10.6092/issn.2038-3460/16868
application/pdf
2038-3460
16868
2
en
Maurizio Teli
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi and Martha Woodmansee (eds.), Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property. Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective, The University of Chicago Press, 2011
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
2
Book Reviews
2011-12-29
2023-04-28
2011-12-29
2023-07-06
133-136
TS
Maurizio Teli
2011/12/29
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/16868
133
Fondazione <ahref, Trento
2038-3460
2
en
136
Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi and Martha Woodmansee (eds.), Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property. Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective, The University of Chicago Press, 2011
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/16868/15842
2
                                                          TECNOSCIENZA – 2 (2)        133




                                               IP is not only a legal issue or a
 Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi and Martha    political and economical arena for
         Woodmansee (eds)                  social struggles, as exemplified by the
Making and Unmaking Intellectual           Free and Open Source Software
Property. Creative Production in           advocates or by initiatives like
 Legal and Cultural Perspective            Creative Commons, but is primarily a
                                           promising point of view for
2011, The University of Chicago Press,
                                           observing the contemporary inter-
              466 pp.
                                           relations between law (and the
                                           processes of legal production) and
             Maurizio Teli                 the results of contemporary research
                                           on the processes of knowledge
      (Fondazione <ahref, Trento)          production (p. 2).
                                               To STS scholars, the IP arena is
                                           able to show how the understanding
    There are many reasons why you,        of cultural, scientific, and techno-
a reader of Tecnoscienza, can be           logical production, which STS
intrigued by the book edited by            researches, journals, and books,
Biagioli, Jaszi, and Woodmansee, and       disseminate, is widely under-
many more reasons why I, as a reader       estimated in the construction of the
of Tecnoscienza and as a researcher        legal artefacts that rule knowledge
interested in intellectual property        production in contemporary society.
(IP) issues in contemporary society,           Therefore, IP is relevant not only
have found the book extremely              (but mainly) as a global politics issue,
engaging and powerful in clarifying        a point of convergence of different
issues and opening up new research         social movements, concerned with
possibilities.                             software licences, patents regulation,
    In this short review, I will clarify   environmental issues, or “indigenous
these reasons proposing the different      people” rights, but also as a testbed
readings of the book that I find of        for scholarship ability to influence
interest for a young researcher facing     diffused knowledge on concepts like
IP issues for the first time, for          authorship, personhood, or know-
scholars in the IP field, for political    ledge production.
activists engaging with IP in their            In particular what the essays part
different claims and actions, and for      of the book show is that the cultural
all of us, members of the STS              and legal aspects of IP (the subtitle
community.                                 main point) are irrevocably intert-
    There are two main reasons to          wined in the practices of producing
read the book that are directly            IP artefacts, IP-connected political
recalled by the title and the subtitle     claims, and IP research, and such
of this edited work: the focus on          comprehensive         perspective     is
intellectual property and the stress       carefully able to “unmake” IP
on a legal and cultural perspective.       discussing how it is historically,
134   BOOK REVIEWS




      anthropologically, and legally, “ma-      arguing for the possibility that the
      de”. The centrality of the practical      socially distributed critiques of IP
      production of scientific knowledge, a     regime are potentially being re-
      consolidated part of the STS              worked by the USA legal profession,
      panorama at least since the               through the stress on invention and
      publication of Pickering’s edited         authorship as a work of transfor-
      book on science, culture, and             mation more than one of creation by
      practices (1992), is the unspoken         the genius of the individual.
      intellectual background of the essays         Jaszi conclusion opens up the
      included in the book I am reviewing       reading of the book that is more
      for you.                                  interesting for scholars engaged with
          My reading of the “legal and          IP as a research issue, the almost ever
      cultural perspective” gets streng-        present critique of “possessive
      thened if you approach the book as a      individualism” (Macpherson 1962) as
      novice on IP issues, following the        the basis of contemporary IP regime.
      structure the editors gave to the         Possessive individualism stresses how
      book, that unfolds collecting the         the individual skills and abilities are
      twenty-three     essays     in    “five   owned by the individual herself, who
      argumentative clusters”: the practical    owes anything to society for them.
      production of IP material artefacts,      Through the criticism of possessive
      from patent specifications to patent      individualism, the book provides a
      drawings; a discussion of the             critique of liberalism as the basis for
      “commons” and of “communities” as         contemporary IP (and as a political
      showing contemporary IP western           vision). Almost the entire book is
      base and as opening up perspectives       dedicated to show how possessive
      for overcoming contemporary IP-           individualism is accommodated into
      based power structures; a stress on       the legal discourse, through the
      IP “crimes” as lenses through which       discursive transformation of the role
      the political roots of IP are made        of authors and inventors, changes of
      visible and questioned; the trajectory    the description of practices in many
      of objects among different categories     social worlds (es. Biagioli, 25-41),
      of IP law, showing their historical       from agriculture to academic work
      discontinuity and the porosities of       (es. Kevles, 253-268), and the
      the IP system itself; a conclusive part   insufficiency of an individualistic per-
      on how collaborative practices are        spective to understand the comple-
      made possible by the IP system and        xity of authorship and use of cultural
      how they contemporarily create the        products in non-Western countries
      basis for overcoming the actual           and cultures (es. Coombe, 79-98).
      conceptualization of IP itself.               Connected to the unveiling of
          The conclusive chapter by Jaszi is    possessive individualism as the basis
      summarizing these possibilities in its    of the IP regime is the possible
      title, Is There Such a Thing as           reading that is going to be interesting
      Postmodern Copyright? (413-427),          for political activists in their activity.
                                                         TECNOSCIENZA – 2 (2)        135




