> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: Annapurna Mamidupudi & Vivek Oak > Reference:: https://garlandmag.com/loop/who-owns-craft-knowledge/ > Date:: 2023-08-24 > Tags:: #warp/talk #India #knowledge > WeftLinks:: [[Reinventing the Wheel]] > [!SUMMARY] Summary > Craft process cannot be represented only by naming. Ownership of the knowledge rests in the hands of the makers themselves. ### Highlights Today we learn about a new publication [Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property](https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5609/Ownership-of-KnowledgeBeyond-Intellectual-Property), edited by Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi and Marius Buning. This book problematises the idea of ownership of knowledge by distinguishing the naming of practices such as intangible cultural heritage and their embodiment in use and performance. This volume makes us think again about the nature of abstraction that seeks to distil complex craft practices into words for a book, screen or policy. It opens up a critical question for knowledge workers in the crafts. The talk was delivered by two of the authors. Annapurna Mamidipudi was trained as an engineer in electronics and communications, in Manipal, in South India. She has set up an NGO that supported vulnerable craft livelihoods and worked with artisan production for nearly two decades in South India. She has trained herself in natural dyeing techniques that were slowly becoming extinct, and actively assisted production processes of artisan groups. Currently she is employed at Max Planck Institute for History of Science. As reflected in her chapter on Carnatic music, she is also the producer of a musical opera, Pallaki Seva Prabandhamu, based on an 18cth Tamil poem. Vivek S. Oak is a fellow at the Handloom Futures Trust in Hyderabad, India. Annapurna spoke to the uneasy conflation of knowing and owning. Intellectual property regimes abstract craft techniques as names or designs. This overlooks the embodied knowledge that is often critical in the craft process. An example is the use of smell in indigo dyeing. For Annapurna, the nexus of science and law locks in a particular abstract regime for "owning" certain knowledge which overlooks its necessary experience in practice. Vivek presented two tables that difference degrees to which knowledge was alienable. He argued that scholarship tends to reduce the many different ways of knowing to the more abstract and nameable qualities. There was some discussion about the political framework in which this work might be situated. Marx's analysis of the relation between capital and labour has parallels in the way the abstraction of work can serve dominant class interests. But labour for Marx was a largely industrial activity that required little skill and was at the service of machines. We considered alternative forms of solidarity such as the European guild or the Asian identity of the master. This was left as an open question for further consideration. There was also questioning of "ownership" as a singular quality. It it is important to consider different forms of ownership, not just what a court decides on. It can be customary as deemed by a traditional community. This talk spoke to the heart of the enterprise of a "knowledge house". It is important reminder that the concepts we use to understand crafts will always have a limit. It is critically important to have voices of makers to reflect the experiential dimension of craft process. <iframe title="Ownership of Knowledge" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oMgBXLnJKuI?feature=oembed" height="113" width="200" style="aspect-ratio: 1.76991 / 1; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe>