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The Entextualization of Ayurveda as Intellectual Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2012

Matthew Wolfgram
Matthew Wolfgram*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article documents the practices of pharmaceutical creativity in Ayurveda, focusing in particular on how practitioners appropriate multiple sources to innovate medical knowledge. Drawing on research in linguistic anthropology on the social circulation of discourse—a process called entextualization—I describe how the ways in which Ayurveda practitioners innovate medical knowledge confounds the dichotomous logic of intellectual property (IP) rights discourse, which opposes traditional collective knowledge and modern individual innovation. While it is clear that these categories do not comprehend the complex nature of creativity in Ayurveda, I also use the concept of entextualization to describe how recent historical shifts in the circulation of discourse have caused a partial entailment of this opposition between the individual and the collectivity. Ultimately, I argue that the method exemplified in this article of tracking the social circulation of medical discourse highlights both the empirical complexity of so-called traditional creativity, and the politics of imposing the categories of IP rights discourse upon that creativity, situated as it often is, at the margins of the global economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 19 , Special Issue 3: Intangible Property at the Periphery: Expanding Enclosure in the 21st Century , August 2012 , pp. 313 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2012

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