Culture as Property: Intellectual Property, Local Norms and Global Rights

Local Knowledge as Trapped Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Culture, Power and Politics

“…TRIPS' perceived silence over local knowledge is therefore deafening but nonetheless easy to understand in historical and neocolonial contexts. It would not require a long piece of revisionist history to show that TRIPS reflects the historical legacy of colonial disdain, exclusion, derogation and appropriation as a policy framework for dealing with local knowledge (Arewa, 2006a; 2006b; 2007a; Mgbeoji, 2007).…”

“…Knowledge thrives in the agency of culture and vice versa. Early modern conceptions of culture were premised on progressive accounts or theories of human development (Arewa, 2006a; Ivison, 2002). In the popular and conventional versions of this account while Europeans were at the peak, non‐Western peoples were located at the lowest rung of this cultural ladder.…”

“…In the popular and conventional versions of this account while Europeans were at the peak, non‐Western peoples were located at the lowest rung of this cultural ladder. The West's “other” were mainly depicted in derogatory terms such as wild, primitive, undomesticated hunter‐gatherers, savages and barbarians who were in dire need of civilization and transformation into decent or modern societies (Arewa, 2006a, p. 35; Stocking, 1982). Indeed, “[t]he rise of biological and evolutionary theory by the end of the eighteenth century” only helped to consolidate the linkage “between the superiority of European culture and the cultural (racial) inferiority of other peoples” (Ivison, 2002, p. 35).…”

“…Indeed, “[t]he rise of biological and evolutionary theory by the end of the eighteenth century” only helped to consolidate the linkage “between the superiority of European culture and the cultural (racial) inferiority of other peoples” (Ivison, 2002, p. 35). It also provided the basis and justification for political domination in all its coloration (Arewa, 2006a, p. 43), 4 including the messianic assumption of the white man's moral burden, that is to bring civilization to the God‐forsaken ends of the world (Mgbeoji, 2007; Oguamanam, 2004b).…”

“…It is quite logical and hardly surprising that emboldened by the mindset of its cultural (racial) superiority, Europe treated indigenous and other non‐Western cultures and local knowledge practices with derogation, especially in the colonial project. According to Arewa (2006a, p. 43), the entrenched hierarchies of cultures that located non‐Western peoples at the dregs “were ultimately linked to the nineteenth century global hierarchies of power” 6 . These power dynamics were serviced by imperial and colonial structures that facilitated the appropriation of economic values in local knowledge of colonized peoples, for instance through the colonial division of labour 7 .…”