Social Justice Usage
Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/a-review-of-cultural-appropriation-2834563
Fordham University Law Professor Susan Scafidi defines cultural appropriation as follows: “Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.” Very often those who appropriate culture of another group profit from their exploitation. They not only gain money but also status for popularizing art forms, modes of expression and other customs of marginalized groups.
New Discourses Commentary
Though defined more broadly above, in practice the concept of cultural appropriation refers to a person from a dominant racial or ethnic group using an element of culture from a minority racial or ethnic group, especially as a way to profit (either monetarily or in cultural capital, i.e., by looking cool). This can range from hairstyles to religious symbols to music to language to food to dress. As with all issues in Social Justice, cultural appropriation must be understood in terms of the underlying systemic power dynamics that Theory assumes define material reality and our existence in it. This is why only dominant groups can culturally appropriate, which is seen as a kind of stealing from those already oppressed, while minoritized groups have the dominant culture forced upon them.
Cultural appropriation is regarded as unjust and deeply offensive for a number of reasons. Firstly, it can be experienced as an inauthentic, cheapening, parodying, or mocking use of something that has cultural meaning within the minoritized culture but not within the dominant culture (usually white, Eurocentric, and/or Western). This has often been claimed about the use of the Hindu bindi, for example, which has spiritual meaning, when applied as a mere fashion accessory. Secondly, it can be understood as a kind of colonialism in which something that has been or is created by one group is then popularized and exploited by another who get credit for it. This has been claimed about blues music (thus rock and roll) and yoga. Thirdly, it is seen as indifference to the item as a cause of racism. This has been claimed about dreadlocks, which have been the object of scorn by white cultures, then being appropriated by them as a means of being fashionable or “unique.”
The idea of cultural appropriation depends upon the belief that cultural artifacts are something that can be owned by the people associated with those cultures rather than things that people do that other people can appreciate, value, dislike, make use of, or disparage however they want without making any implications about the people most centrally involved in their cultural production. It depends further on the idea that those who hold systemic power in society, when making use of those artifacts, cannot fully understand the underlying knowledge(s) or traditions that went into them (or do not care about them) but can use their power to profit off them or to remove their cultural significance to the minoritized group. Within the view of Theory, minoritized groups can essentialize their cultural features as a means of asserting their value or disrupting the existing hierarchy of power (see also, strategic essentialism).
One problem with the concept of cultural appropriation is that it is a very Western concept and is not often shared by members of the cultures allegedly being appropriated. Asian people, in particular, both East and South, are likely to regard the use of Asian dress, food, and music positively as a compliment on their cultures, not a form of theft. (This attitude often extends to first-generation immigrants to Western countries from Asia as well, but it frequently reverses in second-generation ones.) At the root of what this difference in attitude exposes is the fact that the question of whether something is cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation is highly subjective. Under the Social Justice approach, the winner of any such disagreement is often declared to be whoever is most offended.
Objections to cultural appropriation often miss their targets as well, given the subjective nature of cultural appreciation. For example, the objection that white people are appropriating aspects of culture that they have previously been scornful of or prejudiced against disregards the likelihood that these were almost certainly different white people.
The concept of cultural appropriation can become very limiting when applied to the world of art which it frequently is. Cultural sharing has always been central to the vitality of art, but as more and more styles, artifacts, and tropes become identified as belonging to a certain culture, artists have to work hard not to offend. There is also the concern that some aspects of culture can be very useful. We veer into the worst of the silliness when it is argued that white people have no business in practicing yoga for flexibility or learning Spanish for travel or work.
Related Terms
Authentic; Colonialism; Dominance; Essentialism; Eurocentric; Exploitation; Injustice; Knowledge(s); Minoritize; Oppression; Power (systemic); Race; Racism (systemic); Social Justice; Strategic essentialism; Theory; Western; White
Additional Examples
Source: The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy). Taylor and Francis, pp. 358–359.
Ironically, as federal officials actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures, anthropologists invaded Native communities to document their languages, music, dances, and ceremonies before they ‘vanished’ altogether. The hermeneutical consequences of these appropriations were massive and enduring. Indigenous peoples lost the authority to interpret their own history and culture, as well as their authority to protect themselves from further appropriation. Indigenous peoples lost physical possession of vast amounts of their cultural heritage, and they were also subjected to the imposition of alien hermeneutical schema. Indigenous peoples were foreclosed from participating in the creation of epistemic practices and excluded from the institutions where meaning is made. The interpretation of Indigenous culture shifted to the expertise of anthropologists within museums and academia, and Indigenous peoples became the objects of the epistemic practices of anthropology. Needless to say, this history is replete with instances of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, and Indigenous peoples continue to suffer from participatory prejudice and informational prejudice as they seek to repatriate cultural objects within domestic and international forums.
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Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-018-1224-2
The wrong of cultural appropriation is rooted in imbalances of power. Whether a particular case is most saliently understood as one of silencing, exploitation, misrepresentation, or offense, what ultimately makes particular instances of cultural appropriation wrongful, and thus what grounds objections to them, is the way in which they manifest and/or exacerbate inequality and marginalization. Call this the oppression account of cultural appropriation.
Languages
Revision date: 7/8/20
8 comments
Theres a 4th Reich & thats why theres any of these sociological constructs at all & the matter is hard to rationalise.
I never understood this cultural appropriation stuff until I thought about the following. If I am not mistaken slavery was present in Africa before for example people from other countries started to have slaves and take them to their lands, and these people may have been introduced to this concept and or assisted in this by the native people in Africa. If this is correct, perhaps that’s where the roots of all this fuss about cultural appropriation lie!
Folks who worry about cultural appropriation might only think about how some people from other cultures looked at slavery in Africa and started using slaves themselves and used it for profit themselves. Perhaps it would help for these people worried about cultural appropriation to think about this all some more, and realize that there might also be good things that might come from sharing and using practices knowledge and ideas and wisdom from many different cultures by many other different cultures. For instance reasoning and logic.
It’s interesting that no one seems to consider the use all over the world of the twelve-tone equal temperament system of tuning to be a case of cultural appropriation, at least not in the desired “guilt-trip people by calling things cultural appropriation” way.
It’s certainly true that the academic literature on cultural appropriation is in large part coming from postcolonial studies, critical legal theory, etc. and so you’ll be reading a lot about ‘subaltern’ cultures and whatnot, but within the academy the concept isn’t really ‘owned’ by critical theory: e.g. James O. Young wrote a book on cultural appropriation, and as I recall his ethics is basically Utilitarian. When you start talking about the importance of preserving traditional cultures, the authority of ancestral practices and the need to respect what people hold sacred, you’re going to sound more like a Burkean conservative than some kind of radical.
That in turn makes more sense when you think of this as a topic within heritage scholarship. The idea that cultures are capable of a kind of ownership is coming from thought about cultural heritage, or in its more legalistic framing, cultural property. (The standard example of heritage with disputed ownership is the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles.) From tangible cultural heritage we jump to the thought that there can also be intangible heritage: traditions and skills and so on that a people may want to preserve as part of what makes them who they are. The term ‘cultural intellectual property’ is sometimes used, but is even more contentious: the W.I.P.O. has been trying for ages to reach international agreement about what it calls Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions.
From the point of view of critical heritage studies or radical museology, ‘cultural heritage’ is precisely the ideology in need of critique. That’s what seems to be going on in the Routledge Handbook excerpt: it’s claiming that the way minority cultures were essentialised is itself an expression of the dominant (Western, scientific) culture’s power, rather than criticising cultural appropriation as such. So, not only are there non-woke concerns about cultural appropriation (about inadvertent sacrilege, or about the unwilling assimilation of minority cultures), the Routledge Handbook excerpt actually appears to me to be partly a woke critique of them. It’s not so much that cultural appropriation is an inherently ‘wokish’ idea, it’s that evangelical poseurs on Twitter don’t really know or care.
There *is* another genealogical link, but not where one might expect. As I mentioned, the idea that intangible ideas can be ‘owned’ evokes the law of intellectual property. Compared to the main tradition of thought about I.P. in the Anglophone world (as a limited instrument to achieve a public good), the civil law tradition of authors’ rights has more to do with protecting expressions of a creator’s personal genius, and some scholars link that to ideas about property and the self in the philosophy of… G.W.F. Hegel.
An interesting counter example to the negative allegations of cultural appropriation is the career of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. From his youth, he idolized the practitioners of traditional blues. It was his dream to one day play with Albert King, which he eventually did, as well as B.B. King, Buddy Guy and many others.
In addition to his original music, Vaughan, with his band Double Trouble, would cover numerous blues standards, creating a revival of the genre, presenting it to a whole new audience and resuscitating the careers of numerous blues artists.
If the wizards of woke call this cultural appropriation, I call them crazy.
Blackface? And yellowface and brownface? And finally as you get to the end of this sort of thing … transface. 🙂
Haha yes – he is trying to look British.
In fact, the Japanese word for a suit is a Sebiro which was the way the Japanese pronounced Savile Row, the street where some of the finest English bespoke tailors traditionally have their premises.
White people can’t wear kimonos but the king of Japan can dress like the Monopoly man.