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James LeachJames Leach is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has undertaken long term field research in Papua New Guinea, and also in the UK. James’s research interests include intellectual property and notions of creativity, knowledge production and exchange in cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary contexts, the development of new technologies and their implications for social form, and the relation of law (specifically intellectual property law) to artistic practice. He is currently working on a book addressing contemporary constructions of ‘the owner’ and ‘the creator’ in different contexts. These interests all draw upon and extend collaborative anthropological research with Reite villagers from the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. James was trained as a Social Anthropologist in Manchester (B.Soc.Sci 1992, PhD 1997). His first publications focused on kinship, creativity, place/landscape, and art in Reite. Since then, he has written on Intellectual and Cultural Property, and on interdisciplinary collaboration. He has recently been engaged in comparative research on creativity and ownership in the UK (artists’ placements in Research and Industrial contexts), in directing research on gender in Free/ Open Source Software Development, and on artist’s relation to laws of Privacy and Defamation. Two new initiatives are currently being developed: one a collaborative research project on Institutions, Audit, Value and Personal Relations in Papua New Guinea; the other, Open Objects Initiative (with Matt Ratto and Dawn Nafus) develops a critical forum for research on new technologies and design-for-redesign. James was Awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute J.B. Donne Prize in the Anthropology of Art for 1999, and The Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2004. Contact
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Selected publications‘An Anthropological Approach to Transactions involving Names and Marks, drawing on Melanesia’, in Trademarks and Brands, an Interdisciplinary Critique, (eds.) Lionel Bently, Jennifer Davis and Jane Ginsburg, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2008) 'Creativity, Subjectivity, and the Dynamic of Possessive Individualism' in Creativity and Cultural Improvisation (2007) (eds.) T. Ingold and E. Hallam, ASA Monograph 43. Oxford: Berg 'Differentiation and encompassment: A critique of Alfred Gells theory of creativity' in Thinking Through Things (2007), (eds.) Ami Henare, Martin Holbraad and Sari Wastell, London: Routledge Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Policy Support (FLOSSPOLS) D 16, Gender: Integrated Report of Finding, with Dawn Nafus and Bernhard Krieger (2006) Link Download 'Team Spirit. The Pervasive Influence of Place Generation in 'Community Building' Activities along the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea.' Journal of Material Culture 11(1 and 2): (2006) Download 'Modes of Creativity' in E. Hirsch and M. Strathern (eds) Transactions and Creations. Property Debates and the Stimulus of Melanesia (2004), Berghan Books: New York and Oxford Link Download Rationales of Ownership. Transactions and claims to ownership in contempoary Papua New Guinea (2004) Creative Land. Place and procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New
Guinea, (2003) 'Owning Creativity. Cultural Property and the Efficacy of Kastom on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea' Journal of Material Culture 8(2): 123-143 (2003) Download 'Drum and voice: aesthetics and social process on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 8, 713-734 (2002) Download 'Multiple Expectations of Ownership' Melanesian Law Journal Volume 27 (2000) Article Download For a more full listing click here. |
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