RITUAL AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

This article discusses the existence of property rights in ritual symbolism, focusing particularly on disputes over these rights. A universe of such rights is comparable in certain respects to a prestige economy such as the Kula system. They both manifest the same conception of property as a symbolic representation of persons. Both involve contests for the control of high-status forms of property, between political actors competing for prestige and legitimacy. Some illustrations are given of the uses of this perspective in analysing processes of change in ritual systems.

[1]  P. Bourdieu.  Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste* , 2018, Food and Culture.

[2]  P. Geary.  Sacred commodities: the circulation of medieval relics , 1986 .

[3]  F. Barth,et al.  Ritual and knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea , 1977 .

[4]  J. Parry.  Money and the morality of exchange: On the moral perils of exchange , 1989 .

[5]  P. Bohannan,et al.  The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy , 1959, The Journal of Economic History.

[6]  A. Appadurai.  The social life of things: Introduction: commodities and the politics of value , 1986 .

[7]  R. Rohner,et al.  The Kwakiutl: Indians of British Columbia , 1970 .

[8]  Igor Kopytoff.  The social life of things: The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process , 1986 .

[9]  M. Douglas,et al.  The World of Goods , 2021 .

[10]  A. McGrath,et al.  Reformation Thought: An Introduction. , 1989 .

[11]  M. Sahlins.  Culture and Practical Reason , 1979 .

[12]  C. Gregory.  Gifts and commodities , 1982 .

[13]  K. Maddock.  The Australian aborigines , 1973 .

[14]  Alan B. Carter.  The Philosophical Foundations of Property Rights , 1989 .

[15]  A. R. Radcliffe-Brown.  Religion and Society , 1945 .

[16]  Ruth Benedict,et al.  Patterns of Culture , 2019, Nature.

[17]  W. R. Smith,et al.  Lectures on the religion of the Semites , 1907 .

[18]  E. Durkheim,et al.  Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse , 1991 .

[19]  T. Parsons,et al.  The Mind and Society , 1916 .

[20]  Susanne Küchler,et al.  Malangan: Art and Memory in a Melanesian Society , 1987 .

[21]  Jean Baudrillard,et al.  3 For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign , 1980, Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings.

[22]  M. Castro.  Sahlins, m. Culture and practical reason, chicago, university of chicago, 1976 , 1988 .

[23]  W. Stanner,et al.  ON ABORIGINAL RELIGION , 1959 .

[24]  A. Cohen,et al.  The symbolic construction of community , 2013 .

[25]  Simon J. Harrison.  Stealing People's Names: History and Politics in a Sepik River Cosmology , 1992 .