A traveler’s view on cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation – taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. Let me tell you a story… Sitting at a cafe in Medellin, Colombia, I was eating the classic Italian dish of Lasagna, accompanied by salad and a croissant, typically French but actually Austrian in origin, although in all likelihood copied from an Egyptian pastry dating back to ancient times. A French cultural organisation was promoting a day of free music so I…

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Cholitas and Bolivia’s colonial hangover

Think of an image of Bolivia. Would it be those women with the bowler hats by any chance? How about its famous, sweater wearing president Evo Morales? The bowler hats make for an iconic image, because of course we recognise them as our own culture implanted into an alien environment. The president’s sweater, proudly worn as a testament to his indigenous heritage, is however, only marginally less of an import: it may be made from local alpaca wool but needles…

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Biker babes of Burkina Faso

Motorbikes, Muslims, fashion and the modern woman in Burkina Faso.   When your brain does a Google image search on the terms Muslim women, African women or African Muslim women, what comes to mind?  I won’t be so presumptuous to think that my regular readers are the kind of people to jump immediately to the stereotypes of poverty and oppression, or at the very least to move on from them after a moment’s reflection – after all there are many…

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