By: Christopher Kelty

Christopher Kelty — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:08:04 +0000

thanks kavita, i agree that “give up their property” is probably not the right way to express it. Having worked extensively through the various approaches to property and gifts in the anthropology literature, it’s hard to find the right tack on this–it just gets more coonfusing. I wouldn’t conceive of it in epochal terms though. Property is very much conceived in terms of relations today, but only in some idioms, as when economists and lawyers speak of property as a “bundle of rights” and not as any tangible thing per se. Rights are relations to persons and things (or persons and persons, or increasingly things and things), and there is always a slippage in legal and economic language between a system that distinguishes according to rights granted by a sovereign and natural rights, even today I think. What’s hard I think is determining whether there is actually a misrecognition happening here (as in a classic misrecognition of the relations of production or a more subtle misrecognition of the nature of rights). I like to think that when people insist that they own a thing (i.e. this CD is Mine) they are expressing something rather than misrecognizing a legal fact (i.e. that they actually don’t own it, but own a piece of plastic that implies a contractual relation with a copyright holder). But what exactly are they expressing… I think they are expressing something more than just hyper-individualized consumer mis-recognition of the social relations of production (which certainly happens in many cases), and might be expressing a desire to make that thing public in whatever way they want…

By: kavita

kavita — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:02:03 +0000

Chris, I agree with much of this, obviously. But I would push to further reformulate the last sentence [”to give up their property”]. In the 17th century property was not actually a thing [either to be hoarded or given away]; rather, property was a relation. [Mostly, “relations to” land, which is a thing - thus the slippage in the use of the term, until the full flowering of commodification in the following 2 centuries, which made it seem natural to see relations as things… but that’s a longer story]. Anyway, I am playing with the idea that in fact this older notion of property as a relation (not a thing) is what’s going on in this “giving away.” When people ask you this question they seem to be fixated on the thing (software, content, music, etc) as the precious property-thing which must be treated in a proprietary manner. But of course if we look at the social relations around that thing (as you do in your work), we see that people are not just giving it away (no “pure” gifting); there are complex exchange relations, as there are in gift economies. [which is another story, and one that you’ve helped open up before.]
cheers,
– Kavita
PS - great site ! congrats on the book!!

Comments on: Two Bits at Northeastern

By: Christopher Kelty

By: kavita