Traditional Transmission as Cultural Commons: The Conflicts and Crisis of Commodification

Abstract

"This paper represents a reframing of aspects of common property debates in an attempt to come to a better understanding of the commons as a cultural system, and of commodification within the cultural commons, specifically focusing on transmission processes within Irish traditional culture. Starting from the assumption that rational choice theory, game theory, and neo-classical economic analyses are inadequate when faced with systems within traditional culture, this paper seeks to outline an alternative; Traditional Standpoint Theory. In a belief that privileging the voices of those who are not in a dominant position may lead us to a less false representation of their activities, this particular take on Standpoint Theory will draw on traditions within Marxism, Feminism, Social Interactionism, Anthropology, Sociology, Folklore, and Ethnomusicology.

"Outlining ways in which intellectual property, spectacle, commercialism, technology, and academia all contribute to spatial mapping of the traditional transmission processes through processes of commodification and reification, the analysis will show how each of these is working within dominant epistemic structures that emphasise and support damaging assumptions about individuality, authorship, creativity, originality, and property. These assumptions feed dichotomies of tradition-modernity, tradition-progress, tradition-innovation, public-private, professional-amateur, gift-commodity, oral-literate in ways which undermine and enclose transmission processes, leading to a condition of crisis within the cultural commons of Irish traditional culture.

"Following Bourdieu's emphasis on practice, and in mind of the political imperative of praxis, it is hoped that this focus on local, subjugated knowledge and transmission will lead to a re-evaluation of music, reciprocation, identity, trust, property, community, time, and tradition. It is hoped that the conclusions of this paper will add to theoretical debates within Common Property Studies, leading us to re-examine the nature and definition of Common Pool Resources, and bringing us to a fuller understanding of the central requirements of tradition and sustainable transmission within increasingly commodified transmissional spaces."