices and transnational ties. The alternative globalization of hacking through these convivial spaces for socialization and self‐training has created new political locations and horizons, shifting the moral valence of hacking toward more open and collaborative practices. The hackerspace network is one of the key sites for the observation of this transformation for prefiguring new technical and political practices, hence its relevance for anthropological studies of technology and politics in the contemporary moment. [computing, expertise, hacking, technopolitics, hackerspaces]
“…Over time, Seeed engineers started to learn about alternative development and licensing practices by attending international conferences. Attribution, originality, and “proper copying” (Hayden ; Ribeiro ) assumed radically different moral connotations in the southern Chinese context, creating different conditions for Seeed to operate between gifts and commodities. Pan suggested: What [people in China] are trying to do now is to merge with the global open source world, but it is not so widespread.…”
Section: Chaihuo: An Experiments With Gifts and Commoditiesmentioning
Under the practical symbol of “hacking,” computer expertise has been translated into renewed forms of political action in the past two decades. In this article, I examine this phenomenon through the study of self‐organized collectives for technoscientific experts who identify as “hackers.” Based on multisited field research in global cities of the Pacific Rim, I describe the formation of a network of community spaces called “hackerspaces” with a focus on their exchange practices and transnational ties. The alternative globalization of hacking through these convivial spaces for socialization and self‐training has created new political locations and horizons, shifting the moral valence of hacking toward more open and collaborative practices. The hackerspace network is one of the key sites for the observation of this transformation for prefiguring new technical and political practices, hence its relevance for anthropological studies of technology and politics in the contemporary moment. [computing, expertise, hacking, technopolitics, hackerspaces]
“…Migration scholars at the turn of the millennium revived the concept of cosmopolitanism to critically address social scientists’ recurrent practice of reproducing in their theoretical frames the artificial boundaries of national identities (Ribeiro, 2005; Vertovec and Cohen, 2002; Werbner, 2006). This was a call for a humanist political project that highlighted connections beyond territorial borders and national allegiances (Cheah, 2006), and a general ‘willingness to engage with the Other’ (Hannerz, 1996: 103).…”
By the late 1990s, when I was conducting ethnographic fieldwork research in Lisbon, the ‘dentists’ case’ had become a familiar trope for the presence of Brazilian immigrants in Portugal. Although it involved a small group of Brazilian and Portuguese professionals, it gained visibility in the media of both countries, escalating into a political and diplomatic quarrel, and culminating in the amendment of the 1966 Cultural Accord. I use Victor Turner’s concept of social drama to address the case as a chapter in the cyclical pattern of connection and disconnection of postcolonial Luso-Brazilian relationships. Drawing from a recent discussion on the concept of cosmopolitanism in migration studies, I employ the idea of postcolonial sociabilities to help explore the seemingly inherent ambiguities in the relationship between Brazilians and Portuguese.
“…Mimesis also took on an unprecedented importance in the critical theory of modernity (Horkheimer and Adorno [1944] 2002) and later on in approaches to media and simulacra (Baudrillard 1994). Together with the imitation and the copy, it remains a reference in contemporary discussions surrounding digital copies, copyright, and authenticity (Ribeiro 2013). Even if according to Lempert (2014: 380) mimesis and imitation are rarely addressed explicitly within anthropological theory, the universe of meanings and applications surrounding them attests that as concepts they continue to spur innovative approaches (see Walker 2010;Willerslev 2007: 9-27).…”
Section: Mimesis Colonialism and 'The Primitive'mentioning
Engaging critically with literature on mimesis, colonialism, and the state in anthropology and history, this introduction argues for an approach to mimesis and imitation as constitutive of the state and its forms of rule and governmentality in the context of late European colonialism. It explores how the colonial state attempted to administer, control, and integrate its indigenous subjects through mimetic policies of governance, while examining how indigenous polities adopted imitative practices in order to establish reciprocal ties with, or to resist the presence of, the colonial state. In introducing this special issue, three main themes will be addressed: mimesis as a strategic policy of colonial government, as an object of colonial regulation, and, finally, as a creative indigenous appropriation of external forms of state power.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
