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An introduction to the Rice University course"Text as Property/Property as Text"which seeks to compare ancient and modern conceptions of authorship, ownership and alternative traditions of writing, stewardship, allusion, and distribution.

Text as property/property as text: intellectual property across the ages (anth 321/clas 311)

This class is an experiment in comparison. It stretches over millennia and includes a pretty outrageousdiversity of material, but it is collected together under the assumption that it can be compared and contrasted by thinkingabout the concepts of authorship, ownership, circulation, property, control, imitation, re-use, appropriation, forgery,plagiarism etc.

For details see the Syllabus

Such comparison needs a baseline, of course, and that is what the first seven weeks of the class is meant to provide. Byhalfway through the class, you should have a pretty extensive grasp of the following things: modern intellectual property,ancient Roman and Greek manuscript traditions, modern definitions of "information", andboth ancient and modern conceptions of "author", "genius", and "owner". From this baseline, we will proceed to compare a widevariety of artistic, scientific, literary and real-life things.

The second half of the class, however, is meant to introduce you to a number of different alternative conceptions of authorship and ownership, both in the modern world and in the ancient world.So you can think of this class as not only a comparison between ancient and modern, but a comparison of modern with modern andancient with ancient. Every era has its own dominant and lesser known traditions. In the end, we hope to leave you with amuch richer sense of just how narrowly most dominant versions of authorship and ownership are, and how many other traditions,experiments, movements, communities, and practices there have been in the past and continue to be in the present.

Anthropology and cultural comparison

One way of understanding how this class is structured is to think about how anthropology views its object.When anthropologists study the Bororo, for example, they treat them as a separate culture -- even if this is just a fiction since these days the Bororo are wearing Nikes and wanttheir MTV. Nonetheless, the Bororo culture is assumed to include a set of practices, institutions, laws, politicalorganizations, economic systems and religion that are presumed to be relatively stable--and more importantly different from anequally stable "us" (which usually means the Euro-American traditions of democracy and capitalism and Judeo-Christianity).Occasionally, this kind of comparison is enlightening and leads to a better understanding not just of another culture, but ofboth cultures being compared. Such comparison could be conducted between any two "cultures" so long as one is willingto get to know each of them in sufficient detail, and to keep an open mind about them.

Questions & Answers

what is microbiology
Agebe Reply
What is a cell
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what is cell
Mohammed
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Muhammad
is the branch of biology that deals with the study of microorganisms.
Ntefuni Reply
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studies of microbes
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Bacteria doesn't produce energy they are dependent upon their substrate in case of lack of nutrients they are able to make spores which helps them to sustain in harsh environments
_Adnan
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Muhamad
they make spores
Louisiaste
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the significance of food webs for disease transmission
Abreham
food webs brings about an infection as an individual depends on number of diseased foods or carriers dully.
Mark
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Esinniobiwa Reply
Assimilatory nitrate reduction is a process that occurs in some microorganisms, such as bacteria and archaea, in which nitrate (NO3-) is reduced to nitrite (NO2-), and then further reduced to ammonia (NH3).
Elkana
This process is called assimilatory nitrate reduction because the nitrogen that is produced is incorporated in the cells of microorganisms where it can be used in the synthesis of amino acids and other nitrogen products
Elkana
Examples of thermophilic organisms
Shu Reply
Give Examples of thermophilic organisms
Shu
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Micheal Reply
Prevent foreign microbes to the host
Abubakar
they provide healthier benefits to their hosts
ayesha
They are friends to host only when Host immune system is strong and become enemies when the host immune system is weakened . very bad relationship!
Mark
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faisal Reply
cell is the smallest unit of life
Fauziya
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Akanni
ok
Innocent
cell is the structural and functional unit of life
Hasan
is the fundamental units of Life
Musa
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Micheal Reply
There are nothing like emergency disease but there are some common medical emergency which can occur simultaneously like Bleeding,heart attack,Breathing difficulties,severe pain heart stock.Hope you will get my point .Have a nice day ❣️
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ESTHER Reply
Many sites of the body have it Skin Nasal cavity Oral cavity Gastro intestinal tract
Safaa
skin
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all
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Source:  OpenStax, Text as property/property as text. OpenStax CNX. Feb 10, 2004 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10217/1.7
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