On Cultural Appropriation

Abstract

This article starts from the premise that cultural appropriation is a key concern for folklorists and ethnologists, as well as for many of the communities with which they engage and partner, but that it is also one that has received relatively little attention of a general conceptual sort. This is true despite the ubiquity of cultural appropriation discussions in popular media, public culture, and informal scholarly conversation. Drawing on the work of these fields, an ideal-type conceptualization of cultural appropriation is offered, one that situates it as one among a range of modes of cultural change. For cultural appropriation, the key neighboring modes are diffusion, acculturation, and assimilation. The article also briefly addresses cultural appropriation as it is often situated vis-à-vis conceptions of, and processes related to, cultural property and cultural heritage. This heuristic emphasizes the metacultural discourse that marks instances of cultural appropriation as well as the inequality often characterizing the parties to such episodes.