Group Ownership, Group Interests, and the Ethics of Cultural Exchange

Abstract

In this essay, we address an important problem in the ethics of cultural engagement: the problem of giving a systematic account of when and why outsider use of insider cultural material is permissible or impermissible. We argue that many scholars rely on a problematic notion of collective ownership even when they claim to be disavowing it. After making this case, we motivate an alternative framework for thinking about cultural exchange, which we call the core interests framework. We conclude with some reflections on how this framework helps to raise interesting questions about the most promising accounts of wrongful cultural appropriation.

1 Introduction

The concept of cultural appropriation has become a ubiquitous tool in social critique. There is, however, much confusion about the nature of this concept and ample scepticism about its utility. Our main goal here is to diagnose one significant source of confusion. We call this source of confusion the cultural ownership framework.

The cultural ownership framework is a common yet flawed framework for thinking about what we call the problem of permissions: the problem of giving a systematic account of when and why outsider use of insider cultural material is permissible or impermissible. We argue that many philosophers and political theorists rely on aspects of this framework, at times even when they claim to be disavowing it. After making this case, we motivate an alternative approach to thinking about the ethics of cultural exchange, which we call the core interests framework. We conclude with some reflections on how the core interests framework helps to raise interesting questions about some of the most promising accounts of wrongful cultural appropriation.

2 What is Cultural Appropriation?

There is disagreement about how to define cultural appropriation, and even more disagreement about when and why it is wrong. We will work with the most theoretically neutral understanding of the phenomenon available. Here is the minimal account we will be assuming: cultural appropriation is a form of cultural exchange or cultural borrowing or cultural use which involves outsider use of insider materials. Some brief notes on this conception will set up our presentation.

We assume that difficult questions about the nature of cultural membership can be resolved. In other words, we help ourselves to claims about those who belong to a culture (insiders) and those who do not (outsiders). This is a standard assumption in writing about this topic. There are reasonable worries about how to make good on it, but they will not concern us here.¹

By ‘materials’, we mean ‘cultural materials’. We assume that cultural materials are very diverse.² We are primarily interested in the use of materials that are non-rivalrous, i.e., in outsider use that does not prevent insider use. Outsider use of non-rival materials may still alter the value of these materials to insiders. However, plausible theories about wrongful outsider use of rival goods do not easily generalise to non-rival goods (Thompson 2003; Young 2010, Chap. 3; Ziff and Rao 1997: 4). We will say more about this shortly by way of examples. We hope to emphasise how the extraordinary diversity of valuable cultural materials complicates the formulation of general principles about the ethics of cultural exchange.

By ‘use’ we mean to include both morally problematic and unproblematic uses. Although we assume that some instances of outsider use are morally problematic, and some impermissible, we do not assume that “cultural appropriation” should refer only to these problematic uses. We sidestep the question of whether cultural appropriation is always wrong, i.e., the question of whether “cultural appropriation” is a descriptive or normative concept. This is an essentially terminological question that leads to unproductive arguments, at least in popular discourse.

If cultural appropriation is merely a descriptive concept, then perhaps our minimal definition suffices for some purposes. If the concept has normative content, then this definition falls short. It must be said that in political discourse the concept has an undeniable condemnatory force. Fortunately, this need not worry us. Everyone should be interested in moving beyond the minimal definition, because everyone should be interested in the further question of when and why outsider use is impermissible. This is the main controversy to be explored.

There are several accounts of impermissible outsider use in the philosophical literature.

Some connect the wrongfulness of outsider use to oppression (Matthes 2016, 2019), others to the violation of intimate connections between group members (Nguyen and Strohl 2019), and others to the expression of objectionable attitudes like disregard (Tuvel 2021). Our investigation of the cultural ownership framework and the core interests alternative will illuminate some of the strengths and limitations of these accounts.

3 The Problem of Permissions

The problem of permissions is the problem of giving a systematic account of when and why outsider use of insider cultural material is permissible or impermissible. How, in short, do we make sense of the complex suite of permission facts concerning outsider use? This set of facts is complex in a number of ways. For one thing, facts about the relative privilege of cultural groups do not suffice to explain the permission facts. Nor do facts about the centrality of the relevant material to the identity of the cultural group. We illustrate with a few examples.

Natural languages are integral to the identities of many cultural groups. Yet it is permissible for a comparatively privileged Westerner to study, speak, and read Arabic—and to use this knowledge to study the Quran. Likewise, it is permissible for non-Jews to study, speak, and read Yiddish (Ingalls 2015). That said, there are impermissible ways to engage with these languages, e.g., by using them only in order to tell racist jokes. And there are important concerns about outsider use of rare or dying Indigenous languages (Gregory 2021).

Cuisines are likewise integral to the identities of various cultural groups. Yet it is hard to believe that affluent Americans are required to refrain from cooking Ethiopian food. That said, it is commonly and plausibly maintained that there are morally problematic ways for outsiders to engage with insider food cultures. It seems clear that non-Ethiopians should not open Ethiopian restaurants without attempting to employ Ethiopian staff. And it is often noted that the cuisine of marginalised immigrant cultures may be shamed or denigrated by the dominant culture for decades, only to be later commercialised by members of the dominant culture and praised for its “authenticity” or “cleanliness” (Otterman 2019).

