Copyright legislation is often described in relation to a series of abstract legal
and economic constructs, without due attention to the ways in which it may be
constituted by the persons and artifacts that it legislates over. In this article, I
focus in detail on some ways in which concepts of copyright are negotiated in the
South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. I analyze copyright in relation to the
technical, social and conceptual processes of copying, restriction and creativity,
respectively, in order to draw out some of the diverse social and material processes
that are built into the legal category. I draw specifically on my research with
Ni-Vanuatu men and women using local resources to earn money through the production
of artifacts for the market – an exemplary context for the emergence of
discussions about ‘indigenous' copyright legislation. In
describing copyright in one very local context, I emphasize that focusing on the
materiality of different property forms can enable us to more sensitively understand
the differential constitution of intellectual property rights in an increasingly
global arena.
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