kn/own/able

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Who kn/owns your cells? The legacy of Henrietta Lacks

A light micrograph of HeLa cells, an “immortal” human cell line derived from a cancerous tumor. The line was established in 1951 from a biopsy taken from an African American woman called Henrietta Lacks, and was the first human cell line to survive and grow in the laboratory. Henrietta Lacks' cells were used without permission from her or her family, raising issues about ethics and privacy. They have been used extensively around the world in fields including cancer research, immunology, and vaccine development. Learn more about Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cell line: https://hela100.org/hela100

Credit: HeLa cells, LM. Kevin Mackenzie, University of Aberdeen. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

AMP v. Myriad: How Patenting Genes Can Affect Medical Diagnosis and Treatment

In the 1990s a company called Myriad Genetics Inc. sequenced and patented the human BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, known to be mutated in some forms of hereditary breast cancer. This patent prevented other labs from offering testing for these BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. As a result the price of getting tested reached thousands of dollars, which limited options for people looking to find out if they were susceptible to breast cancer. On June 13, 2013, a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) v. Myriad Genetics Inc. case banned patenting on “products of nature,” including naturally-occurring DNA and unmodified human genes. Now, some members of US Congress want to overturn the ruling. This would permit gene profiling companies to patent human DNA sequences, which could have significant impacts on healthcare. Learn more on the American Civil Liberties Union website: Image: ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-fight-to-take-back-our-genes.

Originally, this website was supposed to start with the question “Do I kn/own my DNA?” But in the end, the decision fell on “Do I kn/own my body?”

Here’s why: In this audio clip, Vivek Oak* explains how terms like “DNA” and “body” influence our perception of knowing and owning.

* chapter author of “Ownership of Knowledge” and advisor to the kn/own/able communications team.

In Western society, the idea of owning something doesn’t apply only to physical possessions—it also covers intellectual property. Copyright, authorship, and patents decide who has the rights to ideas and what value is given to them. But it’s important to understand that knowledge and ownership aren’t limited to these legal constructs. There are also forms of knowledge that are hard to put into words. Watch this video showing Indian Carnatic music. From knowing how to move your body in order to sing, to recognizing and exercising the structures of a musical style, to the unspoken communication between performers and listeners, and all the practices in between: there are dimensions of knowledge and ownership that are inherent to our bodies, like those of the performers in the video. Words alone can’t capture it; it’s another, just as important way of knowing and owning this knowledge.

Is a spinning wheel in a museum the same as a spinning wheel in use?

A video contrasting Javanese handmade batik with industrially produced batik imitations. The second image showcases African wax prints, originally created for sale in West Africa and Japan. Wax prints were introduced during the Dutch colonial period, aiming to compete with handmade Indonesian batiks through cost-effective machine production. However, this endeavor failed because Indonesians possessed their own knowledge about the manual production of batik and its unique qualities—for example the “crackle.” Nevertheless, these imitations found new significance on the continent of Africa, evolving into more African-inspired designs and becoming locally owned and known by the mid-twentieth century.

Credits: Image 1 – Batik dyed Selendang (Shawl): Selendang (shawl) or belt, batik dyed, Java, 1775–1825, 168.2 x 103.1 cm. Nr. 1938.241.1–2, gift of Mrs. Charles H. Worcester. Art Institute Chicago (CC0 Public Domain Designation). Link to image

Image 2 – European Batik imitation: Sample of machine plain woven cotton cloth printed by the wax-print method in imitation of batik, Manchester (England), 1900-1913, 60 x 50cm. asset number 831858001, donated by Charles A Beving. Copyright: The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Link to image License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Between traditional crafting and mass production: Who knows and owns a pattern? Researcher and activist Annapurna Mamidipudi disentagles these relationships in this short video clip.

Watch the full Latest Thinking video in our Stories: What Can Artisanal Production Teach Us about Knowledge and Ownership?

The arrangement of words in a (presumably) unique sequence allows us to claim ownership over them and the ideas expressed by them. On the other hand, the use of text without attribution to their original author may be seen as plagiarism—and this comes with legal implications. This idea of how we “own” words developed in Western society, and “earned the force it has today only because of the geopolitical balance of power.”

Source: Quotation by Cynthia Brokaw, Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property, 2023: p. 66. Image from Merriam Webster, 2023: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarize.

Owning Words as Objects

In Imperial China, the act of rearranging text written by others was not regarded as plagiarism, copyright infringement, or intellectual property theft. Instead, the use of verbatim quotations and meaningful juxtaposition of existing classic texts was often seen as a mark of imagination and originality.

Yet it was possible to own text in a different way. The emergence of woodblock printing during the early Song Dynasty turned written knowledge not into intellectual property but into physical property. Buying the blocks made one into the owner of the knowledge carved into them; renting the blocks did not. And so in China, notions of how written knowledge could be owned were quite distinct from Western ideas of intellectual property.

Read more about this case in the open-access book chapter “Intellectual Property with Chinese Characteristics” by Cynthia Brokaw, in Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (2023). https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14648.003.0007

Image: A woodblock of the kind that was used by Yangzhou's printshops for printing books, China, ca. 1600. From the collection of the China Block Printing Museum in Yangzhou. Vmenkov, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0, 2008.

