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'Intellectual property law regulates the creation, use, and exploitation of mental or creative labour' (Bently and Sherman, 2008, p. 1). One of the rationales commonly invoked to defend the existence of Intellectual Property (IP) law is associated with the idea of creativity: 1the protection offered by IP would foster creativity by guaranteeing appropriate rewards to the creator.2In this sense IP is instrumental with respect to a goal: but can IP be understood as a mode of cultural creativity in its own right?3
In my paper I will try to answer the question by looking at one particular form of IP rights, namely Geographical Indications (GIs; Gangjee, 2012). GIs represent in many ways the ideal subject to explore the ability of IP law to act not just as an operational tool, instrumentally capable of encouraging and controlling innovation, but also as a conceptual reservoir which can provide constitutive elements for places and societies. According to this vision, GIs would represent something which is, at the same time, external and internal to the fabric of a place, as well as of the community living in that place. Such a vision is clearly grounded in the recognition that 'law shapes the social realities it purports merely to represent' (Coombe and Aylwin, 2011, p. 2029), i.e. that it is endowed with constitutive force. Thus, GIs represent a legal resource that allow 'reifying local traditions and burnishing images of rustic authenticity onto goods' (Coombe, 2005, pp. 44-45).
In particular, I will not assess if GIs are actually a mode of cultural creativity; rather, I will look at if (and to what extent) they are narrated as a mode of cultural creativity. My goal is to show that GIs are the protagonist of legal narratives in terms of cultural creativity: in other words, that they are constructed not just as a tool to protect and promote quality products, but also as a pillar which should contribute to defining the identity of a place, as well as the identities of the group(s) operating within that place. In pursuing this goal, I will address two further corollaries: (i) narratives' contents vary depending on the context in which they take place; and...