Cultural Appropriation, Or The Usurpation Of Ethnic Elements: A Real Problem?
The concept of cultural appropriation is increasingly debated in circles of social psychology, anthropology and sociology, although it is not new.
The idea that one culture can feed off another through means that are not violent has aroused great controversy, and, as we will see, part of the problem is that there are two very different positions: those who believe that cultural appropriation is a form of real domination that must be fought, and those who believe it does not exist.
Now… what exactly is cultural appropriation and why do we hear more and more about it? We will see it in the following lines.
Cultural appropriation can be understood as the use of typical cultural elements of one ethnic group by another, stripping it of all its meaning and trivializing its use. In short, this is what happens when a cultural element is usurped with purposes that have nothing to do with those attributed to it.
However, as often happens in social sciences, there is no single agreed upon definition of what cultural appropriation is, and that is why some people add a nuance to this definition: This cultural “theft” must be produced by a hegemonic or dominant culture to something else that is submitted to the first.
Thus, this last detail serves to introduce another issue in the way in which we can understand this phenomenon: power dynamics, the disappearance of certain cultures at the expense of the enrichment of others.
Many of the contexts in which people or organizations have been criticized for falling into cultural appropriation are linked to art, fashion and aesthetics. For example, some fashion magazines have been attacked and boycotted (although with little effect) for using white models to represent non-Western aesthetics with clothing from cultures considered “exotic”.
The same has happened in the world of music. Several singers have been criticized for resorting to cultural appropriation, like Miley Cyrus with the twerk or Katy Perry for dressing in clothing associated with the Japanese stereotype. The same is done, in retrospect, with Elvis Presley, for marketing music that until a few decades ago was part of African-American culture, until he made it fashionable.
On the other hand, certain universities and organizations of all kinds have also been criticized for marketing events related to non-Western style meditation, or even yoga. There are many commercial activities associated with elements easily identified with certain cultures.
The controversy
Cultural appropriation is a very problematic concept. One of the reasons is that, on the one hand, it is very arbitrary attribute an aesthetic, element or ritual to an ethnic group determined and not to others.
For example, dreadlocks are normally associated with ethnic groups linked to Africa or in any case to Jamaica, a country with a black majority. However, technically, in the past there were already groups of white people who wore dreadlocks, such as certain peoples of Ancient Greece or religious groups in Europe. On the other hand, it would also be possible to criticize people associated with the populations of Africa and Asia for using a cultural element of ethnic subgroups that are in a worse situation than their own. When determining what an ethnic group is It is possible to adopt an infinite number of perspectives.
Another problem is that many people don’t believe cultural appropriation is a problem, even if it exists. That is, they emphasize the idea that cultures have no limits and therefore flow, constantly change and pass from one hand to another. From this point of view, no one should suffer or worry about something like this since the normal thing would be for a culture to remain unchanged and isolated from the rest.
Additionally, another topic that is often talked about is that for cultural appropriation to exist, there must first be cultural elements that belong to a few hands. Usurpation occurs when someone who previously enjoyed something stops doing so due to the action of another person, who takes ownership of that resource. However, in cultural appropriation this does not happen; In any case, something that was previously only used by a smaller group of people becomes popular.
A broader view of the problem
It must be taken into account that for many people cultural appropriation cannot be understood by simply analyzing the way in which a habit, aesthetic or ritual becomes popular. What happens is that this phenomenon is, in any case, the symptom that there is a culture that subjugates the rest.
We have already seen an example that leads us to this idea: the popularization of African American roots music by Elvis, a white man. The same happens with twerk, which until recently was associated with groups of non-whites with few economic resources. Or even with Buddhism, a religion that, due to the stereotypes surrounding meditation, has been associated with peace, even though it is perfectly possible for Buddhists to fall into violence as a result of religious fanaticism.
Cultural appropriation, then, would be a way of commodifying cultural aspects that have existed for a long time outside the margins of the market, and that have been introduced into this from the perspective of white Western culture Even when this serves to whitewash the image of a specific ethnic group, this is the result of ignorance, a sign of the extent to which these populations are removed from the decision-making centers of the economy.
