Doctoral Dissertation Research: Digitizing Traditional Knowledge: National Reactions to Intellectual Property Claims to Yoga

摘要：博士论文研究：传统知识的数字化：国家对YogaPI的知识产权索赔的反应：William Maurer Co-PI：Allison Fish使用知识产权（IP）索赔作为保护或利用传统知识的一种手段所产生的问题越来越多地在地方，国家和全球层面上进行辩论。具体而言，印度等国担心，知识产权法的国际协调的影响，加上占主导地位的国家最近的法律的发展，将导致对它们声称属于自己的传统知识的不道德和不公平的管理。利用最近的瑜伽知识产权索赔的案例研究，该项目采用民族志技术来研究传统知识如何受到复杂的跨国互动的挑战和重新配置。此外，该项目分析了传统的全球化和商业化如何促使人们不仅对瑜伽，而且对财产和所有权，瑜伽在国际商业交流中的实践（跨国商业瑜伽）已经在世界各地的国际化中心流行起来，是一种多元的，这个价值数十亿美元的行业一直是国家机构、私人和利益集团越来越多的正式和非正式监管活动的场所。这些规则旨在解决的主要问题包括：（1）什么是瑜伽及其练习？(2)它的专有性质是什么，它属于公有领域还是私有领域？(3)谁有权管理它的表达？为了回答这些问题，感兴趣的团体对瑜伽的性质提出了不同的主张，包括将其定性为单一作者的发明，声称它是存在于公共领域的通用实体，声称它是特定民族国家的文化实践，或者倡导按照开源哲学来管理。虽然社会-尽管法律的学术研究关注某些传统知识形式的商品化，特别是制药公司对土著植物智慧申请专利并从中获利，但很少有研究调查瑜伽等做法。跨国瑜伽提供了一个独特的和冲突的案例研究有关的文化知识的商品化和传统的所有权有两个原因。第一，在最臭名昭著的争端中，双方的身份被颠倒了，以至于是印度瑜伽士个人和印度政府要求私人和半私人的知识产权。其次，瑜伽引入了一种无形的商品形式，完全通过身体的行为来生产和消费。因此，瑜伽有一种难以捉摸的品质，无法在书面记录中捕捉和表现，例如故事，也无法收集材料样本，例如种子。因此，本研究的跨国商业瑜伽投资在以下领域：（1）跟踪传统知识实践的新理解，如瑜伽，（2）跟踪由于知识产权法的发展而出现的新概念，（3）研究市场如何融入传统，以及（4）重新阐明公共和私人领域之间的界限。这项研究将导致更好地了解如何理解财产的概念。

Abstract: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Digitizing Traditional Knowledge: National Reactions to Intellectual Property Claims to YogaPI: William Maurer Co-PI: Allison FishIssues generated by the use of intellectual property (IP) claims as a means of either protecting or exploiting traditional knowledge are increasingly debated at local, national, and global levels. Specifically, countries such as India are concerned that the effects of international harmonization of IP law, when combined with recent legal developments in dominant states, will result in the unethical and inequitable management of the traditional knowledge they claim as their own. Using the case study of recent IP claims on yoga this project employs ethnographic techniques to examine how traditional knowledge is contested and reconfigured by complex transnational interactions. Furthermore, this project analyzes how the globalization and commercialization of tradition prompts new understandings of not only yoga, but also property and ownership rights, to emerge.The practice of yoga in international commercial exchange (transnational commercial yoga) has become popular in cosmopolitan centers around the world and is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been the site of increasing formal and informal regulatory activities by state institutions, private individuals, and interest groups. The primary questions that these regulations are meant to resolve include: (1) What is yoga and its practice? (2) What is its proprietary nature and does it reside in the public or private domain? (3) Who has the right to manage its expression? In order to answer these questions, interested groups have made diverse claims about the nature of yoga including characterizing it as the invention of a singular author, claiming it is a generic entity that exists in the public domain, asserting it is the cultural practice of a particular nation-state, or advocating its management according to Open Source philosophies.Though socio-legal scholarship has attended to the commodification of some traditional forms of knowledge, especially the patenting of and profiting from indigenous botanical wisdom by pharmaceutical companies, there has been little research that investigates practices such as yoga. Transnational yoga provides a unique and conflicted case-study related to the commodification of cultural knowledge and the ownership of tradition for two reasons. The first is that the identities of the parties in the most notorious disputes are reversed such that it is the individual Indian yogis and the Indian government that are claiming private and semi-private IP rights. Secondly, yoga introduces an intangible commodity form that is produced and consumed entirely through bodily enactments. Thus, yoga has an elusive quality that cannot be captured and represented in the written record, such as a story, nor can material samples, such as seeds, be collected. As such this study of transnational commercial yoga is invested in the following domains: (1) Tracking new understandings of traditional knowledge practices such as yoga, (2) Tracking the emergence of new concepts of property due to developments in IP law, (3) Studying how the market incorporates tradition, and (4) The rearticulation of the boundaries between the public and private domains. This research will lead to greater understanding of how the concept of property is understood.