Chinese printing blocks and European printing press

The history of printing is full of gaps and uncertainty. While Johannes Gutenberg is known for inventing the printing press, we also know that relevant printing technologies were around—in China and other parts of Asia—several hundreds of years before he was even born. And there is a chance that some of these methods made their way from East to West over the centuries. Listen to this audio clip* to learn more about how this connects to knowledge ownership.

*voiced by a member of the kn/own/able Communications Team

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About the kn/own/able project

“Knowing” and “owning” seem like two separate things in our modern globalized world. But are they really? In the kn/own/able project, we contend that this division is artificial and exacerbates social inequalities. Because, in fact, both are mutually conditioning.

This issue spans academic and wider social spheres, with impacts across (de)colonialism, heritage, law, environmental change, science development and more.

Our goal is to demonstrate how “knowing” and “owning” are indivisible, or kn/own/able. From here, we seek to spark further discussion, empower researchers with new interdisciplinary methods, and instigate social change around the unity of knowledge and ownership.

Learn more

Book Release

A framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society

Release: Summer 2023
Volume: 394 pages
Format: 7 x 9 in
Price: $65 USD/open access
Language: English
Publisher: MIT Press

Call for Participation

Call for Contributions: The Kn/Own/Able Project—An Initiative on Knowledge and Its Ownership
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News

Handloom Futures Launches New Website
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Event

October 23, 2023: Time Bandits. Historians of Science and the Matter of Comparison
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Exhibition

November 3–4, 2023: Handloom Weaving as Knowing and Owning
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Event

In Search of Kn/own/ables: Weaving and Dyeing as Knowledge Commons and Common Knowledge in India
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News

Who Owns Knowledge? Global Perspectives on Law and Science
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Event

November 28, 2025: How Do We Deal with “Cultural Heritage”?
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Event

May 10–25, 2022: Responsible Documentation and Conscious Outcomes
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Talk

November 6, 2023: Falling Walls in den Geisteswissenschaften
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Talk

November 3, 2023: How is Knowledge Owned? Thinking beyond Intellectual Property
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Event

October 26, 2022: The Right to Own: Knowledge Management in 13th-Century Yuan-China
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Event

October 24, 2023: Book Launch Party at the University of Oslo
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Show all Stories & Resources

Case Study

Sandal Scandal: Expensive Prada Knock-Offs or Cheap Craft Heritage?
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Case Study

Knownables in the Wild: Bullshitting Practices in Social Humanities and Social Sciences
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Sketchnote

Intellectual Property with Chinese Characteristics
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Sketchnote

Excavations of Knowledge Ownership: Theoretical Chapter
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Sketchnote

Teaching Intellectual Property: Constructing the Historical Narrative of Intellectual Property in University Textbooks
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Sketchnote

Ownability, Ownership, Knowledge, and Genetic Information in the United States
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Sketchnote

Imitating Crackles: Material Mimesis in Stones and Textiles
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Sketchnote

Raga and the Problem of Ownership: Knowledge and Culture in Carnatic Music
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Sketchnote

Do Look Up: Glass Ceilings in Science Classrooms
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Sketchnote

Names for Work: Crafts, Bureaucracy, and Law in Yuan and Ming China
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Sketchnote

Relationships and Traditional Knowledge in Papua New Guinea
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Audiovisual Media

“Ach, Mensch!": Can Knowledge Be Expropriated, Dagmar Schäfer?
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Recommendation

Legal History Insights Blog
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Audiovisual Media

What Can Artisanal Production Teach Us about Knowledge and Ownership?
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Audiovisual Media

“Big Pharma Wants to Own Your DNA Info”—Myles Jackson
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Audiovisual Media

The Invisible Craftsmen
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Audiovisual Media

New Books Network: Ownership of Knowledge
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Audiovisual Media

Saloo—A Song Encompassing Knowledge and Poetry
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Audiovisual Media

In Search of Kn/own/ables: Natural Dyes Malkha Tie-Dye Ikat
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Audiovisual Media

Carnatic Music Lecture Demonstration
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Audiovisual Media

In Search of Kn/own/ables: Sonthanga, Malkha Commons
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Audiovisual Media

In Search of Kn/own/ables: Pulugurtha Decentralised Spinning
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Audiovisual Media

In Search of Kn/own/ables: Weaving a Handloom Knowledge Commons
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Audiovisual Media

Beyond the Notes: How Carnatic Music Belongs to Its Practitioners
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Audiovisual Media

Into the Kn/own/
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Audiovisual Media

Podcast Series: Into the Kn/own/
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Audiovisual Media

A Crackle on the Surface
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Audiovisual Media

Do Look Up: Glass Ceilings in Science Classrooms
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Audiovisual Media

A New Approach to Understanding Knowledge and Ownership
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Audiovisual Media

An Ethereal Thread
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Audiovisual Media

Once upon a Time in Intellectual Property Law
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Audiovisual Media

Can Someone Own Your Genes?
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Case Study

in search of kn/own/ables
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