Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-n2sc8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-07T07:22:26.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intangible Cultural Property, Tangible Databases, Visible Debates: The Sawau Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2009

Guido Carlo Pigliasco
Guido Carlo Pigliasco
Affiliation:
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Intellectual property claims have long been sustained in a way that is now under severe scrutiny. Pacific Island countries continue to face unauthorized uses of their traditional knowledge and practices. In response, international agencies in collaboration with Pacific Island countries are promoting sui generis forms of protection. The Institute of Fijian Language and Culture's Cultural Mapping Programme looks beyond ongoing debates about indigenous collection and digitization of intangible heritage to promote sui generis protection measures in lieu of western intellectual property law. Supported by an Institute grant, the unfolding Sawau Project creates an archive of sites, stories, and shared memories of the Sawau people of Beqa, an island iconic in Fiji for its firewalking practice (vilavilairevo). Advocating a form of social intervention in situ, The Sawau Project has become a collaborative tool to encourage digital documentation, linkages, and institutional collaborations among Fijian communities and their allies to negotiate and promote alternative forms of protection.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 16 , Special Issue 3: Pacific Discourses About Cultural Heritage and Its Protection , August 2009 , pp. 255 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banks, Marcus, and Morphy, Howard, eds. Rethinking Visual Anthropology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Boyle, James. “Foreword: The Opposite of Property?” Law and Contemporary Problems 66, no. 1–2 (2003): 1–74.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael F. “Can Culture Be Copyrighted?” Current Anthropology 39, no. 2 (1998): 193–206.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael F. “Heritage Trouble: Recent Work on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Property.” International Journal of Cultural Property 12 (2005): 40–61.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael F.Who Owns Native Culture? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Christen, Kimberly. “Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons.” International Journal of Cultural Property 12 (2005): 315–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, James. “Looking Several Ways: Anthropology and Native Heritage in Alaska.” Current Anthropology 45, no. 1 (2004): 5–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, James. “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel, and the Disciplining of Anthropology.” In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science, edited by Gupta, A. and Ferguson, J., 185–222. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Coombe, Rosemary. “Cultural Rights and Intellectual Property Debates.” Human Rights Dialogue (Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs) (Spring 2005): 34–36.Google Scholar
Coombe, Rosemary. “Fear, Hope, and Longing for the Future of Authorship and Revitalized Public Domain in Global Regimes of Intellectual Property.” DePaul Law Review 52 (2003): 1171–91.Google Scholar
De Burlo, Chuck. “Cultural Resistance and Ethnic Tourism on South Pentecost, Vanuatu.” In Tourism and Indigenous People, edited by Butler, R. and Hinch, T., 257–76. London: International Thomson Business, 1996.Google Scholar
Geismar, Haidy. “Copyright in Context: Carvings, Carvers, and Commodities in Vanuatu.” American Ethnologist 32, no. 3 (2005): 437–59.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Faye. “Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media.” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 365–82.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Faye. “Native Intelligence.” In Visions of Culture: A History of Visual Anthropology, edited by Ruby, J. and Banks, M.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, f.c.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Faye, Abu-Lughod, Lila, and Larkin, Brian. “Introduction.” In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, edited by Ginsburg, F., Abu-Lughod, L., and Larkin, B., 1–36. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, Laura. “Image and Instrumentality in a Xavante Politics of Existential Recognition: The Public Outreach Work of Eténhiritipa Pimentel Barbosa.” American Ethnologist 32, no. 4 (2005): 622–41.Google Scholar
Gregory, Sam. “Transnational Storytelling: Human Rights, WITNESS, and Video Advocacy.” Visual Anthropology Review 108, no. 1 (2006): 195–204.Google Scholar
Hennessy, Kate. “A Ituva Ni Vakadidike E Sawau: The Sawau Project DVD.” Visual Anthropology Review 25, no. 1 (2009): 90–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Intangible Heritage as a Metacultural Production.” Museum International 56, no. 1 (2004): 45–65.Google Scholar
Kurin, Richard. “Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in the 2003 UNESCO Convention: A Critical Appraisal.” Museum International 56, no. 2 (2004): 66–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lassiter, Luke E.The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Leach, James. “Modes of Creativity.” In Transactions and Creations: Property Debates and the Stimulus of Melanesia, edited by Hirsch, E. and Strathern, M., 151–75. New York: Berghahn, 2004.Google Scholar
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004.Google Scholar
Lindstrom, Lamont. “Traditional Cultural Policy in Melanesia (Kastom Polisi long Kastom).” In Culture, Kastom, Tradition: Developing Cultural Policy in Melanesia, edited by Lindstrom, L. and White, G., 67–81. Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1994.Google Scholar
Lucas-Schloetter, Agnès. “Folklore.” In Indigenous Heritage and Intellectual Property: Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, edited by von Lewinski, S., 257–377. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2004.Google Scholar
Mead, Aroha. Personal communication, Call of the Earth Llamada de la Tierra, June 6, 2005, Suva.Google Scholar
Nemani, Sipiriano. Personal communication to the author May 10, 2005, Suva.Google Scholar
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. “Critical Commentary: Native Anthropologists.” American Ethnologist 11, no. 3 (1984): 584–86.Google Scholar
Pigliasco, Guido Carlo. The Custodians of the Gift: Intangible Cultural Property and Commodification of the Fijian Firewalking Ceremony. PhD thesis, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2007.Google Scholar
Pigliasco, Guido Carlo. “Local Voices, Transnational Echoes: Protecting Intangible Cultural Heritage in Oceania.” In Sharing Cultures 2009: International Conference on Intangible Heritage, edited by Lira, S., Amoêda, R., Pinheiro, C., Pinheiro, J., and Oliveira, F., 121–27. Barcelos, Portugal: Green Lines Institute, 2009.Google Scholar
Pigliasco, Guido Carlo. “Sorry, We Branded Ourselves Long Ago: Cultural Property and Commodification of Fijian Firewalking.” Submitted to American Anthropologist on May 17, 2009 f.c.Google Scholar
Pigliasco, Guido Carlo. “Visual Anthropology and Jurisprudence: The Sawau Project.” Anthropology News 48, no. 1 (2007): 65.Google Scholar
Pigliasco, Guido Carlo. “Voyaging through Epistemological Boundaries: Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection in Fiji and Oceania.” In Social Movements Between Cultural Heritage and the State, edited by Rio, K. and Hviding, E.. Oxford: Sean Kingston, in press.Google Scholar
Pigliasco, Guido Carlo, and Colatanavanua, Felix. A Ituvatuva Ni Vakadidike E Sawau (The Sawau Project), DVD. Suva, Fiji: Institute of Fijian Language and Culture, 2005.Google Scholar
Qereqeretabua, Misiwaini. “Cultural Mapping: An Approach to Safeguarding Indigenous Fijians' Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Paper presented at the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO Training Course for Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, Japan, January 21–26, 2008.Google Scholar
Regenvanu, Ralph. Personal communication to the author March 26, 2009, Honolulu.Google Scholar
Riles, Annelise. “Law as Object.” In Law and Empire in the Pacific: Fiji and Hawai‘i, edited by Merry, S. E. and Brenneis, D., 187–212. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Robins, Steven. “Comment to Adam Kuper ‘The Return of the Native.’” Current Anthropology 44, no. 3 (2003): 398–99.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. “What Is Anthropological Enlightenment? Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century.” Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999): i–xxiii.Google Scholar
Silverman, Erik Kline. “Cannibalizing, Commodifying or Creating Culture? Power and Art in Sepik River Tourism.” In Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands, edited by Lockwood, V., 339–57. New York: Prentice-Hall, 2004.Google Scholar
Solomon, Maui. Personal communication to the author July 29, 2006, Honolulu.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn. “Introduction: Rationales of Ownership.” In Rationales of Ownership: Ethnographic Studies of Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, edited by Kalinoe, L. K. and Leach, J., 1–12. Wantage, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2001.Google Scholar
Torrie, Jeremy. “An Epic Battle of Whales, Rabbits and Warriors.” Cultural Survival Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2005): 16–17.Google Scholar
Tuhiwai-Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books, 1999.Google Scholar
Wilson, Pamela, and Stewart, Michelle. “Indigeneity and Indigenous Media on the Global Stage.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics, edited by Wilson, P. and Stewart, M., 1–35. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.Google Scholar