Most conceptions of public and private life within political and social theory do not adequately consider the networks or fluidities involved in contemporary social relations. The distinction of ...public and private is often conceived of as statically `regional' in character. This article, following an extensive analysis of the multiple meanings of the `public' and `private', criticizes such a static conception and maintains that massive changes are occurring in the nature of both public and private life and especially of the relations between them. We consider flows and networks that enable mobility between and across apparent publics and privates. These mobilities are both physical (in the form of mobile people, objects and hybrids of humans-in-machines) and informational (in the form of electronic communication via data, visual images and texts). We consider the transformations of public and private life that have arisen from `complex' configurations of place and space: the dominant system of car-centred automobility whose spatial fluidities are simultaneously private and public; and various globalizations through the exposure of `private' lives on public screens and the public screening of mediatized events. These mobile, machinic examples demonstrate the limitations of the static, regional conceptualizations of public and private life developed within much social and political theory, and suggest that this divide may need relegation to the dustbin of history.
Major controversies in moral and political theory concern the rights, if any, Indigenous peoples should have over their traditional knowledge. Many scholars, including me, have tackled these ...controversies. This Article addresses a highly important practical issue: Can we come up with a solid framework for resolving disputes over actual or proposed intellectual property rights in traditional knowledge? Yes, we can. The framework suggested here starts with a preliminary distinction between control rights and income rights. It then moves to four categories that help to understand disputes: nature of the traditional knowledge under dispute; dynamics between named parties to disputes; unnamed Indigenous claimants; and the various normative systems (for example, custom, U.N. documents, treaties, statutes, administrative regulations) within which disputes are decided. Throughout, examples that inform the framework come principally from Indigenous peoples in the Pacific rim. Lastly the Article tests the framework against some disputes over traditional knowledge in Samoa and New Zealand. This framework is comprehensive and sensitive to context. It is flexible regarding which normative systems are best suited to settling disputes. A test run shows that the framework helps to resolve practical legal issues.
