Reification of the Intellect: Historical Sociology of Intellectual Property

• In Event: 540 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Knowledge Economies and Commerce

Abstract

This paper attempts to establish a perspective on historical sociology of intellectual property in a way to understand the processes that transformed knowledge, information and intellect into property. This task paves the way for situating intellectual property protection in a sociological inquiry with an investigation of the relations of production they are embedded in. This way of contemplation on the issue challenges the major tendency in the literature that focus either on intellectual property categories themselves or the consequences of intellectual property protection. Therefore, a new area of historical sociology of intellectual property, which focuses on the history of social transformations with regard to this concept, provides insights for scrutinizing contemporary intellectual property regime. In this framework, by revising the previous attempts to historicize intellectual property by addressing their unit of analysis which situates intellectual property either into a business based economic unit or a national economic unit; I highlight the relationship between the emergence and development of intellectual property and the emergence and development of historical capitalism. I conclude by reassessing the critical literature’s perspective on intellectual property rights, which evaluates the contemporary global regime as a mere exploitation of the local resources by the capital on a global scale. Rather, global intellectual property enforcement not only is a symbol for new means of exploitation, but also reflection of a deeper transformation in which the capital penetrates to and governs the areas that were not included into the process of accumulation before.

Author

• Nazan Bedirhanoglu, State University of New York-Binghamton