New Article: Contentious Europeanization

My first article is finally published!  “Contentious Europeanization: The Paradox of Becoming European through Anti-Patent Activism” is being published in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology.  The full citation, abstract, and the pre-print version of the article are available on my Publications page.

Many thanks to Ethnos editors Nils Bubandt and Mark Graham for a thoroughly encouraging peer review process which immensely improved the paper.  I am also indebted to Alberto Barrionuevo, who has kindly given me permission to reprint his photo “Sea Battle of the Software Patents at the European Parliament,” (CC) 2005-07-05, Alberto Barrionuevo, license Creative Commons BY-SA Spain 3.0.  This photo effectively captures the political imagery engaged in disputes over software patents in the European Union.  So when my article was accepted for publication, I started looking for the author in order to secure permission for reprinting the photo with the text of my article.  In the two months of e-mailing that ensued, I discovered that the photo had been archived, published, (re)named, (re)contextualized, and edited on various websites, including:

• An editorial entitled “Victory in the European Parliament” by Gérald Sédrati-Dinet, then-president of FFII France.  The photo was attributed to Gustavo Broos and entitled “David and Goliath.”
• FFII gallery of online photos, which was since been re-done and the old URL does not work any more.  As of 2006, when I checked this website the last time, the photo was also attributed to Gustavo Broos and named “David and Goliath / giant, goliath, behemoth, monster: someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful.”  Gustavo said that he remembered coming up with this name, but he was not the author of the photo.
• newer FFII gallery site credits the photo to Alberto Barrionuevo and gives no title for the photo.
• Alberto Barrionuevo on his website offers a “web ready version” of the photo which, as he pointed out in an e-mail, has been edited to remove the cable which appears in the front plan of the original image.

Eventually I decided to use the image from the FFII gallery website (which does contain the cable) and add Alberto’s title and the terms of his license (CC BY-SA Spain 3.0).

Thanks to numerous free software activists whom I contacted along the way in my attempt to reconcile the multiple tracks of activist archiving, editing and repurposing the photo as documentary evidence with publisher’s demand of finding the single author who could give the reprint permission in conventional copyright terms.