What is Intellectual Property After?

Abstract

This chapter takes as its starting point ANT's success in overcoming descriptive resistance to dealing even-handedly with persons, things, artefacts and so forth together. It points to a situation which attempts even-handedness, resource transfer in the wake in the Biodiversity Convention, while at the same time re-inventing the very divide between Technology and Society which ANT has sought to demolish. The same may be said of procedures of recompense, and the chapter considers issues in intellectual property rights as they have been extended to the compensation-sensitive milieu of Papua New Guinea: what is intended to balance out interests creates new social divisions. It thus raises questions about processes of social differentiation. It is also intended to show the applicability of ANT models to the practical understanding of what otherwise would just seem too heterogeneous a collection of materials.