cultural appropriation

English

An example of cultural appropriation: a white woman wearing a Native American-inspired war bonnet

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃ(ə)ɹəl əˌpɹoʊpɹiˈeɪʃən/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

cultural appropriation (countable and uncountable, plural cultural appropriations)

1. (sociology) The (often financially) exploitative, oppressive and/or inaccurate cooption of elements of one culture by members of a different culture.

   White Americans engaged in cultural appropriation when they performed dances involving blackface and mock Native American regalia.

   • 2000, David Hesmondhalgh, in Born/Hesmondhalgh, Western Music and Its Others, p. 280:

     What are the implications for our understanding of the ethics of cultural appropriation when the sound of a Pacific island women's choir becomes the hook of a club hit in Europe, without reward, recompense, or credit for that choir?

   • 2015, The Guardian, headline, 23 November:

     Are yoga classes just bad cultural appropriation?

   • 2015 April 2, Navneet Alang, “Must We Forfeit Our Ghee?”, in Hazlitt‎^[1], retrieved 2023-05-14:

     Where, then, is the line that divides the simple pleasure of cultural fusion from cultural appropriation? One answer is that it becomes appropriation when one group's sense of "normal" inexplicably and unfairly dominates over another.

   • 2016 November, Frances Wilson, “Whose Life Is It Anyway?”, in Literary Review:

     The party guests were subsequently investigated by the college for ‘ethnic stereotyping’ and placed on ‘social probation’, while the students' general assembly denounced the event as an act of ‘cultural appropriation’.

Hypernyms

• appropriation

Related terms

• cultural appreciation
• culturally appropriate

 

Translations

exploitative, oppressive and/or inaccurate cooption of elements of one culture by members of a different culture

• Catalan: apropiació cultural f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 文化挪用 (wénhuà nuóyòng)

• Finnish: kulttuurinen omiminen
• Georgian: კულტურის მითვისება (ḳulṭuris mitviseba), კულტურის მისაკუთრება (ḳulṭuris misaḳutreba)
• German: kulturelle Aneignung (de) f
• Icelandic: menningarnám n
• Irish: leithghabháil chultúrtha f
• Japanese: 文化盗用 (bunka tōyō), 文化の盗用 (bunka no tōyō)
• Portuguese: apropriação cultural f
• Spanish: apropiación cultural f
• Turkish: kültür yağmacılığı

References

• “cultural appropriation”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.