Stories are also integral to the identities of various cultural groups. Yet it would be odd to claim that, generally speaking, one must be an insider to tell a story involving insiders (Smith 2019). Rushdie (1991: 394) expresses this perspective, common among authors, in his reflections on The Satanic Verses, which he intended as a celebration of “hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas.” What’s more, the telling of certain important stories appears to require the depiction of insiders. Australians ought to tell stories about the colonial dispossession at the heart of their country’s founding, and it is obligatory that these stories include depictions of dispossessed First Nations. That said, there is great controversy about when it is impermissible for outsiders to tell insider stories, and varying perspectives on this question across and within cultural groups.³ It is natural to decry outsider commercialisation of insider stories when insiders do not benefit.⁴ It is important to critique outsider stories that misrepresent insiders, especially when such misrepresentation contributes to oppression (Mehdi 2023). However, some commentators claim there are much more wide-ranging prohibitions which do not depend upon commercialisation: “So potent are stories that, in native culture, one storyteller cannot tell another’s story without permission” (Keeshig-Tobias 1997: 73).⁵

Finally, though certainly not exhaustively,⁶ artistic and personal styles are integral to the identities of various cultural groups. Jazz music is a prized achievement of Black American culture, and it is generally accepted that white musicians problematically appropriated jazz by commercialising it for white audiences and reaping undeserved, disproportionate rewards (Hall 1997). That said, Black American jazz musicians have themselves appropriated music from other cultures in developing the jazz canon.⁷ Further, non-Black people the world over can permissibly listen to jazz music, sell jazz albums in their record stores, play in jazz bands, and so on. As should be obvious, the puzzle here is not limited to jazz, or to Black American music, or to Black American culture. There is much contestation about outsider use of various stylistic elements of minority cultures (e.g., hairstyles, garments, accents), and it is natural to think some outsider uses are impermissible.

Some forms of outsider use are permissible while some are impermissible. The philosophical challenge is to adequately systematise and explain this suite of outsider permissions. The challenge is made vivid when we consider a system of explanation that is both popular and problematic. This is the cultural ownership framework.

4 The Cultural Ownership Framework

The cultural ownership framework attempts to solve the problem of permissions by understanding cultural material as cultural property. Insiders have proprietary rights in their culture. They own it collectively and can decide whether and when it may be used by outsiders. Outsiders may use or borrow aspects of this culture only when they have proper authorisation from insiders. Proper authorisation is a matter of the authoritative desires or collective decisions of the group.

The general perspective just expressed is assumed in much popular discourse—and inadequately conceptualised by most theorists. In this section, we sketch several reasons for questioning this framework. In the next two sections we show that many philosophers and political theorists presuppose central aspects of this framework, sometimes while explicitly denying they are doing so.

Here is a preliminary formulation of our main worries about the cultural ownership framework.

First, property rights frameworks do not easily extend to the relations between cultural groups and non-rivalrous cultural materials. It is certainly possible to make sense of group ownership in some instances, including in the case of nation-states and tangible cultural artefacts which everyone agrees can be stolen. But it is a challenge to understand how traditional conceptions of property are applicable to cases of relatively unorganised and heterogenous cultural groups and their engagement with cultural materials that are non-rivalrous. Suppose the Albuquerque Museum was indeed obligated to return Olmec and Zacatecas antiquities to Mexico in 2022 (as they did). Suppose this obligation was grounded in the fact that Mexico is the rightful owner of these artefacts, or the appropriate agent of the rightful owners. Nothing follows from this analysis about outsider use of Mariachi music. The genre of Mariachi is a Mexican cultural product, to be sure. But it is not clear how it could be stolen (or repatriated). Indeed, liberal intellectual property frameworks are notoriously unfriendly to ideas about group ownership of intangible cultural heritage often defended by Indigenous scholars and activists.⁸ We doubt that intellectual property claims can give us much purchase on the problem of permissions in such cases.

Second, many cultural groups lack the requisite structure for group agency and so may not meet a plausible necessary condition on having property rights, especially the right to permit others to use one’s property. On most accounts, a group is only an agent if (1) it possesses a group-level decision-making procedure and (2) a structure that assigns different roles to members. Many theorists also believe that a group is an agent only if it has (3) a unifying project, purpose, or goal.⁹ Without this structure, it is unclear how to understand the notion of proper authorisation. After all, individual group members often have conflicting attitudes about whether an instance of outsider use should be authorised. Many have no views on the matter whatsoever. Absent generally accepted procedures for resolving such conflicts, it remains unclear how any authorisation could be authoritative.

Third, the framework suggests a puzzling asymmetry between cultural groups that are agents and those that are not, namely that only the former can authorise outsider use. After all, groups that are not agents do not have authoritative decision-making procedures. And authoritative decisions are essential if cultural groups are to issue binding permissions or prohibitions about the use of insider materials. But it is hard to believe that all outsider use is impermissible (or permissible) when the relevant group is not a group agent. Suppose a colonial regime dismantles tribal governance structures as a plank in their strategy of disempowerment. The cultural ownership framework suggests that this loss of collective agency is likely to have major implications for the suite of permissions surrounding outsider use, since longstanding modes of authorisation have been undermined. This is implausible. The oppressive actions of the colonial power do not fundamentally alter the suite of permissions or make it impossible for new permissions to be generated.

