View the conference flyer (PDF) »

In Mali today, appeals to confront the "scourge" (fléau) of music piracy and affirm the intellectual property of professional musicians resound within the public sphere. These debates acho anxieties about the social and economic value of the arts in an ear of private markets and decentralized politics. In an effort to historicize such concerns, this talk will present a geneology of copyright (le droit d'auteur) and its criminalized corollary, piracy, through an emergent politics of culture in Mali over the past half century.

Sponsored by the IHC's African Studies RFG, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and the IHC's Public Goods series.