Such reading is the one that, through     theless, among these fews we can find
different lenses, uncovers how the IP     interesting case studies, like the story
concepts and enforcement at the           of the GNU GPL software license
global level are part of processes of     (Kelty, 133-148) and its ability to
reinforcement of the centrality of the    show how law and ethics are the
western countries and of some             results of practices that confront
groups of people or groups of             different       discursive      regimes;
companies in the western world            promising methodological persp-
itself. Such kind of political discri-    ective, like Lenoir and Giannella’s
mination has taken and is taking          (359-384) use of patent data in an
place      through     the   processes    STS quantitative approach to
regulating the “unauthored” (Perl-        understanding technological plat-
man, 115-132), through the con-           forms; interesting analysis of contem-
struction of the “pirates” figure         porary scientific practices, like
(Liang, p. 167-180; Woodmanse, p.         Murray’s (399-412) discussion of the
181-198), through the exclusion of        changes in the science economies
multiple authorship in the character      connected to the emergence of
of the single inventor or author          patents siding publiccations as
(Swanson, 41-54), and through the         credits for the academic work. In
facilitation    of    some    practical   particular, Lenoir and Giannella’s
activities, like sampling in music        contribution can be stimulating for
(Dicola, 235-249).                        contemporary STS debates because it
    Bringing together these possible      connects to recent trends in intro-
perspectives and readings, the book       ducing specific forms of quantitative
is pointing out clearly the gap           data analysis in the STS field, e.g. the
between the understanding of know-        ones on Digital Methods (Rogers,
ledge production and circulation          2010).
developed by contemporary scholar-            In conclusion, Making and
ship and the actual translation and       Unmaking Intellectual Property is a
assumptions of the IP regime on the       recommended reading for anyone,
same processes.                           young and experienced scholars,
    Actually, this is one of the main     political activists or STS researchers,
point of interest in the book for us as   who is interested in the co-evolution
STS scholars, because we will find in     and the co-production of IP
it a great example of opening “the        artefacts, presumptions, politics, and
black box” (Latour 1987) of IP,           practices.
unfolding its modernist presump-
tions through fascinating stories of
hybrid configuration of sociomaterial     References
networks and practices, although
only a minority of the contributions      Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action,
are written by STS scholars or refer         Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
                                             Press
directly to STS literature. Never-
136   BOOK REVIEWS




      Macpherson, C. B. (1962) The Political         changes it differently for every
          Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hob-   person, because the world in which
          bes to Locke, Oxford, Oxford University
          Press                                      we live is never the same world for
      Pickering, A. (1992) Science as Practice and   every individual. The example of
          Culture, Chicago, The University of        digital technology is enlightening in
          Chicago Press                              this regard. In the past thirty years,
      Rogers, R. (2010) Internet Research: The
          Question of Method, in “Journal of
                                                     the array of correlated and
          Information Technology and Policy”, 7      complementary technological innova-
          (2/3)                                      tions known as the Internet has
                                                     produced conspicuous changes for
                                                     human beings. But these changes
                                                     have not been equally radical in all
                                                     spheres of life. Consider two spheres
                         ***                         which are substantially different: the
                                                     manufacture of automobiles and the
                                                     production of music (but also its
                                                     consumption).
                                                         The entry of Internet into
                    Ulrich Dolata                    automobile manufacture has brought
         Wandel durch Technik. Eine                  changes in, for example, the
          Theorie soziotechnischer                   circulation of information between
              Transformation                         the manufacturer and its suppliers, or
                                                     between the manufacturer and its
      (Change by means of technology: A theory
                                                     sales network. In an era of the large-
        of sociotechnological transformation)        scale relocation of production and
              2011, Campus, 170 pp.                  the massive spread of outsourcing,
                                                     the Internet has become a crucial
                                                     resource for the operation of the
                    Paolo Volonté                    automotive industry. But, despite its
                (Politecnico di Milano)              enormous impact, the Internet has
                                                     not provoked radical transformations
                                                     in the sector. Instead, it has become
          The face of modern society is              an important tool with which to
      determined not only by the                     support the car industry’s existing
      technologies that we use but also by           organizational, institutional, and
      the changes that they undergo. Our             structural bases.
      lives have been marked by cars for a               Something very different has
      century but the digital revolution is          occurred in the field of music produ-
      now changing them more than any                ction. Until the end of the 1990s the
      social movement has ever been able             sector was dominated, from the
      to do. However, it is not doing so for         technological point of view, by the
      everybody in the same way. Tech-               compact disc. Because this device
      nology changes the world but                   was not easily duplicated, it
