Ownership and Appropriation

In a world of finite resources, expanding populations, and widening structural inequalities, the ownership of things is increasingly contested. Not only are the commons being rapidly enclosed and privatized, but the very idea of what can be owned is expanding, generating conflicts over the ownership of resources, ideas, culture, people, and even parts of people. Understanding processes of ownership and appropriation is not only central to anthropological theorizing but also has major practical applications, for policy, legislative development and conflict resolution. Ownership and Appropriationsignificantly extends anthropology's long-term concern with property by focusing on everyday notions and acts of owning and appropriating. The chapters document the relationship between ownership, subjectivities and personhood; they demonstrate the critical consequences of materiality and immateriality on what is owned; and they examine the social relations of property. By approaching ownership as social communication and negotiation the text points to a more dynamic and processual understanding of property, ownership and appropriation.

Veronica Strang is Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Auckland. Mark Busse is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Auckland.

Foreword  Chris Hann (Max Planck Institute)    Introduction  Mark Busse (University of Auckland) and Veronica Strang (University of Auckland)    PART ONE – SUBJECTS, PERSONHOOD AND PEOPLEHOOD    Chapter 1.  Sharing, Stealing and Borrowing Simultaneously  Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge)    Chapter 2.  On Having Achieved Appropriation: the anak berprestasi of Kepulauan Riau  Nicholas Long (University of Cambridge)    Chapter 3.  Appropriating Authentic Practice: competing discourses of ‘being there’, ‘having been there’ and ‘virtually being there’  Tamara Kohn (University of Melbourne)     Chapter 4.  Dreaming in Thread: from ritual to art and property(s) between   Katie Glaskin (University of Western Australia)    Chapter 5.  The Legal Geographies of Cultural Rights: community subjects and their traditions  Rosemary Coombe (York University)    PART TWO – MATERIALITY AND IMMATERIALITY    Chapter 6.  Cultural Appropriation  Taihakurei (Eddie) Durie (Ngati Kauwhata, Aotearoa)    Chapter 7.  The Double Movement of Property Rights and Rental Regimes in Papua New Guinea  Colin Filer (Australian National University) and Michael Lowe (Australian National University)    Chapter 8.  Fluid Forms: owning water in Australia  Veronica Strang (University of Auckland)    Chapter 9.  Appropriating Fish, Appropriating Fishermen: tradable permits, natural resources and existential uncertainty  Monica Minnegal (University of Melbourne), Peter Dwyer (University of Melbourne)    Chapter 10.  Can’t Find Nothing on the Radio: access to the radio frequency spectrum in Nepal  Michael Wilmore (University of Adelaide), Pawan Prakash Upreti (Equal Access Nepal)    PART THREE – OWNERSHIP AS SOCIAL COMMUNICATION    Chapter 11.  The Village That Wasn’t There: the narrative appropriation of a tourist destination  Adam Kaul (Augustana College)    Chapter 12.  Formed and Forming: the articulations of Yolngu art in its contexts  Howard Morphy (Australian National University)Index