standardizing_cultural_distinction

Special UCL Anthropology Departmental Seminar

Standardizing Cultural Distinction in the Neoliberal Politics of Heritage.
Prof. Rosemary Coombe, York University (Canada)

9 May 2012, 2-4 PM (Darryl Ford Seminar Room)

Professor Coombe's talk will look at the some of the ways in which standardization is impacting policy and agendas around cultural heritage.  Taking a Foucaultian perspective, she will look at some global policy instruments, their implementation, and the cultural implications that follow from them.

Speaker bio

Rosemary J. Coombe is a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Cultural Studies at York University in Toronto, where she teaches in the Communications and Culture Joint PhD/MA Programme, and is cross-appointed to the Osgoode Hall Faculty of Law Graduate Programme, and the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought.

Prof. Coombe's work focuses on the cultural, political, and social implications of intellectual property laws, addressing questions of the contested meanings of cultural heritage and cultural property, issues of (mis)appropriation, as well as advocacy related concerns.   Her book, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties is a legal ethnography of the ways in which intellectual property law shapes cultural politics in consumer societies.