‘Culture Is a Huge Recycling Project’

Is Appropriation Appropriate? Depends on What We Mean. Martin Puchner’s ‘Culture: The Story of Us from Cave Art to K-Pop’

It’s not hard to find examples of cultural appropriation across the media today, nor people decrying it. Just take one scorcher from a few years back (and before mentioning it, here’s hoping tempers have cooled a bit in the meantime): singer Adele’s Bantu knots. Dip into the social media and press coverage, and it’s all outraged critics and earnest defe…