Cultural appropriation: what it is and why it matters
Cultural appropriation: what it is and why it matters
Notes from Rina Arya's (2021) Article 'Cultural appropriation: What it is and why it matters?' In Sociology Compass, 15 (1) August, pp. 1-11.
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Sharing or experiencing cultures other than one’s own is a rich part of the human experience. Potentially problematic when the culture that has been taken from is a marginalised minority or indigenous culture.
Central to appropriation is commodification – the process by which aspects of a culture are turned into an object of sale, distorting and misrepresenting culture.
Appropriation reflects the phenomenon of exploitation between cultures of unequal power.
Recognising appropriation also means recognising the histories of colonialism and imperialism and their legitimisation of material extraction.
Often committed unintentionally or inadvertently, but this doesn’t mitigate the damage.
Appropriation is surrounded by concepts of ethics – ownership, justice, political questions of identity and marginalisation.
Extraction is political and contextualised within the discourse of identity politics where marginalised groups must fight for rights.
Intersectionality (framework of interlocking race, gender, and class) demonstrates how social and political elements create different models of advantage and disadvantage (Crenshaw, 1989).
Globalisation and developing digital technologies increased access to cultures and blurred the lines.
Author and Journalist Lionel Shriver argues that sharing cultures is foundational for creativity, while criticising taking from marginalised cultures. She argues that fiction writers depend on placing themselves in the shoes of other people, including people from other cultures. She also argues that ‘super sensitivity’ is a result of fear of offending people from other cultures and this is discouraging writers from developing their characters (2016).
Others, like James Young, defend cultural appropriation, stating that it’s not unethical to appropriate motifs, styles, or subject from other cultures, given that acknowledgement is given. Holding these components, he argues, as the property of a particular culture curtails creativity (2010).
Decolonising the curriculum
Uncovering structures of knowledge, their biases, and consequent lacunae (gaps in knowledge) within education with the view to addressing the explicit and implicit ways in which education perpetuates inequality in the construction of knowledge is an integral part of addressing institutional and structural racism.
Appropriation – ‘to make one’s own’
‘Taking’ or ‘borrowing’ (without the intent of returning) involves an asymmetry of power between two cultures with the dominant culture taking from the marginalised culture. Appropriation involves taking from a culture that has relatively less power.
‘Oppression account’ is the taking in this dynamic which increases inequality and marginalisation (Matthes, 2019) – this is what makes appropriation morally wrong.
On the other hand, cultural assimilation, the incorporation of a marginalised culture into a host society admits the degrees of isolation or segregation up to complete assimilation (Kent, 2006).
Theoretical discussions are complicated by the question of what culture is – how clear the boundaries are and who are the insiders and outsiders – who the members are.
Cultural identities involve overlapping multiplicities (Hall, 1992) – advantages and disadvantages conceptualised in intersectionality.
The unclear nature of cultural identity consists of “the unstable nodal point of such overlapping identities, all of which may pull in different directions” (Jay, 1994, p.236)
Social, economic, political factors influence the fluid nature of culture and its products.
Negotiating between cultures is a dynamic process that is rooted in everyday lived experiences (Strang and Busse, 2011, p.14).
Commodification – The central practice of appropriation
Means by which cultural goods or ideas are transformed into objects of trade.
The real value of an object – the social history of production – is abstracted as it enters the market.
Material relations of the object are stripped away, and the conditions of labour involved in its production are masked and mystified. The value of the object is replaced by exchange value – its commercial worth – the cultural value of owning the commodity.
Objects inherit social potential – this can be both empowering and exploitative as consumers can have experiences through purchasing power (Levesque, 2015, p.3)
Commodification is integral to capitalism in the pursuit of profit (Piero Sraffa in Leys, 2012).
Artefacts of a marginalised culture may be used by the dominant or majority culture for aesthetic pleasure – in pop culture fashion, festivals, music videos. Aesthetic appreciation is used to excuse appropriation and commodification.
Exoticising ethnic cultures – commodification of cultural expressions of otherness to make the majority culture more ‘exciting’.
“Ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (Hooks, 2015, p.21)
Marginalised groups don’t have the same privileges to self-expression, which makes it crucial that they have ownership of their culture. Objects of their cultures are political symbols of oppression. Appropriation destabilises this ownership – it distorts, trivialises, and oversimplifies it.
For example, ethnic clothing and accessories adopted by celebrities add ‘mystique’ while minorities are ostracised because of the visible signs of their difference and then experience racial profiling and stereotyping – markers of tradition, patriarchy and oppression become exotic, desirable, edgy when displayed on white women (Maira, 2002; 2007).
Meaning is inverted, or values are assigned to cultural ideas and then transformed into something different.
In hip-hop – graffiti, breakdancing, and rap were expressions employed for survival strategies to cope with subjugation, racism, and poverty (Chang, 2005). Commodification of hip hop culture transformed it from its roots as a form of resistance and self-expression of working-class African Americans, to a mainstream phenomenon and adopted by white urbanites who exploit its transgressive nature as a way to express their dissatisfaction with their own culture (Kitwana, 2005).
Stripped from its socio-political significance, hip hop is defined by faux gangster styling in dress, speech, dance, devoid of its roots in African culture (Brown and Kopanoeds, 2014).
Commercialisation has distorted the mainstream understanding of hip-hop but more authentic expressions in global culture haven’t been supressed.
