Rise Of Knowledge Societies Leads To New Social Conflicts, Book Says

By Maëli Astruc for Intellectual Property Watch

The rise of knowledge societies leads to the emergence of new conflicts initiated by stakeholders who do not come from the closed world of intellectual property, but rather from the general civil society. This reflects the growing importance of IP in the international economy, says a recent book.

The book, titled “Conflicts in the Knowledge Society, The Contentious Politics of Intellectual Property,” was written by Sebastian Haunss, senior researcher in political science at the University of Bremen (Germany). Haunss proposes a political science analysis of these movements.

He considers that “the politicization of IP … is embedded in more wide-ranging processes of social change associated with the transformation of industrial societies into knowledge societies.” The book states that from those conflicts have emerged new collective actors “with the ability to contest the existing dominant order.”

The first chapters explain the history and the recent politicization of IP and why it leads to conflicts. Core chapters analyse four recent conflicts: software patents in Europe, access to medicines, Creative Commons licensing, and Pirate Parties. Those mobilisations are analysed in the light of three points: the wider context of the conflict, actors it involves and its more general framework.

Conflicts can be linked, as they address similar meta-conflicts, namely the current mode of innovation, the access to knowledge and the limits of anonymous markets.

The book is published by Cambridge University Press, available here.