The thesis is an exploration of how indigenous knowledge has emerged as a subject within Australian intellectual property law. It uses the context of copyright law to illustrate this development. The work presents an analysis of the political, social and cultural intersections that influence legal possibilities and effect practical expectations of the law in this area. The dilemma of protecting indigenous knowledge resonates with tensions that characterise intellectual property as a whole. The metaphysical dimensions of intellectual property have always been insecure but these difficulties come to the fore with the identification of boundaries and markers that establish property in indigenous subject matter. While intellectual property law is always managing difference, the politics of law are more transparent when managing indigenous concerns. Rather than assume the naturalness of the category of indigenous knowledge within law, this work interrogates the politics of its construction precisely as a ???special??? category. Employing a multidisciplinary methodology, engaging theories of governmental rationality that draws upon the scholarship of Michel Foucault to appreciate strategies of managing and directing knowledge, the thesis considers how the politics of law is infused by cultural, political, bureaucratic and individual factors. Key elements in Australia that have pushed the law to consider expressions of indigenous knowledge in intellectual property can be located in changing political environments, governmental intervention through strategic reports, cultural sensitivity articulated in case law and innovative instances of individual agency. The intersection of these elements reveals a dynamic that exerts influence in the shape the law takes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/187905 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Anderson, Jane Elizabeth, Law, Faculty of Law, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Law |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Jane Elizabeth Anderson, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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