Fourth, setting aside these difficulties in understanding proper authorisation, it does not seem like authorisation is in general required to make outsider use permissible. A non-Japanese person may permissibly prepare sushi whether or not the Japanese government or other Japanese agents authorise it. A non-Chinese person may permissibly play the Guzheng without the approval of any particular Chinese music society. Similarly, it does not seem like authorisation always suffices to make outsider use permissible. An outsider may not permissibly use insider materials in a way that exploits the labour of insiders, even if insiders have collectively and authoritatively decided that a minority group within the culture is not entitled to the relevant labour protections.

5 The Influence of the Cultural Ownership Framework

The popularity of the term “cultural appropriation” is itself evidence that the cultural ownership framework is more influential than some might have expected. In contemporary English, to claim that someone has appropriated something at least strongly suggests that they have taken something that is not rightfully theirs, in most cases implying that it is the property of someone else, or that someone else has exclusive rights to it. This hypothesis is confirmed by many articles about cultural appropriation in popular venues, which transparently assume that cultural groups have exclusive rights over their materials, and that outsiders are only permitted to use insider materials when they have obtained authorisation.

In academic writing, and especially in writing by philosophers, the cultural ownership framework is often repudiated (see Matthes 2019: 1010; Nguyen and Strohl 2019: 998–1000). Nonetheless, elements of it are evidently retained. Most commonly, authors appeal to group wishes, desires, or decisions as sources of authorisation or prohibition without fully appreciating the fundamental difficulties that arise when we try to understand these notions. Similarly, many appeal to group autonomy or self-determination when discussing cultural groups that are non-agential and thus incapable of possessing such capacities. Even authors who recognise these difficulties tend, in our estimation, to offer accounts of wrongful cultural appropriation that underplay their significance.

For example, in defending their intimacy account, Nguyen and Strohl are explicitly interested in what they call “sub-agential groups”—cultural groups which have “some animating basis for cohesion” but are not group agents (2019: 996). Nonetheless, they claim that if “a group is socially and politically marginalized, it becomes especially important to defer to the group in matters relating to its practices and institutions, to afford the group as much self-determination as possible” (990, our emphasis). They add that “intimate practices are important loci of self-determination” (989–90, our emphasis), and that “[w]hether or not a given form of appropriation constitutes a breach of intimacy cannot be determined independently of the decisions, wishes and expressions of the relevant group” (994, our emphasis).

These claims require further explanation. The notion of group wishes, and by extension deference to them, remains opaque when a group does not have an authoritative procedure for translating individual wishes into a group wish. Similarly, appeals to self-determination are puzzling when cultural groups are not sufficiently organised to express a unified perspective, and to will accordingly (as is often the case). Dodd (2021: 383–385) notes that while Nguyen and Strohl say that style appropriation does not involve the violation of property rights, the authors are “implicitly thinking of the [relevant materials as]…their intellectual property.”¹⁰ We discuss the intimacy account at length in the next section in an attempt to make good on this admittedly controversial interpretation.

For now, we observe that many other philosophers and political theorists make related assumptions. Matthes (2019: 1010, our italics) says that “[r]espect for cultural autonomy may require that outsiders refrain from appropriation, but it also requires that groups have the power to authorise appropriate use of their cultural heritage.” Haynes (2021: 292, our emphasis) defines cultural appropriation in terms of “unauthorised use or imitation” of cultural materials. Xhignesse (2021: 329, our emphasis) understands artistic appropriation as a failure in “obtaining consent” of the right kind. The relevant notions of autonomy, authorisation, and consent are left largely undeveloped. A natural hypothesis is that these authors are inheriting and employing the standard meanings of these terms, which presuppose core aspects of the cultural ownership framework, rather than special technical meanings which do not.

A striking example comes from Chaves and Bacharach (2021: 335, our emphasis), who claim that some hairstyle appropriation amounts to “stealing Black culture.” The authors also contend that exceptions to the prohibition on hairstyle appropriation arise when “Black people have authorized or sanctioned…the wearing of Black hair” (341). This leads them to maintain, awkwardly, that because Jeremy Lin obtained “permission” from his Black teammates, his wearing of dreadlocks was permissible—though other Black NBA players objected, and though the Black members of the Brooklyn Nets presumably do not speak for Black Americans in any meaningful sense. While it is unclear how this form of authorisation is supposed to function, it is clear these authors are assuming Black Americans own Black hairstyles, and that individual Black Americans, or small groups of them, may (via some underspecified mechanism) grant permissions for outsiders to wear them.

Even writers more sceptical about common discourses surrounding cultural appropriation also rely, implicitly, on the intuition that cultural groups are agents with ownership rights in their cultural materials. For example, Balint and Lenard (2020: 343, our emphasis) claim that the wrong of cultural appropriation “is in the using of a cultural practice that, in some sense, belongs to others.” And they appeal to meaningful contestation as the ground of cultural appropriation’s wrongness, in a way that suggests they are thinking of contestation as meaningful precisely when it represents the voice of the group. As they put it: “Contestation is meaningful if it is sustained over time, by multiple members of the culture from whom the symbol or practice is being appropriated, and if culturally specific justifications or explanations are at the heart of the dispute” (2020: 340). They do not say what it is that gives some members the authority to generate such prohibitions on outsider use.

Of course, many of these theorists are claiming that authoritative group decisions can be generated in the absence of group agency and cultural ownership. Our point is that they do not adequately defend this view because they do not adequately motivate independently plausible conceptions of authoritative group decisions. In sum, notwithstanding some explicit (and reasonable) scepticism about the cultural ownership framework, writers on the ethics of culture frequently endorse key elements of this framework, sometimes while claiming they are doing no such thing. This is strong evidence that it is difficult to address the problem of permissions without falling back on assumptions about cultural ownership.

