Doctoral Dissertation Research: Counterfeit goods, the state, and intellectual property: An ethnography of legal consciousness in post-socialist China

中国在2001年加入世界贸易组织后，有义务遵守保护知识产权的多边协议。然而，知识产权中的私有制概念与定义模糊的地方产权关系形成对比，并与中国常见的互惠做法相矛盾。通过对长江三角洲两个不同市场的民族志研究，本项目考察了知识产权法律的意识在法律的改革加强私有制的背景下的出现和形成，即使长期实行的互惠交换习俗继续存在。研究人员将研究零售店主，销售人员和合法注册品牌的所有者在这两个市场中如何体验，解释和谈判不断变化的版权和商标法，思想的私人所有权，以及在销售假冒商品和建立本地品牌时的一般财产。在为期十二个月的田野调查中，研究者将采用三种方法：参与者观察，半结构化和生活史访谈，以及公开文本收集。本课题是首次对后社会主义转型期的知识产权法律的意识进行实证研究。本研究揭示了欧美法律的范畴在中国国家和地方文化实践中的力量和局限性，推进了法律和社会研究、财产的人类学分析、国家的民族志方法以及作为全球化一部分的知识产权的跨学科研究。更广泛地说，这些发现将丰富公众对新兴财产制度如何由代表性不足的群体的日常做法塑造的理解。在更好地了解处于不同地位的市场人员的状况以及他们可以选择的办法之后，国家和国际两级的决策者就可以设计出在文化上更适当和更公平的政策。

China, upon its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, became obliged to abide by multilateral agreements that protect intellectual property. The concept of private ownership embedded in intellectual property rights, however, contrasts with vaguely defined local property relations and contradicts practices of reciprocity common in China. Through an ethnographic study of two distinct markets in the Yangtze River Delta, this project investigates the emergence and formation of a legal consciousness of intellectual property rights in a context where legal reforms enforce private ownership even as long-practiced customs of reciprocal exchange continue. The researcher will examine how retail shopkeepers, sales staff, and owners of legitimately registered brands in the two markets experience, interpret, and negotiate changing copyright and trademark laws, private ownership of ideas, and property in general as they sell counterfeit goods and build local brands. During twelve months of fieldwork, the researcher will employ a combination of three methods: participant observation, semi-structured and life history interviews, and public text collection. This project is the first empirical study to examine legal consciousness of intellectual property rights in a society undergoing a post-socialist transition. Revealing the power and limits of Euro-American legal categories as mediated by the Chinese state and local cultural practices, this research advances law and society research, the anthropological analysis of property, ethnographic approaches to the state, and the cross-disciplinary study of intellectual property rights as part of globalization. More broadly, the findings will enrich public understandings of how emergent property regimes are shaped by everyday practices of underrepresented groups. With a better understanding of the conditions of differently positioned market people and the options available to them, policymakers at both national and international levels can design policies that are more culturally appropriate and equitable.