cultural ownership | Pandaemonium

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AND SECULAR BLASPHEMY

July 9, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the New York Times on controversies over ‘cultural appropriation’ . (I cannot publish my NYT articles on Pandaemonium until the month after they are published in the newspaper.) It was originally published on 14 June under the headline ‘In defence of cultural appropriation’. The article has drawn much attention (and much hostility). I hope to write a proper response to the criticism soon. The images are all […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, blasphemy, chuck berry, cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, dana schutz, elvis presley, emmett till, identity politics, racism, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

WHO IS APPROPRIATING WHAT?

September 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Last week the novelist Lionel Shriver gave the keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival. It did not go well. She addressed the question of ‘Fiction and identity politics’ (apparently the organizers had originally asked her to talk about ‘community and belonging’, but she had submitted to them a different topic), providing a robust critique of identity politics and of the idea of ‘cultural appropriation’. Beginning with a story about colleges attempting to ban the wearing of sombreros as an […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, free speech, herder, identity politics, immigration, lionel shriver, racism, romanticism

AWAY WITH THE GATEKEEPERS!

April 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for Al Jazeera English on the the controversies over ‘cultural appropriation’ and what they reveal about the degradation of contemporary campaigns for social justice. It was published in AJE under the headline ‘The bane of cultural appropriation’. Another week, another controversy about ‘cultural appropriation’. The latest has been the furore over Justin Bieber’s dreadlocks. The Bieber furore followed similar controversies over Beyoncé’s Bollywood outfit, Kylie Jenner’s cornrows, Canadians practicing yoga, English students wearing sombreros and American students donning […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, herder, identity politics, justin bieber, racism, romanticism

BATTLES OVER ANCIENT BONES AND MODERN IDENTITIES

June 24, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Last week a paper in Nature by Rasmussen et al threw new light on the question of the genetic origins of Kennewick Man, a 8,500 year old skeleton whose bones were discovered in July 1996 by two teenagers in the Columbia River, near Kennewick, Washington State, in north-west USA. It was a rare find, nearly a complete skeleton, and one of the oldest human discovered in North America. The bones became the focus of an intense, fractious battle, both scientific and […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, cultural ownership, cultural repariation, david hurst thomas, human remains, identity politics, indigenous culture, kennewick man, nagpra, native americans, racial science, unesco, vine deloria

THE BATTLE OF THE BONES

December 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I published recently a transcript of a radio documentary I had made that explored the question of ‘Who owns culture?’. Perhaps the most fractious of recent debates around this question has been over ‘Kennewick Man’, an ancient skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in America’s Washington State. The 9000-year old skeleton became the focus for two major controversies: What is race? And who owns history? I tell the story of Kennewick Man in my book Strange Fruit: […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, creation myths, cultural ownership, cultural repatriation, culture, david hurst thomas, human origins, human remains, indigenous culture, kennewick man, nagpra, native americans, unesco, vine deloria

WHO OWNS CULTURE?

December 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I mentioned in my last post the attempts by the UN, UNESCO and WIPO to give certain groups, particularly indigenous groups, control over traditional culture, and of the dangers inherent in such an approach. I am publishing here the transcript of a BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme that I wrote and presented in 2004 which explored the issue of ‘Who owns culture?’. You can listen to an audio of the programme, too. ‘Who owns culture?’, Analysis, BBC Radio 4, 29 July […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: anthropology, british museum, broadcasts, cultural ownership, cultural policy, cultural repatriation, culture, human remains, indigenous culture, museum of london, museums, neil Macgregor, unesco