6 Cultural Ownership and the Intimacy Account

The intimacy account is one of the most promising and prominent accounts of (some) wrongful cultural appropriation. In this section we offer an interpretation of the account which stresses its underlying continuity with the cultural ownership framework.

Our main claim is that the structure of the intimacy account mirrors the structure of the cultural ownership framework, and that this is interesting, since its proponents explicitly reject the latter. Our secondary claim is that it is precisely this structure that leads to problems. There are two related components of this structure: first, a proprietary relation between insiders and cultural materials (i.e., ownership or intimacy); and second, a normative power that insiders possess to authorise outsider use (i.e., an authoritative group desire or decision).

For Nguyen and Strohl (2019: 989), cultural appropriation requires the existence of a group that is bound together by common practices that ground a sense of unity among members. These practices or cultural materials are especially valuable to group members because they express affection and solidarity. Importantly, the account is not designed to explain all wrongful cases of cultural appropriation, but only cases involving so-called expressive harm, which the authors understand as a failure to respect a group’s wish that “outsiders refrain from appropriating a given cultural element [without insiders needing to] cite a rationale” (984).

For instance, there may be no independent fact of the matter about whether it is wrong for white Brazilian women to wear the headwrap characteristically worn by African-Brazilian women. It may depend, say Nguyen and Strohl, on what African-Brazilian women want. Their goal is to vindicate the claim that some outsider use is impermissible not in virtue of any independently specifiable harm, but merely in virtue of violating a cultural group’s desires. Because of this specific goal, the intimacy account is an especially useful foil for the core interests framework, a point we return to in the following section.¹¹

The key idea of the intimacy account is that members of (some) cultural groups (at least sometimes) enjoy special prerogatives with respect to their materials—prerogatives which Nguyen and Strohl take to be analogous to those enjoyed by parties to an intimate interpersonal relationship. A romantic couple has the prerogative to decide if they would like to share some sufficiently distinct relationship materials with others, such as unique pet names or a funny love dance (988). Similarly, groups that share distinct cultural practices have the prerogative to decide if they would like to share these practices with outsiders. In short, the meaning-generating function of intimacy grounds group-based prerogatives to determine what outsiders may do with the group’s cultural materials. Although the group of African-Brazilian women is not intimate in the same way that families are intimate, the headwrap nonetheless functions to embody a sense of common identity and connection. For this reason, the group is entitled to demand that outsiders refrain from engaging with this practice if they so wish.

Though the authors replace talk of group ownership with talk of group intimacy, the aim of their claims about intimacy is to motivate a special prerogative held by group members which is functionally similar to ownership. Nguyen and Strohl believe that a romantic couple is entitled to decide whether others may use their relationship materials. They believe, correspondingly, that (some) cultural groups have (some of) the same kind of entitlements. We believe that even the claim about romantic couples is questionable. One way to make this case is by asking for more detail about the scope and ground of intimacy-based prerogatives.

Suppose a romantic couple requests that we do not make use of their special secret cute names, which have been accidentally revealed at a dinner party. Does this request ground a prohibition on outsider use? What sort of prohibition, i.e., what is its scope? And why, i.e., what grounds it? Our inclination is to say that such requests do ground prohibitions, but not in the thoroughgoing ways Nguyen and Strohl appear to suppose, or for the reasons they appear to suggest.

One possibility about the scope of these prohibitions is that they apply to the direct interactions between these insiders and outsiders. It would be wrong for us to use the special names in front of our friends, because it would make them feel embarrassed or violated. Another possibility is that the prohibitions apply to public uses of the proprietary materials. The disclosure of the names was a mistake, and further publicising them is an affront to the couple’s privacy. So far so good. But what if we find meaning in using the names in the privacy of our own homes? It is not at all clear that a private use of the names which generates meaning is made impermissible merely by the wishes of our friends.

Now suppose the couple makes public art in which the names figure prominently. Still, they continue to request that nobody else employ these names. Intuitively, the publicity of their use significantly alters the normative landscape (compare Young 2010: 125, 2021: 313). It is unclear when and why outsider use of the names would be wrong in such cases. Further puzzles arise if the names are used in a commercial endeavour.¹² And as should be obvious, a story about intimacy-based prerogatives will rarely generalise to common cultural appropriation complaints if it applies only to private or non-commercial uses. For instance, African Brazilian women characteristically wear the headwrap in public, and headwraps are sold by various entities that are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of race.

To be clear, we make no claims here about who is permitted to wear the headwrap in Brazil or about when they are permitted to do so. Our claim is that Nguyen and Strohl overextend the possible scope of intimacy-based prerogatives even in the simple motivating case of romantic partners. This suggests their explanation cannot shed much light on the much more complicated questions about permissible cultural borrowing we are pursuing.

There is also an interesting question about what grounds these intimacy prerogatives. We agree that it is wrong to contravene a friend’s strong desires when the costs are low. However, this truth obtains independently of facts about intimacy and so cannot be grounded in such facts. Suppose our friends find more meaning in observing traditional norms of etiquette than in employing their favoured pet names. In this case, it would probably be more objectionable for us to intentionally set their table improperly than it would be for us to intentionally use their pet names in their presence. Table setting is a cultural practice, but not an intimate or private one. A natural hypothesis is that the ground of our obligations in both cases is the strength of our friends’ desires, rather than the intimacy of their practices.

