ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to establish the proposition that intellectual property rights locate meaning and value within a market context. It argues that while being a place of potential political significance, in the sense that it might offer a bulwark against the creeping propertization of everything, the value of the public domain/cultural commons has proved illusory. The book aims to develop a theoretical concept of cultural property/heritage that frees itself from Western tropes based on the Cartesian dualisms of nature and culture, tangible and intangible, moveable and immoveable. It takes forward this theoretical analysis by investigating the Western obsessions with the nature/culture distinction, tangibility, immovability, monumentality, conservation and authenticity that have dominated thinking about cultural property/heritage. The loss of any discourse about balance in copyright law obviously enlarges copyright’s potential as a tool of cultural domination and homogenization.
