In the past few years, we’ve heard and read many discussions on Cultural Appropriation, a term that is sometimes used excessively and without acknowledging its context and meaning. So, here we go. Let’s clarify this intricate topic in today’s episode!
Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I am a PhD and a Religious Studies Scholar and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, Witchcraft and all things occult.
In this episode, we will discuss Cultural Appropriation from an academic perspective. I must premise before we start our discussion, that this video was modelled after and inspired by a talk that Professor Sabina Magliocco gave for Harvard Divinity School, invited by Professor Giovanna Parmigiani. They are both fellow Italians and scholars I hold in high esteem, and I have to admit, Professor Magliocco’s explanation of cultural appropriation is the best and easiest to understand that I’ve ever come across.
I will leave the link to the mentioned talk in the info box and some other peer-reviewed sources, including the book by Dr Suzanne Owen on the Appropriation of Native American Spirituality.
So, first of all, before we discuss cultural appropriation, we need to clarify what culture is.
Culture is not – and I repeat – is NOT the same as race or ethnicity. It is also not biologically inherited or what your DNA suggests being the geographical location of your predecessors or ancestors.
Culture is LIVED and LEARNED, something you breathe and are immersed into constantly. Either because you were born and raised into a culture or because you move to a different country and get “acculturated”. So, for example, I’m Italian not because my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all Italians – which is also true – but because I was born and raised in Italy, Italian is my native tongue, and the Italian culture has shaped my identity throughout my upbringing and shows in the way I speak, I interact, I gesticulate, and I despise the very thought of pineapple on pizza!
As Magliocco explains, culture is a complex system of knowledge, symbols, meanings, practices, and beliefs that characterize a specific group of people in a specific time and place. (Magliocco, 2009; Cultural Appropriation in Neopagan and New Age Religions: A Conversation with Sabina Magliocco, 2021) (Magliocco, 2009)
Culture is also constantly changing and there is no such thing as a culture that is unaffected by contact with other cultures and the passing of time. Now, there are different ways cultures spread and influence each other. Cultures spread through trade, migration, conquest as well as the use of the internet and social media in a globalized world.
There are mostly three types of influences that affect a specific culture – reshaping it.
The first is Cultural Diffusion, where elements of one culture pass on and get transmitted to another. For instance, the bidet was brought to Italy by the French and now we’re one of the few cultures who sees that marvellous and refreshing piece of furniture as indispensable and greatly miss it when moving abroad!
The second type is Acculturation and this happens when a weaker cultural group adopts elements of the dominant cultural group. This also happens when you migrate to a different country and start assimilating traits of that culture. Like me learning how to queue, ever since I moved to England, instead of just proceeding through the chaos of people as I would naturally do in Italy.
The third type is Syncretism and this occurs when there is an overlap and integration between two or more cultural elements. This allows for traits and elements of one culture to take on new meanings.
This happened, for instance, when the Saints got syncretised with Afro-Caribbean spirits. This also happens in Italian folk witchcraft, where Saints are sometimes seen as spirits, and practitioners work with them in a rather shamanistic way.
Now, when it comes to cultural appropriation, we have none of the aforementioned types of cultural exchanges, and that’s because cultural appropriation is inextricably linked to power imbalance, colonialism, and consumer capitalism.
Let me explain.
The concept, more than the term, was coined by Kenneth Coutts-Smith in his 1976 work on “cultural colonialism.” (Coutts-Smith, 2002)
Scholars like Aldred and Owen have, later, researched practices such as sun dances and sweat lodges performed by Westerners who did not belong to the indigenous cultures those practices stemmed from. In these and similar works, we can notice that the concept of cultural appropriation is mainly entertained in relation to native traditions of indigenous people adopted – or indeed appropriated – by Westerners. (Aldred, 2000; Owen, 2011)
In 2005, Scafaldi’s paper clearly established cultural appropriation as a legal term in American law (Scafidi, 2005). So, we see that the concept of cultural appropriation has been discussed by academics since the 1990s, but it only entered the public discourse recently, around the 2010s.