We want to stress the dialectical role of the previous few paragraphs. Even if we are wrong, and romantic partners and families do have strong and broadly encompassing moral prerogatives to prohibit outsider use of intimate materials, it is unclear why we should think that cultural groups like African Brazilian women, Canadian Muslims, or East Asian Australians have such prerogatives. There are major differences between these types of groups, differences that are not reducible to varying degrees of intimacy. One important difference becomes salient when we attempt to give an account of the mechanism by which the relevant normative power might be exercised.

How can a cultural group authorise or prohibit outsider use? By the lights of the intimacy account, a group can do this by coming to a decision that expresses their wishes. There is a pressing set of concerns that arises here. What could count as “the group’s wishes” or “the group’s decision” when we are interested in large, heterogeneous groups, inevitably composed of individuals with inconsistent preferences about the matter at hand, and frequently lacking any authoritative procedure for adjudication when preferences conflict?¹³ Nguyen and Strohl suggest that a group “approximates a univocal decision when a considerable number of group members voice such a decision and there is an insignificant amount of dissent from within the group” (998).¹⁴ If many African-Brazilian women voice their view that others should not wear the headwrap, and not many dissent, this opinion counts as the group’s decision and should be respected by outsiders.

We do not find this account of group decisions plausible. In particular, we think there are many cases in which it erroneously grants authority to verdicts that should not be thought authoritative.

Nguyen and Strohl provide two conditions for an approximately univocal decision (i.e., an authoritative one): a considerable number of insiders voice a verdict, and an insignificant number dissent. The following sorts of counterexamples show that these two conditions are insufficient. A considerable number of particularly vocal insiders voice a verdict about outsider use of some material. Few insiders dissent. However, the lack of dissent is explained not by general acceptance of the verdict, but by a climate of fear which makes dissent on this topic socially costly. Whether or not the position of the vocal insiders is reasonable, it is hard to believe their position represents anything resembling a group decision. And this is true independently of how we resolve the vagueness of the “considerable number” and “insignificant amount” locutions. Even in the especially rare cases in which a majority of insiders vocally express a verdict, and there is absolutely no dissent from other insiders, we should not accept that something approximating a group decision has (necessarily) been thereby generated. At the very least, the lack of dissent must be grounded in moderately active and informed agreement with the verdict, rather than fear of social reprisal or ignorance that the issue is being debated.¹⁵

It should not be surprising that the two conditions do not suffice for an authoritative group decision. Absent well-defined and generally endorsed structures for disseminating information, facilitating discussion, polling group members, and, most importantly, translating individual (usually inconsistent) desires into a group verdict which grounds permissions and prohibitions, there is little reason to think the notion of a group verdict can be vindicated. This does not mean that insider wishes about outsider use are normatively unimportant unless and until insiders form themselves into a genuine group agent. We should disentangle the duty to care about the desires of other individuals from the (putative) duty to defer to the “desire of the group.”

We always have pro tanto reasons to respect reasonable desires. We also have pro tanto reasons to be especially deferential to the desires of marginalised people. These reasons obtain whether or not the relevant cultural group exercises collective agency. It is also common for insiders to have special knowledge of their own culture. As a consequence, the popularity of verdicts about outsider use among insiders is often our most reliable guide to the moral facts about such use. Related, we sometimes have sophisticated and reliable instruments for measuring insider opinions about outsider use. These observations are compatible with our scepticism about the existence of authoritative group decisions in the case of many interesting cultural groups. From our perspective, the characteristic mistake is sliding from claims about the distribution of attitudes among insiders to claims about authoritative group decisions.

We should emphasise that some cultural groups can make group decisions. Similarly, romantic partners and families can make group decisions. However, it is striking that even in the latter cases—that is, cases of literally intimate groups—it is extremely unclear when and how non-unanimous insider preferences can be translated into authoritative group decisions. This is unclear precisely because (as in the case of most cultural groups) there is no uncontroversial or even generally accepted mechanism for accomplishing such a normatively loaded task. Suppose Mom and I want a revered recipe to stay a family secret. Dad thinks sharing the recipe is a better way to honour it. Perhaps it is wrong for Dad to share the recipe, and perhaps the wrongness is grounded in our wishes. But it is not grounded in the “decision” of the family, at least until we collectively decide upon a procedure for adjudicating such disputes.¹⁶

Most cultural groups have large and diverse memberships. They overlap in complex ways with other cultural groups, and the interests of these groups may compete. For this and other reasons, it is rare for group members to approximate unanimity on significant issues of cultural exchange. Even in the cases that are often used as motivating examples, such as the wearing of dreadlocks by non-Black people, insider attitudes are divided.¹⁷ There is little reason to think, in sum, that the intimacy account can provide much help in responding to our problem about permissions. It retains too many structural elements of the cultural ownership framework.

7 The Core Interests Framework

We have illustrated the popularity of the cultural ownership framework and sketched some of its limitations. We will now explore an alternative. According to the core interests framework, outsider use is (prima facie) wrong when it sets back core interests of insiders. It is (prima facie) permissible when it does not set back any core interests. We are not defending any substantive account of core human interests in this paper. Doing that is the work of moral philosophy. Our ambition is to sketch the basic structure of an alternative to the cultural ownership framework, and to show how this alternative facilitates productive re-framing of debates about cultural appropriation.

