Cultural Appropriation

I have written a decade ago that accusations of cultural appropriation are about snobbery, not protecting cultures. We show that we know how the dish is prepared back in Nepal, or what this dance means in Namibia, or what an earring means in Nauru - and you don't, you benighted fool.

Listening about the exchange of elite goods in the Iron Age today, I was struck by a similar pattern.  First, a foreign good would be given and received solely as a marker of status.  It should you had a wide reach, and wide knowledge. Kings exchanged gifts as a favor to each other, so that they could show them off. Yet as trade increased, a few things started happening.  The expensive pottery influenced the style of the local pottery. Other people desired to get some inferior version of the foreign pattery if they couldn't get the best kind. In a generation the original gift was not fully unique, and in two generations it might even be a bit common.  I was reminded of the objects the sea captains brought back from distant lands to the ports of Boston and Portland, and how they populate the small museums of various towns in New England. Ornate letter-openers, doll-costumes, or intricate knives from Rio, or Rangoon, now mostly valuable because they are 200 years old, not because they are from a distance.  We have such things in abundance now, but they were treasures then. They have become much less valuable. 

And she feeds you tea and oranges, that come all the way from China. Well, we've all got lots of stuff from China now, which is different even from 1966. The tea in question was Constant Comment, by the way, which was created in NYC in 1945, so, bit of a letdown there.

So to with the treasures from other cultures that are information.  If you know about tlayudas, that used to be a big deal.  But now that there are Oaxacan restaurants in the US, for status you now need to know the real way they cook tlayudas in Oaxaca to be one up on the others in your circle. Your status object is now not a piece of pottery, but information.  This is much harder to protect, and other people knowing the good stuff cheapens your precious object. You have to cry "Sultural Appropriation" to slow them down and keep your leverage. The accusation is a specific version of a larger general case about showing off your foreign connections.