Copyright in context: Carvings, carvers, and commodities in Vanuatu

Much of the anthropology of indigenous copyright and other forms of intellectual property focuses on the ways in which indigenous understandings of reproductive entitlement diverge from the Euro-American or Western property values perceived to be enshrined within national and international legislation. I argue that in Vanuatu, local chiefs and carvers have successfully merged international and indigenous reckonings of entitlement within their understanding of copyright, simultaneously capitalizing on and blurring commonly understood conceptual, economic, and sociopolitical divides. When the people of Vanuatu are asked what copyright is, they invariably refer to the carvings and carvers involved in the ritual hierarchies of entitlement of the region of North Ambrym. I take this locally drawn analogy as my starting point to argue that concepts of "copyright," and, indeed, copyright legislation and enforcement, may be mutually constituted between spheres of exchange and understandings of entitlement, as much from the bottom up as from the top down.