I don't think we'll be able to stop the circulation of what we live in an age of circulation. What one perhaps does have to guard against is a situation in which one powerful actor with access to, you know, means of distribution far in excess of everyone else's becomes the person who is telling everyone else what their culture is. So I suppose a question is, especially in this modern global hyper connected environment, how we prevent the world from being kind of flooded with cheap or sacks versions of good sushi? And so it makes me think that we can try and foster as much cultural exchange as possible.
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.
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