Reproduction, creativity, restriction

Abstract

Copyright legislation is often described in relation to a series of abstract legal and economic constructs, without due attention to the ways in which it may be constituted by the persons and artifacts that it legislates over. In this article, I focus in detail on some ways in which concepts of copyright are negotiated in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. I analyze copyright in relation to the technical, social and conceptual processes of copying, restriction and creativity, respectively, in order to draw out some of the diverse social and material processes that are built into the legal category. I draw specifically on my research with Ni-Vanuatu men and women using local resources to earn money through the production of artifacts for the market – an exemplary context for the emergence of discussions about ‘indigenous' copyright legislation. In describing copyright in one very local context, I emphasize that focusing on the materiality of different property forms can enable us to more sensitively understand the differential constitution of intellectual property rights in an increasingly global arena.

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