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Antinomies of cultural appropriation - Introduction
Abstract.
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.
[globalization, culture, cultural diversity, creolization, methods]
"We take, whatever technology works and shape it to our purposes and uses. Apparently that bothers people who want us to remain prìstine, or to admit to our contradictions of wanting technology and controlling and preserving the resources of our own use. Why not? We have always accepted and reshaped technology that works for our own purposes. "
(Marshall Sahlins 1999:xv)
Begriffliches
"Kulturelle Aneignung" ist ein junger Begriff in der Ethnologie. Frühe Verwendungen sind in den Cultural studies ab den 1970er und in den Media studies ab den 1980er Jahren festzustellen; dort wie im gegenwärtigen ethnologischen Gebrauch steht die Differenz zwischen verschiedenen Möglichkeiten der Wahrnehmung kultureller Phänomene im Vordergrund. Kulturelle Aneignung beschreibt mithin kulturelle Transformationen (Rautenberg 2004:77) und fokussiert dabei die Fragen nach Innovation und der Kreativität von Akteuren, die zwischen den verschiedenen, kulturell geprägten Perspektiven vermitteln (Jansen 2005). Von besonderer Bedeutung für die Aneignung sind die Handlungsräume der Akteure, die diese zur Bildung einer neuen Plattform oder auch zur Abgrenzung nutzen.
Damit steht "kulturelle Aneignung"...