[Urbanstudy] beyond the binary Dispersed property and pirate acts in city economy space and politics

[solomon benjamin]

Hi,
To 'displace' the idea of the pirate, and with that,
question powerful binaries seems very important via
the concept of 'dispersed property'. Some wandering
thoughts as this relates to city economy, settlement,
and politics that binds these both. 

Here, several point raised by Hans Christ (at the
Kunstverein at Stuttgart)who distinguished between
piracy of a 'brand', versus say the creation of
products seen in city economies. The latter are varied
-- embracing economies the weekly markets and hawkers
on pavements, of small firms located in trade and
manufacturing arrangements. In many of these forms of
re-tooling that derive from 'reverse engineering' open
up a relatively new line of products that are
customized via the locality of demand and use: what
Jeebesh refers to the small day to day acts by
everyone as a pirate! If so, the notion of the
'pirate' soon dematerializes -- just as attempts to
'fix' property. Diane Singerman's wonderful book on
the economy, legality, and politics of neighborhood
life in Cairo (Avenues of Participation) makes an
important and relevant point that many of these
'small' acts (that also disperse property) add up to a
larger (quiet) politics of subversion are not
percieved by those carruing them out as being
'political'. 

Breaking beyond this binary and into considering the
dispersal of property that comes from such quiet
politics. Sigificanlty, underlying economy, the
politics of land destabilizes and disperses property
via the consolidation of ever complex forms of land
tenure. Its hardly surprisign that most 'old /
traditional/ walled' city quarters of cities (Cairo,
Delhi, Lahore, Jaffa) layer complex tenure forms of
land with those of inter-connecting economies. But
these are not just 'traditional' and locked into a
linealirity and binary of a development kind (The
anthropologist Robert Redfeild's 'Folk to Modern'
society). In Bangalore and also Bombay, we see
contemporary forms of tenancies that underpin complex
forms of economy. And these dispersed proproties are
deeply material in that they open up complex forms of
fundsing. In India, Pakistan (and perhaps other parts
of South Asia) multple land tenure forms release funds
to be invested into a locality of economy. This also
happens in middle eastarn tenure forms, and recently
Nathalie Boseul, mentioned that a similar arrangement
exists in the Korean context too. Former (Formal)
economist termed these as traditional / informal as
perhaps such destablization of property hardly fitted
into their developmentalist frameworks.

Such systems of tenure, (unsettled) economy, provide
for a politics that is deeply threatening to the
dirgisme of both the 'Market' and the Nation State.
Witness the huge corporate funding backed by very
regrssive state power to digitize land records, to
control the 'Informal Sector' (via Master Planning),
the 'anti-piracy raids', and to weaken municipal
government that has consistantly build a political
realm around dispersal of property and economy. 

If ones takes these arguments furthe to consider the
computer 'grey' markets of Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi,
it may reveal the importance of moving beyond and away
from notions of 'open source' and propriatry (within
which the figure and concept of piracy lies). Instead,
just as we can conceptualize other forms of economies
that unsettle 'property' from within the 'commodity
logic' (as observed by Jeebesh in an earlier time),
can we consider more fundamentally, more interesting
issues of dispersed property rooted in complex forms
of occoupancy -- in space, in economy and in politics.
What, for example, would an environment of re-tooled
and re-machined "networked" society look like in an
anarchic territory. This is not neccessary speculative
or utopian. A closer look at the streets of East Delhi
around Shakarpur in East Delhi as they link to the
'nodes' of Nehru Place and Palika Bazzar in other
parts of Delhi, and perhaps connected to Lamington
Road in Bombay. And its not just the 'grey' market
outlets but rather the small business accounting
software customized for more speaiclized applications
like those of small chemists and pharmacies, or then
more recently in the auto marchine re-toolers of west
bangalore. I suspect that the notion of 'open source'
can hardly describe these situations. This is not just
as it refers to a very very specific form of economic
arrangements, but more due a conceptual fracture and
an unease with the bulk of economies being too 'wild' 
to be boxed into a binaries.  
Cheers
Solly

--- Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net> wrote:

> Recently we were part of the Leonardo/SFAI Digital
> Salon where we  
> spoke of "The Strange Destiny of Open Source in the
> Nation State" and  
> Steve Cisler talked of Piracy.
> 
> Some thoughts that have arisen after the quite
> impassioned discussion  
> that evening around piracy, how it is constituted
> and how to think it  
> beyond a simple anxiety of the loss of property:
> 
> What if we think of' 'dispersed property' and
> 'pirate acts'. The  
> present scenario is of an increasing dispersal of
> 'property' through  
> everyday immaterial goods. This makes us enveloped
> by 'property'.  
> Many acts that touch upon this 'property envelop' do
> infringe  
> property rights. There is, thus, a ubiquitous
> presence of daily small  
> 'pirate acts' by almost anyone.
> 
> Perhaps a simple listing of such daily acts and the
> reality of  
> 'property dispersal' will be relevant in the
> displacement of the idea  
> of the 'pirate' as a figure out there - removed and
> away from us -  
> ruining 'social order and meaning'. The figure of
> the 'pirate'  
> increasingly haunts all discussion of 'intellectual
> property'. It is  
> figure on whom various fears and anxieties of
> capitalism's core  
> 'productive values' are projected - from free riders
> to free lunch,  
> to criminality, to idleness, to laziness, to
> profiting without  
> labour, to destruction of innovation, etc.
> 
> If we can imagine daily life enmeshed within
> immaterial forms of  
> property as a series of relays and disruptions
> produced by multiple  
> 'commoning acts', 'property acts' and 'pirate acts'
> - then we can  
> have an account of everyday life and practice that
> does not freeze  
> all of us into singular 'figures'; figures that do
> not address how we  
> all navigate the contemporary in complex ways.
> 
> best
> jeebesh
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> 



		
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