Project at AIAS

My project builds on ethnographic studies by my ERC research team (2010-15), which addressed comparatively how digitisation and digital media are transforming musical practices in the developing and developed world. It involves analysing the ethnographic material to address debates at the intersection of music, anthropology, digital culture and legal studies. Initial debates concerned the crisis caused to copyright industries by digital technologies; they assumed that the norms enshrined in Western intellectual property law are universal and beneficial and should be extended to the global South. However, counter-arguments have developed in anthropology and legal studies contesting the universality of IP law and arguing that its impact on developing countries can be deleterious. This critical paradigm draws on scholarship from the global South and calls for attention to the diverse values, economic systems and concepts of authorship manifest in cultural production in the developing world. Music is a good cultural form through which to pursue these challenges, and my aim is to bring the ethnographic material systematically to bear on them, with the potential for both intellectual and policy impact.