Earlier we argued that group agency is likely necessary for a group to authoritatively decide on anything. But note that group agency is not required for a group to be understood as possessing a set of distinct interests. Academics have an interest in academic freedom. Unhoused people have an interest in affordable housing. Children have an interest in loving relationships with adults. These are important interests shared by group insiders, and it is perfectly sensible to say, in some cases, that the group has these interests. Yet the existence of these interests in no way depends on such groups being able to exercise collective agency.

Groups usually have many core interests. In the context of the present discussion, it is worth saying that marginalised groups have a number of comparatively urgent interests: in not being continually misrepresented or misunderstood (Mehdi 2023); in not being offensively stereotyped or otherwise demeaned; in not having their labour power exploited; in not being silenced or gaslighted (Dotson 2011); in accessing the equal opportunities they are due. This already explains many prohibitions on outsider use. For instance, we think many controversial uses of American Indian war bonnets—e.g., as sexy accoutrements—are impermissible because of the way they express ignorant disrespect for the cultures of North American Indigenous peoples. These cultural groups have a core interest in being treated with dignity, which is set back by the ignorant sexualisation and trivialisation of a cultural symbol whose function is to recognise exceptional valour.

The core interests framework also immediately explains various complexities concerning such permissions. Our claims in the preceding paragraph do not entail that outsiders could never permissibly wear a war bonnet. Pope Francis wore one when making his historic apology in Canada in 2022, at the invitation of Cree chief Wilton Littlechild. There was energetic disagreement about whether the invitation should have been extended, which shows that though Littlechild’s decision may have represented the wishes or decision of the Cree, it probably could not have represented the wishes or decision of Indigenous people in Canada. Nonetheless, most Indigenous leaders who commented on the matter agreed that given the invitation Pope Francis was right to accept. Our view is that he was right to accept because it was reasonable for him to believe that this use of the war bonnet expressed respect for its meaning to the Cree people and other relevantly invested cultural groups.

Similarly, our framework helps explain why it was probably not wrong, and plausibly very good, for the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, to wear a traditional Maori cloak (a kahu huruhuru) when meeting Queen Elizabeth in 2018. According to most accounts, Ardern wore the cloak with the intention that traditionally accompanies uses of the garment by members of the Maori community. In paying respect to the meaning and beauty of this symbol on the world stage, Ardern promoted appreciation for Maori traditions in New Zealand and abroad. Unlike most uses of the war bonnet by models and fashion houses, Ardern’s gesture communicated a special interest in understanding the cultures of Indigenous peoples, and a special interest in incorporating those cultures into consequential political ceremonies undertaken by the liberal states who exercise power over these groups. Though such gestures can of course be undertaken in tokenizing or unhelpful ways, they can also communicate laudable messages of apology, remembrance, and reconciliation which further the interests of Indigenous peoples. Those who agree that Ardern’s act communicated such laudable messages should be inclined to agree that it was permissible. Those who think it communicated messages that are ultimately damaging for Maori people should not be swayed by the fact that the cloak was voluntarily loaned to the Prime Minister by the Ngati Ranana London Maori Club, or by the fact that Ardern’s choice was generally approved of by Maori people in New Zealand.

Besides immediately giving us more traction on the puzzle about permissions, the core interests framework has other advantages over the cultural ownership framework.

First, consider a question for proponents of the intimacy account. Why is contravening “group wishes” about outsider use a harm? As we’ve seen, answering this question is critical: the goal of the intimacy account is to vindicate wrongfulness when there’s no harm beyond the contravention of group wishes. However, we do not think a compelling answer to this question is available. It is true, though innocuous, that it is prima facie wrong to violate reasonable wishes when doing so is avoidable. But wishes are reasonable, we suggest, only insofar as they track genuine interests. And wishes to keep cultural material from outsiders are reasonable only insofar as outsider use would set back core interests. Suppose the state of Israel passes a law making it illegal for non-Jews to write about the Holocaust. This law might have fantastic pedigree as a group decision while also being unreasonable. Irrespective of the law, it is not true that Jews (or Israeli Jews, or Israelis) have their core interests set back by all non-Jewish writing about the Holocaust. It is group interests, not group wishes or decisions, that seem to do the normative work here.

The example highlights a second advantage of the core interests framework. This framework implies that individuals can be wrong about whether a form of outsider use is permissible, precisely because they can be wrong about their own interests and the interests of their cultural group. Likewise, no matter your story about when and how individual preferences can comprise a group wish or decision, the framework implies that group decisions about outsider use can also be wrong. This is a plausible and important consequence. We’ve noted that our best evidence about the ethics of cultural exchange often comes from members of marginalised groups. However, it is dangerous to move from this important insight to a presumption of infallibility. Many queer people are offended by the use of (supposedly) queer sartorial culture perpetrated by (presumptively) non-queer public figures like Harry Styles. We can imagine a world in which most queer people came to believe that Styles is not permitted to wear certain garments or move his body in certain ways. That would be an unfortunate world, since Styles is disrupting binary presuppositions about personal style, and these presuppositions undoubtedly set back the core interests of queer people. It is a virtue of the core interests framework that it allows for this possibility.

Third, the cultural ownership framework suggests that group agency makes a big difference to the permission facts. In many cases, a cultural group’s lack of public and generally accepted governance structures and decision procedures will undermine the possibility of generating authoritative group decisions. What follows in such cases? There are three possibilities: all outsider use is permissible; all outsider use is impermissible; some outsider use is permissible, but the permissions cannot be explained by the cultural ownership framework. The last possibility is the only viable one. In other words, the cultural ownership framework has nothing helpful to say about many of the most interesting cases of cultural exchange. By contrast, the core interests framework implies that group agency does not make much difference. Group agency is, as we like to think about it, a mechanism by which the desires and values of group members can be aggregated into binding decisions. The process of generating authoritative decisions is an avenue for articulating how desires connect to core interests. But it is the core interests themselves that ultimately ground permissions and prohibitions on outsider use.

Fourth, the core interests framework better explains why legitimate claims about competing interests are relevant to discussions about outsider use, even when there are good reasons to think outsider use will set back the interests of insiders. For example, consider the common claim that the values of literary fiction require relatively broad permissions for outsider authors to imaginatively explore insider stories. Supposing there are reasons to promote the imaginative freedom of authors in this respect, then these reasons are, according to the core interests framework, relevant to our appraisal of authorial decisions (and the decisions of editors, publishers, funders, etc.), whether or not they suffice to make any given case of outsider use permissible. By contrast, the cultural ownership framework seems to imply that authoritative group decisions decisively settle the matter of outsider permissions, and that other considerations are, at least in non-exceptional situations, irrelevant. After all, if I own a water bottle, I am permitted to deny you a drink even when you are very thirsty and I have no good reason to horde my water. Similarly, if Greeks owns the Parthenon Marbles, they are permitted to demand their return to the territory, even if many more people will be able to appreciate them in the British Museum. But it seems odd to say that Greeks are indeed permitted to demand the return of the Marbles irrespective of the interests of non-Greeks. And it seems much stranger to say that Indians may prohibit non-Indians from practicing yoga irrespective of the interests so many non-Indians across the globe have in so practicing. The core interests framework explains this intuition that countervailing outsider interests are also relevant to the evaluation of cultural exchange.¹⁸

Here is a final advantage. The core interests framework allows us to sidestep the particularly difficult question of ownership in the case of “hybrid” cultural materials, i.e., materials that have been developed via exchange between distinct cultural groups. Proponents of the cultural ownership framework need to say whether Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Latin-Americans, Black Americans, Afro-Latino Americans, some combination of these groups, or some other groups own Latin jazz. Until the owner has been specified, there is no sense to be made of permissions and prohibitions on outsider use grounded in group wishes or decisions. Moreover, such cases introduce special troubles in grounding permission facts in authoritative group decisions, since hybrids of cultures are especially heterogeneous and unorganised. Proponents of the core interests framework can endorse the attractively ecumenical thesis that uses of Latin jazz are prima facie wrong if they set back the core interests of any of these groups, i.e., any of the groups who have contributed in significant ways to the development of the cultural material.

8 Three Applications of the Core Interests Framework

A further advantage of the core interests framework is the useful perspective it provides on other prominent accounts of cultural appropriation.

8.1 Core Interests and Group Oppression

Matthes (2016, 2019) has defended an influential view about the ethics of cultural exchange. According to Matthes, outsider use is wrong when it contributes to the oppression of insiders. This happens, for example, when cultural outsiders “interact with dominating systems so as to silence and speak for individuals who are already socially marginalized” (2016: 349). This is an important insight, stressed by many scholars and activists (Dotson 2011; Maitra 2009; Narayan 1998). It is well elaborated by Matthes via the framework of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007). Members of a dominant culture risk compounding oppression via silencing because they enjoy credibility excesses which can lead others to judge that members of marginalized groups lack special insight into their own experience. In other words, by engaging with the cultural material of marginalized groups in a context where one enjoys credibility excesses, one may exacerbate unjust credibility deficits.

Matthes is right that contributing to oppression makes an act of outsider use prima facie wrong. However, the oppression account does not help much in responding to the problem of permissions.¹⁹ One reason is that there are some outsider uses that do not contribute meaningfully to oppression yet are impermissible. For example, consider outsider use of Catholic cultural materials for the purpose of mockery. Though some forms of mockery are permissible, other such uses will be culturally insensitive and offensive, even if Catholics are not an oppressed group. Catholics have core interests in having their cultural materials treated with dignity independently of their relative privilege or non-oppression in any particular social environment.²⁰ Of course, Matthes may simply accept this judgment about permissibility while denying that this is an instance of cultural appropriation, defining the latter in terms of outsider use that contributes to oppression. That essentially terminological move would not change the fact that the oppression account does not provide an adequate account of outsider permissions, and so does not solve one of the deepest puzzles about the ethics of cultural exchange.

In sum, Matthes rightly emphasises one core interest shared by oppressed groups, an interest in not having their oppression exacerbated. However, if his view is that outsider use is impermissible only when it contributes to oppression, and permissible when it does not do so, then this view is inadequate. Groups have core interests in how meaningful cultural materials are used that are not reducible to non-oppression. For instance, every cultural group has an interest against being subjected to blatant disrespect (Young 2010: 25–27). There is disagreement about whether Jews are still oppressed in certain modern societies, but we do not need to settle this question in order to condemn anti-Semitic outsider uses of Torah scrolls.

8.2 Core Interests and Disregard

Another insightful perspective on the ethics of cultural engagement has been defended by Tuvel (2021). According to Tuvel, moral evaluation of outsider use should focus on outsider attitudes towards insiders. In particular, we must assess whether outsiders have disregarded “compelling reasons not to appropriate from a given culture” (2021: 369). Such problematic disregard can take the form of indifference or even active refusal to listen to insider voices. These instances of disregard are wrong when, and because, there are compelling reasons for regard that the outsider has flouted.

