Alexandra Lippman, “Tempos and Temporalities of Ownership: Property, Piracy and Public Domain in Funk Carioca,” Tues 10/7

Tues, Oct 7, 2014 from 12:10-1:30pm in SSH 1246 of the UC Davis campus.

Please join us in welcoming the new ICIS postdoctoral fellow, Alexandra Lippman, at a Food for Thought Event. Alexandra will be presenting on her work, Tempos and Temporalities of Ownership: Property, Piracy and Public Domain in Funk Carioca:

Time has long been a concern of anthropologists. In this article, I argue that music has something to add to anthropological understandings of temporality. After all, the organization of time is one of music’s fundamental characteristics. In order to introduce music into anthropological discussions of time, I discuss ownership within funk carioca, a popular Afro-Brazilian musical genre, which relies on sampling, dubbing, and versioning. I identify four different forms ownership and their distinct temporalities within funk carioca. These situations of ownership are a commons, copyrighted, desired for, and pirated. I call their respective temporalities looping time, limited time, imagined futurity, and in-the-meantime. These temporalities are linked, respectively, to an ongoing present, the past, the future, and a heterotemporality. Each mode of ownership presents musicians with unique ways to make money and/or build their reputation. Songs’ circulation through multiple modes of ownership—often simultaneously—further suggests how these modes are coeval rather than mutually exclusive.

Note this is our Food for Thought format where everyone is asked to read a paper ahead of time. After you RSVP, you will be emailed with the paper to be discussed. 

This event is co-sponsored with the Center for Science and Innovation Studies & the Science and Technology Studies Program at UC Davis.