New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Dagmar Schafer, "Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property" (MIT Press, 2023)

Jan 1, 2026

Guest

Marius Buning

Dagmar Schäfer, a historian of technology and sinologist, joins Annapurna Mamidipudi, an engineer-turned-researcher, and Marius Buning, an assistant professor specializing in intellectual property history. They explore the concept of knowledge ownership beyond traditional frameworks, emphasizing technology's role in shaping this discourse. The conversation dives into how historical practices in China influenced craft knowledge, the implications of performance in ownership, and the inequalities created by current knowledge economies. They also share insights on the power of scholarship in legitimizing knowledge.

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INSIGHT

Knowable Is Multi‑Dimensional

Knowledge combines bodily skill, verbal articulation, and material use into a single knowable practice.
Once something is knowable, it becomes possible to own, share, or withhold it, shaping power relations.

INSIGHT

Ownership And Epistemology Are Linked

Ownership and knowledge are inseparable and shape each other reciprocally.
Ignoring either side distorts how societies legitimize and circulate information and artifacts.

ANECDOTE

Music Ownership Through Performance

Annapurna and Viren analyze caste tensions in Carnatic music through performance as ownership.
They argue that musical knowledge lives in bodies and social inclusion governs epistemic access.

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Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society.

Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership.

Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalities arise from them. Unlike scholars who have fragmented this discourse across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, the editors highlight recent developments in the emerging field of the global history of knowledge—as science, as economy, and as culture. The case studies reveal how notions of knowing and owning emerge because they reciprocally produce and determine each other's limits and possibilities; that is, how we know inevitably affects how we can own what we know; and how we own always impacts how and what we are able to know.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

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