I've seen the question of cultural appropriation come up from time to time in learning and education. In our field, it would be like a person from one culture using or teaching knowledge from another culture. There are certainly some legitimate concerns; for example, I should not simply start conducting research on, or teaching about, indigenous cultures, because to do so would be to treat the culture as an object or a commodity. This article, nonetheless, asks some tough questions. The definition from Susan Scafidi, is "Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artefacts from someone else's culture without permission," writes Amod Lele, adding "The caveat is bizarre. How can 'a culture' give permission?" But more, "The very idea of treating cultural expressions as a culture's property, which can be taken, seems to extend the capitalist logic of private property into ever further spheres." And also, "Cultures have always borrowed freely from one another, changing the meaning of objects in the process – without "permission" – and the process is never unidirectional.
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