What constitutes cultural appropriation, then?
Magliocco clarifies that cultural appropriation is ‘the unauthorized use of cultural material from a subordinate group by members of the dominant group.’ This process is rooted in colonialism and colonial attitudes alongside a power imbalance between the two cultural parties involved. Thus, something is cultural appropriation if it’s been stolen, not borrowed, or offered by a member of a minoritarian cultural group. Something is also cultural appropriation if it deprives of rights and benefits. An act of cultural appropriation may harm, vilify, weaken or damage in any way – financially or otherwise – the subordinate cultural object of the appropriation. For instance, by profiting off the unauthorized use of cultural materials or practices – depriving the owners of that potential income – or using such materials to alter the perception of that cultural group in a way that causes harm, ridicule, or deliberate misunderstanding aimed at weakening that cultural group. Lastly, we come to the capitalistic elements underpinning cultural appropriation as, when this phenomenon takes place, culture becomes a commodity that can be owned, objectified, exchanged, or imitated.
In conclusion, the matter of cultural appropriation is complex and bears no clear-cut answer as to whether X practice classifies as appropriation because it really depends on the context, the intent and the power dynamic in place.
A scenario where a Westerner organises a sweat lodge because they have learned the practice from an indigenous practitioner who had willingly taught them is not equal to a scenario where a Westerner reads about the practice from a random book or magazine, then sets the ceremony up to make money off it while altering people’s perception and understanding of this practice.
Thus, if you’re wondering if something classifies as cultural appropriation, ask yourself these questions:
– Is there a power inequality between my cultural group and the cultural group this practice comes from?
– Do I have permission to use this cultural material? For instance, you’d have permission if the material is being sold or offered or taught by the member of the cultural group it comes from.
– Is the employment of this cultural practice or material going to cause any harm to the cultural group?
– And lastly, am I utilizing this cultural element as a commodity rather than how it was originally intended?
This is a very nuanced matter, but if you answered Yes to two or more of the aforementioned questions, chances are, it is cultural appropriation. That said, I think these conversations as well as the sensibilities and respect practitioners show towards other cultures, are extremely important. I would also encourage people to be equally kind towards those who might genuinely struggle to gather whether something is cultural appropriation or not. I do not condone attacking other practitioners and throwing around accusations of culturally appropriating X, Y and Z.
Please, let’s be kind to each other, and let’s offer education and compassion to each other instead.
This is it for today’s video. And I hope you found it informative. This project of delivering scholarly academic knowledge freely on the internet can only exist thanks to your support. So, if you have the means and want to help at all, I would really appreciate it if you consider supporting my work with a one-off PayPal donation, by joining Memberships, or my Inner Symposium on Patreon – where you will get access to our Discord server, monthly lectures and lots of other perks depending on your chosen tier. And if you did like this video, don’t forget to SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, share this video with your friends and leave me a comment and let me know what you thought about it. I really enjoy interacting with you guys in the comments and learning about what are your thoughts about the matters that I discuss here in the Symposium. And I really thank you for being here and I hope you stay tuned for all the upcoming Academic Fun.
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REFERENCES
Aldred, L. (2000) ‘Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality’, American Indian Quarterly, 24(3), pp. 329–352.
Coutts-Smith, K. (2002) ‘Cultural Colonialism’, Third Text, 16(1), pp. 1–14. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528820110120678.
Cultural Appropriation in Neopagan and New Age Religions: A Conversation with Sabina Magliocco (2021). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDJUTUAJvsE (Accessed: 19 August 2022).
Magliocco, S. (2009) Reclamation, appropriation and the ecstatic imagination in modern pagan ritual. Brill, pp. 223–240. Available at: https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789047442356/Bej.9789004163737.i-650_010.xml (Accessed: 19 August 2022).
Owen, S. (2011) The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Scafidi, S. (2005) Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law. Rutgers University Press.
Published 21 Aug 2022