Source Evaluation

I started my research by looking in the USC research databases for scholarly interpretations/criticisms of cultural appropriation. While I was able to find some scholarly sources on the issue of appropriation in the arts, there were overall relatively few that directly address it. I think the cases they bring up are important, as well as their assessments of them, but overall these lack an overall methodology. They tend to approach appropriation with an ethical lens, and they tend to focus on specific, isolated events of appropriated cultural performance and its immediate consequences, which don’t seem to contribute to either a consistent evaluation method or a greater understanding of the issue. For example, one author describes both instances of unethical and ethical cultural borrowing, but never delineates a clear set of criteria that define its ethicality.

To supplement this research, I researched some more popular articles from several news sources and magazines. In approach, these mirrored the scholarly articles. Almost all articles agree upon what constitutes cultural appropriation and the potential harms it can cause, but the opinions expressed are split fairly evenly between two opposing viewpoints, disagreeing about whether or not cultural appropriation is permissible or not. Here, the examples used by each opinion start to change depending whether they argue for cultural addition or reduction. The approach to cultural appropriation becomes a bit disjunct between the articles as harms laid out against one example don’t apply to (or sometimes contradict) another. While I think both these and the scholarly sources provide valuable empirical evidence, I think this is where another field could help clarify the issue.

In attempt to locate a similar issue in a field with a more methodological background, I began researching translation studies and found a corresponding issue of equivalence. Equivalence is the broad term for the manner in which a target text relates to its source text, both literally and socio-historically. In my research of critical looks at equivalence, I found it to be similar to the issue of appropriation in terms of divisiveness and approach. However, through equivalence, I found Polysystem Theory, which looks at the relatedness of heterogeneous parts across a variety of systems (literary, cultural, historical, etc.) Developed by Itamar Even-Zohar to more methodically deal with equivalence, I think his theory and methodology will be a valuable tool in understanding the murky ethics of cultural appropriation.

From here, I intend to further research and understand this method, then apply its concepts to the cases outlined in my first sources.