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SUMMARY:Medical heritage as cultural property: pan-African politics and gl
 obal IP precedents in the 1960s and 1970s - Helen Tilley (Northwestern Uni
 versity)
DTSTART:20200305T130000Z
DTEND:20200305T140000Z
UID:TALK137665@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:In the summer of 1969\, as social movements roiled the world a
 nd decolonization continued to transform geopolitics\, hundreds of governm
 ent delegates and thousands of official and invited guests journeyed to Al
 giers for the Organization of African Unity's First Pan-African Cultural F
 estival. The government representatives divided into three committees and 
 spent much of the ten-day event hashing out their views on African culture
 \, past and present\, and articulating its role in the economic and social
  development of the continent. Rather than work with a narrow definition o
 f culture\, they embraced an all-encompassing view\, seeing it as the 'tot
 ality of tangible and intangible tools\, works of art and science\, knowle
 dge and know-how\, languages\, modes of thought\, patterns of behaviour an
 d experience acquired by the people in [their] liberating effort to domina
 te nature and to build up an ever improving society'. The resulting recomm
 endations came together in a 3\,000 word _Pan-African Cultural Manifesto_\
 , which was adopted by the assembly on the final day without a single diss
 enting vote. Among their top priorities were the need for member states 't
 o promote and coordinate research in all spheres of traditional medicine i
 n order to modernize them'\; and 'to protect the intellectual property of 
 Africans by suitable legislation'. This talk places this event – includi
 ng the state\, pan-African\, and global policies stemming from it – with
 in the wider context of the global Cold War and decolonization. It explain
 s how concepts relating to African culture\, including people's knowledge 
 and know-how\, came to be encoded not just within the text of model laws r
 elating to copyrights and patents\, but also in the programmes of the WHO 
 and Unesco and the constitutions of certain IP organizations\, setting glo
 bal precedents in the process.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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