I agree with you that part of the problem here might be the tendency to fall back on metaphors of ownership, which can range across all sorts of different things. But I find myself harder and harder to press to say, you know, this is good informed use and this isn't. Once you move beyond objects, I think it becomes very hard to use the language and ill-advised to use the word 'ownership' So where do we draw the line? Where do we cease to be able to own a cultural object and start to have something that really can't be laid claim to by any particular group?
In an age where the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation seems ever more blurred, can anyone actually own a culture? In this conversation acclaimed author and public intellectual Martin Puchner explains that the history of mankind has always been a story of borrowing from one another and that this is something to be celebrated, not lamented. The idea of ownership implicit in debates about cultural appropriation, he argues, presents an insular tale about how culture evolves — flattening out the complicated textures of human history and, in the end, what truly makes us us. Our host for this discussion is Edward Wilson Lee, fellow and lecturer at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices