Arenas of the Intangible: Actors at the crossroads of divergent intellectual property norms in Africa
Project management: Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara
The project examined the historical development of intellectual property rights in Africa and their implementation by local actors in the context of increasing global mobility. It traced how the legal framework of intellectual property is articulated in the field, how local actors implement these legal norms and how they change when the actors work with them and adapt them to local practices and their interests. The project analyzed the field of tension in which the internationally harmonized legal norms for the protection of intellectual property find themselves when they encounter established local legal forms and the local sense of justice. Specifically, the aim was to find out to what extent the various intellectual property norms (e.g. authors’ rights, copyright, patents, trademark law, folklore, protection of local knowledge) have been able to establish themselves, in which local contexts they begin to play a role, and which complex local networks of relationships are involved that play a role in their more or less successful implementation.
As “products of modernity” or “traveling models”, trademark law and copyright are finding their way into African societies in an ongoing process. In order to understand this process, it is important to examine the conditions of the effectiveness of norms in the reality of social relations. If the rules are perceived as coming from outside, the individual actors follow them only insofar as these rules are of direct benefit to them and demand that the state effectively protect their rights. However, in order to do this, the state would have to rely on their cooperation. At the same time, the representatives of the state do not necessarily follow the rules introduced, as they are also individual actors with their own interests. In this respect, a tension arises that can only develop productively if the actors involved recognize the meaningfulness of the norms. In this respect, the justification narratives associated with the introduction of intellectual property easily come into conflict with the interests and knowledge gap of the actors or appear advantageous to them. By selectively adopting only certain normative components, dynamic, constantly changing normative orders characterized by intrinsic contradictions emerge.
The study was conducted from three perspectives: a diachronic, an actor-centered and a transnational perspective. These three perspectives were developed through literature analysis and, above all, field research on the ground in Africa. Studying the local perspective through “close participation” and interactive interviews enables ethnologists to capture the actors’ point of view, their experience of norms, their motives and the reasons for their actions.
The results of the field research show that the different pre-colonial histories and the colonial and post-colonial governments shaped by certain ideologies have strongly influenced current peculiarities in dealing with cultural assets in the countries studied (Cameroon and Mali). Overall, the results point to a discrepancy between norm and reality (or practice), particularly with regard to different discourses on piracy. They also indicate that the multi-layered experiences of local actors play a significant role. This means that the state can no longer be regarded as a neutral instrument for implementing norms, but that both state and often well-informed local actors act according to their own socially inscribed logics and interests.
The most important events in this project:
Workshop: Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler, State regulations and Local Praxis (with young scholars from Africa and Germany), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, July 14-18 and 27-28, 2014.
Symposium: Who owns the praise? Oral literature, cultural norms and rights in artistic productions in Africa (on the 60th birthday of Mamadou Diawara, organized by Ute Röschenthaler and Matthias Grubera), Lautertal, 9 May 2014.
Conference: How does transnational mobility transform cultural production? Informality and remediation in African popular cultures (organized by Ute Röschenthaler, Alessandro Jedlowski, Patrick Oloko and Ibrahima Wane), Point South in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 4-10 January 2013.
International Conference: Intellectual Property, Normative Orders and Globalization, Part 2, (organized by Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler), in cooperation with ZIAF, Forschungskolleg Bad Homburg, 2-4 June 2011.
International Workshop: Intellectual Property, Normative Orders and Globalization (organized by Mamadou Diawara and Ute Röschenthaler), in cooperation with ZIAF, Forschungskolleg Bad Homburg, 2-4 December 2010.
The most important publications in this project:
*Röschenthaler, Ute: “Copying, branding, and the ethical implications of rights in immaterial cultural goods”, in: N. A. Mhiripiri and T. Chari (eds.): Media Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Digital Age, Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 2017, pp. 101-121.
*Röschenthaler, Ute and Mamadou Diawara (eds.): Copyright Africa: How Intellectual Property, Media and Markets Transform Immaterial Cultural Goods. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2016.
Diawara, Mamadou and Ute Röschenthaler (eds.): Competing Norms: State Regulations and Local Practice (Normative Orders vol. 19), Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2016.
*Diawara, Mamadou : “‘La bibliothèque coloniale’, la propriété intellectuelle et la romance du développement en Afrique”, Canadian Journal of African Studies48(3), 2014, pp. 445-461.
Diawara, Mamadou: “Justice in whose name: The domestication of copyright in Sub-Saharan Africa”, in: Gunther Hermann (ed.): Justice and Peace. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Relationship Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus Verlag, 2013, pp. 140-162.
people in this project:
Project management / contact person
Diawara, Mamadou, Prof. Dr.
Project staff
Röschenthaler, Ute, Associate Prof. Dr.