「所有の主体」生成のプロセスをめぐる人類学的試論 : 権利から関係性へ

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Property can be thought of as an integrating concept in anthropology, linking the economic, the political, the jural, and the cultural dimensions of social life. However, in recent years, relatively few anthropologists have made property the main focus of their enquiry. This paper examines anthropological works on property in the last two decades so as to determine the most promising approach. It argues that Marilyn Strathern's works and her analytical concepts of "boundary-making," "inclusion," and "exclusion" contribute to the answer of the fundamental question of how "property-owning subjects (property-holders)" emerge. One starting point of anthropological study has been to criticize Western possessive individualism, by which the proper recipient of a piece of property was said to be the individual who labored to produce it. Utilizing Henry Maine's definition of property as a "bundle of rights," the recent mainstream view claims that property is actually a complex bundles of various rights, and that different rights to a particular thing are distributed among different individuals and groups within a particular society. Given that, neither a society of perfect private ownership nor one of collective ownership could exist, both of which the European dichotomy assumes. Despite its effectiveness as a critique against Western ideology and as a comparative analysis, it should be noted that this approach still relies on the terminology of rights, as it assumes that discrete and identifiable subjects (individuals or groups) have rights to a particular thing. Recently, scholars following Annette Weiner's notion of "inalienability" have criticized that assumption. Arguing that the terminology of rights is not necessarily applicable to every local situation, they tend to describe "local concepts" of property, or local relationships between people and things. As a result of their emphasis on the local model, however, their works have become incommensurable with each other, leading the anthropological study of property instead to a crude classification of various concepts of property. Considering the advantages and disadvantages of those two currents of scholarship since the 1980s, this paper argues that Strathern's concept of property provides with a breakthrough. Denying the universality of discrete and identifiable subjects having rights to a particular object, her works have provided the framework of how property-owning subjects temporally emerge in exchange relations, which can then be applied to the analysis of various situations, such as intellectual property rights. Therefore, it could be said that Strathern's analytical concepts go beyond a mere description of the local model of property, while providing an effective critique against the terminology of rights. This paper clarifies that point, and by applying her framework to the recent controversy regarding indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights, it further attempts to improve on it. It concludes that we should consider the longterm process in which property-owning subjects emerge, while paying attention to power relations that such a process entails.
2009-06-30

「所有の主体」生成のプロセスをめぐる人類学的試論 : 権利から関係性へ

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