Contents
Acknowledgements vii;
chapter 1;
Nullius: An Introduction 1;
chapter 2;
The Promise of Law 25;
chapter 3;
The Truths of Dispossession 49;
chapter 4;
Terra Nullius: The Territory of Sovereignty 77;
chapter 5;
Res Nullius: The Properties of Culture 107;
chapter 6;
Corpus Nullius: The Labor of Sovereignty 129;
chapter 7;
Coda: The Illusion of Property 155;
References 159;
Index 185

"Nullius is an anthropological account of the troubled place of ownership and its consequences for social relations in India.The book provides a detailed study of three doctrinal paradigms where proprietary relations have been erased, denied, or misappropriated by the Indian state. It examines three instantiations of negation, where the Indian state de facto adopted the doctrines of terra nullius (in the erasure of indigenous title), res nullius (in acquiring museum objects), and, controversially,corpus nullius (in denying ownership of one's personhood in citizens' data collected through biometric identification). Nullius contends that even though property rights and ownership are a cornerstone of modern law, they are a spectral presence in the Indian case.Modern Indian law replicates a theologically rooted ambivalence towards accumulation-both of relations and possessions, at once safeguarding accumulation and making it suspect.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of the anthropology of the state, law, data, museums, legal history, intellectual property, cultural property, heritage, historical anthropology, and South Asia.It will also be of interest to non academics working in the fields of data,data ethics, cultural property, intellectual property, and museum collections"-- Provided by publisher.