cultural appropriation

cultural appropriation

English

Noun

cultural appropriation (countable and uncountable, plural cultural appropriations)

1. (sociology) The exploitative or oppressive cooption of elements of one culture by members of a different culture.
   • 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?

   • 2016, Frances Wilson, ‘Whose Life Is It Anyway?’, Literary Review, November:

     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’.

Translations

exploitative or oppressive 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 German: kulturelle Aneignung f Japanese: 文化盗用 (bunka tōyō), 文化の盗用 (bunka no tōyō) Icelandic: menningarnám n Irish: leithghabháil chultúrtha f Spanish: apropiación cultural f