Ethnic minority youth communities in Europe stay closer to the original ethos, exploring their own trials of subjugation and marginalisation “as a means of communication that works in the context of specific localities” (Bennett, 2001, pp.93-94).
Underground expressions resist commodification and resonate more authentically with founding principles providing empowerment for other disadvantaged groups.
The pizza-effect
The ‘pizza-effect’ conveys colonialist imperialist values. Dominant culture taking from marginalised cultures, transforms the cultural object through commodification and selling it back to the original culture (Bharati, 1970).
Involves the process of re-enculturation – cultural products re-established in the original cultures from which they were dislocated from.
Pizza, a simple food in Italy was developed by Italian immigrants in the USA using elaborate toppings. It was transformed and exported back into Italy after WWI with a new ‘global identity’. Italians protested this “from the dangers of standardisation and extinction” (Helstosky, 2008, p.10) as the ‘pizza Americana’ is now not Italian at all because of its transformation.
This reinforces dominant power dynamics through cultural imperialism – pizza becomes a cultural commodity shaped by dominant values and then shared with the less powerful culture or is internalised by it.
This change can be either a modification to the original product, or the interpretative lens through which the original object is framed and evaluated. The most damaging effect of this is the distortion of culture which the minority or indigenous culture inherits in the process of re-enculturation.
The post-colonial perspective of cultural appropriation
Predominant approach sees appropriation as involving degradation of culture, with the most ethical thing to do being understanding: (a) threat to the marginalised culture, (b) ramifications of this, (c) devising recovery plans, (d) implementation of policy.
Postcolonial theory examines the colonialist / imperialist impact on the construction of epistemological and ethical stances that have legitimised appropriation in the name of ‘civilising’ or ‘salvaging’.
“[Classical Western anthropology] arose from imperialist and colonial hegemony … as an attempt to scientifically classify groups of human being as different and therefore separate (the savage from the civilised, the literate from the illiterate, the traditional from the modern)” (Pels, 2008, p.208)
Edward Said (1978) – ‘Orientalism’ – the West created the concept of the Orient, approximating the East as non-Western to consolidate power.
Museum Studies – Western museums as non-neutral and ideologically loaded spaces responsible for establishing and reinforcing pernicious narratives in collections, exhibitions, and curation (Procter, 2020).
“[Museums do] not merely represent the harms done by colonialist forces; they perpetuate them” (Dixon, 2021, p1)
Museums must reflect and understand their constructions in a “painful but necessary process” (Pearce, 1994b p.1-2).
Postcolonial theory therefore advocates an integrated perspective.
Bhabha argues for an alternative view of culture which is not fixed, static and having distinct essences as this is exactly what provides justification for separating the coloniser from the colonised and allows objectification. All culture is characterised by hybridity, change, flux, and transformation, a sense of ‘mixedness’ or interconnectedness (Bhabha, 2004, p.97).
This allows for an integrated view that sees change and becoming.
“This interstitial (small opening between thing) passage between fixed identification opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (Bhabha, 2004, p.5)
The recent shift from tangible to intangible property (land, property, commodities → ideas, intellectual property) presents legal challenges in an age of the Internet where access to cultures is fast and easy. Historical law has focused more on individual rights and the nation, not communities that have little power (Brown, 2003; Scafidi, 2005).
To summarise:
Not all forms of cultural exchange are equal.
Majority / dominant culture taking from marginalised cultures is ethically questionable.
Globalisation has hastened access to cultures, and so there is an increased urgency to understand the implications of cultural appropriation, and what constitutes sharing in a responsible way.
The biggest challenge is the contested concept of culture.
Postcolonial theory has enabled a more fluid understanding and shown an emergence of marginalised groups articulating culture in their own terms.
Voices and representations are included in scholarship, but whether this is genuine dialogue or tokenistic and superficial is anyone’s guess.
Greater understanding of the impact of legislation on marginalised groups ultimately benefits all because it promotes what ways of sharing cultures are acceptable.
References:
Bennett, A. (2001) Cultures of popular music. Open University Press.
Bhabha, H. K. (2004) The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Bharati, A. (1970) The Hindu Renaissance and its apologetic patterns. Journal of Asian Studies, 29(2), 267–287.
Brown, T., & Kopanoeds, B. (2014) Soul thieves: The appropriation and misrepresentation of African American popular culture. Palgrave Macmillan
Chang, J. (2005) Can't stop, won't stop: A history of the hip hop generation. Picador, St Martin's Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(9).
Hooks, B. (2015). Black looks: Race and representation. London: Routledge.
Kitwana, B. (2005). Why White kids love hip hop: Wankstas, wiggers, wannabes and the new reality of race in America. Basic Civitas Books.
Leys, C. (2012). Commodification: The essence of our time. Open Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/commodification-essence-of-our-time/
Maira, S. (2002) Temporary tattoos: Indo-chic fantasies and late capitalist orientalism. Meridian, 3(1), pp.134-160.
Maira, S. (2007) Indo-chic: Late capitalist orientalism and imperial culture. In T. L. Nguyen, & M. T. Nguyen (Eds.), Alien encounters (pp. 221–244). Duke University Press.
Matthes, E. (2019) Cultural appropriation and oppression. Philosophical Studies, 176, 1003–1013.
Shriver, L. (2016) Lionel Shriver’s full speech: I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad, The Guardian.
Strang, V., & Busse, M. (2011) Ownership and appropriation. Berg.
Young, J. O. (2010). Cultural appropriation and the arts. Blackwell Publishing.