All people and groups deserve respect. Disregarding the wishes of individuals and groups is sometimes incompatible with treating them with the respect they deserve. So too is contemptuously using outsider materials without even considering insider objections. Tuvel is right to emphasise these points. But while her account is an instance of the core interests framework, we do not think it is the most compelling development of it.

Consider the question: when and why is outsider disregard wrong? Tuvel’s answer: when and because the outsider has a compelling reason to regard differently. This is the correct answer. It means, however, that the normative work that Tuvel claims is done by outsider attitudes is in fact done by insider interests. Indeed, outsider attitudes are often normatively relevant only in the derivative sense that they are tasked with tracking compelling reasons for regard when such reasons exist.

It is permissible to disregard the history of Peruvian food culture when you prepare (Peruvian) ceviche, because you are not thereby setting back any core interests of Peruvian people; it is also permissible to study this history. By contrast, it is impermissible to disregard the history of Native Americans when you name a malt liquor brand after Crazy Horse, because you are thereby setting back the core interests Native Americans have in not being (continually) subjected to degrading images of their ancestors (Newton 1997). Moreover, many of the core interests that ground compelling reasons do so independently of outsider attitudes. An outsider can exploit insider labour while sincerely believing they are listening to insiders. The problem here is not any particular attitude of the outsider but the fact that they set back insider interests in just labour compensation.

8.3 Core Interests and Offense

Young’s (2010) work on the topic of cultural appropriation is the most systematic in the recent philosophical literature, and we have drawn on it at various points in the preceding. One key interpretive question about this work emerges from Young’s distinction between appropriation that causes harm and appropriation that causes profound offense. Profound offense is offense that strikes at someone’s core values or sense of self. Though Young rejects a hard and fast distinction between harm and offense, he nonetheless structures his discussion on the basis of a “rough and ready distinction” between being harmed and “being temporarily put in an unpleasant state of mind” (130). Since he thinks that some (rare) acts of appropriation are wrong in virtue of causing profound offense, and since it is unclear whether the experience of profound offense constitutes a setback to core interests, there is an interesting question about whether Young’s theory is compatible with the core interests framework.

We think not. Young correctly observes that many people are profoundly offended by defenses of Darwin’s theory of evolution, advertisements for condoms, and interracial coupling. If these people believe their core interests have been set back by such public expressions, they are mistaken. Proponents of the core interests framework should thus reject the view that profound offense can on its own constitute a serious objection to cultural exchange. Profound offense is often, but by no means always, occasioned by the violation of core interests. When it is so occasioned, the offense is an apt response to the violation, but it is the violation that makes the cultural borrowing prima facie wrong.

The core interests framework also helps to characterise and evaluate especially challenging cases of offense-causing cultural exchange. Young discusses Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass tank of the artist’s urine, which predictably offends many Christians (138).²¹ Young defends this work on the grounds that the artist has the valuable intention of shocking Christians out of their complacency. More generally, Young claims that artists like Serrano pursue privileged forms of expression grounded in art’s potential for self-realization. This may be; if so, it is a relevant core interest that may weigh in favour of cultural borrowing. But it does not settle the question of any particular work’s permissibility. Christians have core interests in being treated as social equals, and in not having their most sacred symbols demeaned. Whether Serrano acted wrongly depends on an accurate weighing of all relevant interests.

Similarly, consider Young’s defense of the notorious Jyllands-Posten cartoons, in which a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad (142). Though these cartoons profoundly offended many Muslims, they are defensible, Young claims, because they were intended to contribute to a public debate about freedom of expression, and were not intended to offend. This analysis is likewise incomplete. Mental states of the appropriator may be relevant to moral evaluation of their acts, but they are by no means dispositive. Many acts set back core interests unintentionally. If Muslims have core interests in having their most treasured beliefs respected, and if the cartoons were a serious assault on these interests, then they were prima facie objectionable.

The core interests framework clarifies our evaluation of these difficult cases without entailing any final verdicts. This is appropriate. A general framework for understanding the ethics of cultural exchange should not commit us to specific theories about what individual and group interests are most important.²²

9 Conclusion

We conclude the paper with one crucial point of clarification. Does our rejection of the cultural ownership framework imply that we must be minimising the importance of insider desires? Must we claim that even unanimous agreement among insiders about outsider use is normatively irrelevant? No. Reasonable desires always deserve respect, and sometimes deserve deference. The more reasonable desires outsider use threatens to frustrate, the stronger the argument against such use. When there are no strong reasons in favour of such use, this may be enough to generate prohibitions. The normative story here is a relatively innocuous consequence of general truths about respect for others. Further, and much more interestingly, it is insider desires, plans, projects, etc., that make certain objects sacred or especially meaningful for the group. And we have especially powerful reasons to respect insider desires about such objects: there is a special kind of dignitary harm done to people when their most sacred objects are used in demeaning ways by people who do not care about the actual significance of these objects.

The core interests framework does have the following controversial consequence: it implies that appropriate collective resistance to outsider use is resistance on the grounds that this use sets back the core interests of insiders. Absent such grounds, resistance is not appropriate. Some readers will find this conclusion unappealing. Our contention here has been that the source of this reaction is probably attachment to the cultural ownership framework, which we have shown to be inadequate in providing much needed theoretical resources for assessing the ethics of cultural exchange.