Christen, Kimberley --- "Balancing Act: The Creation and Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge and Culture Inside and Outside the Legal Frame" [2012] ELECD 701; in Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam (eds), "Transnational Culture in the Internet Age" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Transnational Culture in the Internet Age

Editor(s): Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857931337

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Balancing Act: The Creation and Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge and Culture Inside and Outside the Legal Frame

Author(s): Christen, Kimberley

Number of pages: 30

Extract:

14. Balancing act: the creation and
circulation of indigenous knowledge
and culture inside and outside the
legal frame
Kimberly Christen

14.1 INTRODUCTION

The recent development of Web 2.0 technologies grounded in user-generated
content and bottom-up exhibition and display modes has produced a
dynamic platform for, among other uses, sharing and creating cultural mate-
rials. This newly animated digital terrain is not however, without its uneven
landscapes and microclimates of management. Indeed, neither a "flat earth"
nor a "global village" model work for understanding the diverse circulation
routes for, or control over, the flow of information, ideas, and materials
as bits and bytes of a new digital landscape that includes overlapping and
oftentimes contentious intellectual property rights regimes. This new techno-
logical terrain holds significant potential for knowledge production and dis-
semination, but at the same time there are distinct challenges and pitfalls for
indigenous peoples attempting to integrate, adapt, and make anew techno-
logical­cultural systems that fit their diverse needs, complex political situa-
tions and histories of exclusion, dispossession, and legal disenfranchisement.
Existing legal norms are inadequate to address the range of needs and
divergent local and national situations of indigenous peoples as they forge
new technological relationships that alter the contours of entrenched legal
concepts such as property and ownership. Critics and skeptics who point
to the essentializing and/or romanticizing nature of some indigenous claims
to cultural property, cultural heritage, traditional knowledge (TK), and
traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), miss and downplay the differences
...