Antinomies of cultural appropriation - Introduction

In the context of globalization, cultural anthropology gained a new momentum by highlighting the self-conscious persistence of cultural differences. Against the background of an ever increasing intensity of societal and economic entanglements, the vital claim of cultural differences must be a reflexive process associated with the idea that one's own culture is creative and adaptive to innovations. Anthropologists have defined a set of tools in order to describe these processes of cultural changes. These tools have the names of hybridization, creolization and domestication, but, in particular also of cultural appropriation. Historically cultural appropriation was mainly relevant in contexts of unequal power relations. Appropriation thereby became a strategy of the powerless, who used appropriation in order to undermine the structures defined by the powerful. Cultural appropriation can also be practised through mimesis, and thereby negates the authority of powerful actors. Cultural appropriation requires moments of negotiations and does not aim at definitive results, but merely at the transgression of boundaries. Well defined fields of cultural appropriation within anthropology are media studies and consumption. Empirical approaches to a more detailed documentation of appropriation can be the following: (1) Naming, (2) Contextualization, (3) Incorporation and (4) material transformation.