Who Owns Culture?

Sunday, September 18, 2022

What Is It

Fashion designers, musicians, and Halloween costume wearers have been accused of engaging in cultural appropriation. In some cases, the alleged appropriator is quick to apologize; in others, they defend their actions as a way of appreciating a different culture. So why is cultural appropriation such a morally fraught issue? Is there a clear-cut way to tell whether we’re exploring or exploiting? And can we come up with principles that allow artists to be inspired while also allowing communities to hold on to what is theirs? Josh and Ray mix it up with Dominic Lopes from the University of British Columbia, author of Aesthetic Injustice: A Cosmopolitan Theory (forthcoming).

Transcript

Transcript

Josh Landy  
Can anyone own a culture?

Ray Briggs  
When is it disrespectful to copy someone else's style?

Josh Landy  
How do you draw the line between appreciation and appropriation?

Comments (8)


Tim Smith's picture

Tim Smith

Wednesday, August 10, 2022 -- 4:28 PM

Appropriation only raises

Appropriation only raises issues when it comes with oppression which it historically has.

Michelle Gelfand at the Stanford Business School has popularized tight and loose cultures. This helps think about ownership. Also helpful is the Geert Hofstede 6D model -https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-mo...

I recently watched Reservation Dogs on Hulu, and learned more about being an American than Native American culture, which is not appropriation as much as admiration. When you are down culture brings you back if you find truth there.

I don't begrudge anyone truth as long as there is no oppression. That is possible. Ask Ted Lasso.

Skoden.

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Daniel's picture

Daniel

Thursday, September 1, 2022 -- 4:58 PM

What about military

What about military helicopters with names such as Chinook and Apache, as well as an illegal incursion into another country for purposes of assassination under the name "Operation Geronimo"? There's certainly truth there, namely, that someone has a serious psychological problem resulting in instruments of slaughter being given names belonging to its former targets. Would such a truth violate the no-oppression condition? If so, who's being oppressed? If not, would it be just as benign if such instruments of non-accidental human necrosis were given names like "Patrick Henry" helicopters or "Operation Columbus"?

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Daniel's picture

Daniel

Saturday, September 10, 2022 -- 2:58 PM

Here's a question for which

Here's a question for which contribution is greatly hoped: The event in late XVIII century American history called "the Boston Tea Party" is thought to be a seminal one which leads to the Revolutionary War. Considering that the perpetrators of this crime were dressed as area Native Americans associated with the Iroquois Federation, was this an early example in American history of cultural appropriation, or was the intent to conceal their identities and blame it on who they were dressed as? This is an important question because the possibility of its being true implies that the effect of the action, shutting down the harbor enforced by military means under British control, might have been avoided if the deception had been successful. This in turn reveals its authentic goal: to coerce the government of George III to lift the prohibition of settlement West of Appalachia, which had been kept in tact after the repeal of the Stamp Act and was a key demand of the Iroquois Federation which had sided with the British in the previous conflict with the French. In short, if it can be shown that the intent of the disguises was grounded in deception, then its causal relationship to the break-out of war in 1775 must be interpreted as one of a failed attempt to garner British support for ethnic displacement, later given the simpler term of "genocide", and as only afterwards being necessarily separatist in character on account of their exposed impropriety. In consequence this would require a readjustment of historical perspective to an association of the event with genocidal intent rather than independence. Under those conditions the answer to both questions must be in the affirmative. The representations of eventual victims of colonial expansion which later come to control transmission of historical truths are observed to be appropriated at its earliest stages. In addition to their inclusion of manner of dress and gesticulation, events like the famous 1773 destruction of surplus of a product associated the pleasures of leisure may very well show that they are also designed to express pathological criminality as well, worked out in service of representing the victim as the aggressor. Included in this variety of cultural appropriation, (misrepresentation by use of a stereotype of the victim in order to conceal one's own criminality), would have to also be the statement in the 1776 Independence-Declaration in the tenth of the twelve sections concerning the "merciless Indian savages" who have no regard for the civilized "rule of warfare". Naturally a casual perusal of the historical record displays clear inversion of the parties to whom the terms apply, condemning what the writer himself is guilty of, even if only by association. In what way then does the original form of cultural appropriation in the United States, namely the presentation of a stereotype which carries guilt away from the perpetrator, not conform to defensible alternate versions?

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Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Monday, September 12, 2022 -- 1:38 PM

I disagree with the morally

I disagree with the morally fraught distinction. The culture war nonsense we now encounter emerges from all sorts of Me too-ness. When blacks said, say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud,, many took that as literal and perpetual.---black folks are some of the loudest people I know. And,clearly, proud of it.
Giving fairness its' due, I will turn to me too-ness. OK. Enough. For all the foregoing reasons and more.. so, let's gat back to culture war.. it is, I assert, both contrivance and continuance. No one owns it unless everyone does.. and that is my point. Hope you have a better, more convincing back story..

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Daniel's picture

Daniel

Wednesday, September 14, 2022 -- 1:47 PM

In spite of its

In spite of its disconnectedness, discernable in your piece of 9/12/22 above is a clear argument which is easily refuted on account of invalid use of the negation and informal deployment of the straw-man enthymeme. The invalid use of the negation is constituted by a paraphrase of the argument "if all x is y then some x is y" as "if some x is y then not all x is y". A refutation is then attempted by placing emphasis on the invalidity of the paraphrase, exhibiting the straw-man tactic. Also, an invalid premise appears which is unrelated to the argument that draws an arbitrary conclusion from random samples with regards to a uniform extended predicate-reference. For these two reasons, exhibition of unsound reasoning in argument and expression of premise invalidity, you've rendered here useful and beneficial service to the forum which should be justly recognized, in spite of the obvious failure in defense of your position.

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Daniel's picture

Daniel

Thursday, September 15, 2022 -- 2:12 PM

If historical causes of

If historical causes of endemic usage of stereotypes in common speech are such that the possibility of extirpation from customary cultural contexts must be precluded for near-term considerations, can a less injurious stereotype inherit secondary moral permissibility from the primary moral impermissibility of using any stereotypes at all? The question can be asked only where the range of options does not extend beyond their inclusion in the means of inter-individual expression. Does reducing the harm of something harmful in this case entail doing some minimized harm, --which is here to ask: is there secondary permissibility of lesser-evil stereotypes?

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jenniferbrowns

Friday, November 17, 2023 -- 2:06 AM

For those who are fashion

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lerenjack

Wednesday, February 14, 2024 -- 1:48 AM

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