The Copyright Thing Doesnt Work Here: Adinkra and Kente Cloth and Intellectual Property in Ghana

(Paperback)

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Description

In Ghana, adinkra and kente textiles derive their significance from their association with both Asante and Ghanaian cultural nationalism. Adinkra, made by stenciling patterns with black dye, and kente, a type of strip weaving, each convey the bearer's identity, social status, and even emotional state. Yet both textiles have been widely mass-produced outside Ghana without any compensation to the originators of the designs. In The Copyright Thing Doesn't Work Here, Boatema Boateng focuses on the appropriation and protection of adinkra and kente cloth in order to examine the broader implications of the use of intellectual property law to preserve folklore and other traditional forms of knowledge.

Reviews

"Boatema Boatengs use of life histories to humanize discussions of law, policy, and the exigencies of modernity is as refreshing as the wide analytical net she casts to include the North American African diaspora and reflect upon key concerns such as cultural nationalism on both sides of the Atlantic." Kwasi Konadu, City University of New York

"This fine-grained historical and ethnographic inquiry into the social life of Ghanaian textiles isquite simply and by several degrees of magnitudethe best study anywhere of how Western tropes of intellectual property fail to grasp the complexity of systems in which the traditional arts are practiced today. It tells a cautionary tale with urgent implications for IP scholarship, and it should be required reading for policy-makers in world capitals and at international organizations." Peter Jaszi, American University

Author Bio

Boatema Boateng is associate professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego.