Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-02T23:24:51.380Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The law and ethics of ‘cultural appropriation’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2019

Mathias Siems Open the ORCID record for Mathias Siems [Opens in a new window]
Mathias Siems*
Affiliation:
Professor of Private Law and Market Regulation, European University Institute, Italy; Professor of Commercial Law, Durham University, UK (on leave)
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cultural appropriation is often defined as the ‘taking of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artefacts, history, and ways of knowledge’. Despite this apparent link to intellectual property, legal issues are only rarely mentioned in the current debate. Thus, to start with, this paper aims to fill this gap in identifying the possible bases in existing laws that may, at least in principle, justify claims of unlawful behaviour. As far as ethical considerations are concerned, the paper then notes a deep divide between those who fully endorse the notion of cultural appropriation and those who are resolutely opposed to it. This paper aims to give fair consideration to both sides of the argument, suggesting three categories of potentially unethical conduct. On this basis, the paper finally revisits possible legal responses from a normative perspective.

Keywords

law and cultureethicsintellectual propertytort lawfreedom of speechidentity politics
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 408 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appiah, KA (2018) The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Liveright.Google Scholar
Aylen, D (2018) Worldwide: prior rights and registered intellectual property, Mondaq, 7 June. Available at http://www.mondaq.com/canada/x/708556/Trademark/Prior+Rights+And+Registered+Intellectual+Property (accessed 24 November 2019).Google Scholar
Bar-Yam, T (2016) Considering Collective Agency in Kant's Ethics, Working Paper 30, December. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2908704 (accessed 24 November 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boldrin, M and Levine, DK (2010) Against Intellectual Monopoly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brüggemeier, G, Colombi Ciacchi, A and O'Callaghan, P (eds) (2010) Personality Rights in European Tort Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burk, DL (2012) Law and economics of intellectual property: in search of first principles. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8, 397–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, MM (2004) Intellectual property law and indigenous peoples: adapting copyright law to the needs of a global community. Yale Human Rights and Development Journal 7, 51–78.Google Scholar
Carpenter, MM and Hetcher, S (2014) Function over form: bringing the fixation requirement into the modern era. Fordham Law Review 82, 2221–2271.Google Scholar
Carr, G (2013) Protecting intangible cultural resources: alternatives to intellectual property law. Michigan Journal of Race and Law 18, 363–390.Google Scholar
Carugno, G (2018) How to protect traditional folk music? Some reflections upon traditional knowledge and copyright law. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 31, 261–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chua, A (2018) Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Collins, S (2018) Who owns Ananse? The tangled web of folklore and copyright in Ghana. Journal of African Cultural Studies 2018, 178–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copp, D (ed.) (2006) The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dagne, TW (2015) Beyond economic considerations: (re)conceptualizing geographical indications for protecting traditional agricultural products. International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law 46, 682–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driver, J (2014) The history of utilitarianism, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/ (accessed 24 November 2019).Google Scholar
Faure, M (ed.) (2009) Tort Law and Economics. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, W (2018) The puzzle of traditional knowledge. Duke Law Journal 67, 1511–1578.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F (2018) Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Germain, CM. (2019) Don't steal my recipe! a comparative study of French and U.S. law on the protection of culinary recipes and dishes against copying, University of Florida Levin College of Law Research Paper. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3393891 (accessed 24 November 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glenn, PH (2014) Legal Traditions of the World, 5th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslam, N (2016) Concept creep: psychology's expanding concepts of harm and pathology. Psychological Inquiry 27, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inawat, RJ (2015) Music as cultural heritage: analysis of the means of preventing the exploitation of intangible cultural heritage. John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law 14, 228–248.Google Scholar
Jaszi, P (2017) Protecting traditional cultural expressions – some questions for lawmakers, WIPO Magazine, August. Available at http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2017/04/article_0002.html (accessed 24 November 2019).Google Scholar
Kant, I (1785/2003) Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, quoted as edited by Hill, Thomas E. Jrand Zweig, Arnulf. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kariyawasam, K (2012) Protection of indigenous artistic works against unauthorised reproduction – has Australian consumer law been effective in stopping misleading and deceptive conduct in the indigenous art market? International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law 43, 532–554.Google Scholar
Kennedy, A-M and Laczniak, GR (2014) Indigenous intellectual property rights: ethical insights for marketers. Australasian Marketing Journal 22, 307–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenyon, AT (2006) Defamation: Comparative Law and Practice. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Kronman, AT (2019) The Assault on American Excellence. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Kuprecht, K (2014) Indigenous Peoples’ Cultural Property Claims. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, P (2018) Student protests and academic freedom in an age of #BlackLivesMatter. Ohio State Law Review 79, 223–278.Google Scholar
Li, L (2014) Intellectual Property Protection of Traditional Cultural Expressions. Berlin: Springer International.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lilla, M (2017) The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Lukianoff, G and Haidt, J (2018) The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Merges, RP (2011) Justifying Intellectual Property. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, SE (1998) Law, culture, and cultural appropriation. Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 10, 575–603.Google Scholar
Moynihan, K (2018) How Navajo Nation v. Urban Outfitters illustrates the failure of intellectual property law to protect native American cultural property. Rutgers Race & the Law Review 19, 51–73.Google Scholar
Msomi, ZN (2015) Protecting indigenous knowledge using intellectual property rights law: the Masakhane Pelargonium case. Africanus: Journal of Development Studies 45, 71–86.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, MC (1999) Sex and Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ochsner, C and Roesel, F (2017) Activated History – the Case of the Turkish Sieges of Vienna, CESifo Working Paper 6586. Available at https://www.cesifo-group.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6586.pdf (accessed 24 November 2019).Google Scholar
Osiel, M (2019) The Right to Do Wrong: Morality and the Limits of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pager, SA (2016) Traditional knowledge rights and wrongs. Virginia Journal of Law & Technology 20, 82–200.Google Scholar
Pavis, M (2018) Runway models, runway performers? Unravelling the Ashby jurisprudence under UK law. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice 13, 867–877.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, M (2013) The Dimensions of Consequentialism: Ethics, Equality and Risk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, VF (2017) Beyond trademark: the Washington Redskins case and the search for dignity. Chicago-Kent Law Review 92, 1061–1086.Google Scholar
Ridley, M (2010) The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. London: HarperCollins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riley, AR (2000) Recovering collectivity: group rights to intellectual property in indigenous communities. Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 18, 175–225.Google Scholar
Riley, AR and Carpenter, KA (2016) Owning red: a theory of Indian (cultural) appropriation. Texas Law Review 94, 859–931.Google Scholar
Ripstein, A (2009) Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, DF, Abdel-Latif, A and Roffe, P (eds) (2017), Protecting Traditional Knowledge: The WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scafidi, S (2001) Intellectual property and cultural products. Boston University Law Review 2001, 793–842.Google Scholar
Scafidi, S (2005) Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Scafidi, S (2008) Introduction: new dimensions of cultural property. Fordham International Law Journal 31, 684–689.Google Scholar
Sharoni, S (2017) The mark of a culture: the efficacy and propriety of using trademark law to deter cultural appropriation. The Federal Circuit Bar Journal 26, 407–446.Google Scholar
Smith, SA (2010) Comparative legal scholarship as ordinary legal scholarship. Journal of Comparative Law 5/2: 331–356.Google Scholar
Stanton-Ife, J (2006) The limits of law. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/law-limits/ (accessed 24 November 2019).Google Scholar
Suk, JC (2007) Equal by comparison: unsettling assumptions of antidiscrimination law. American Journal of Comparative Law 55, 295–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suk, JC (2012) From antidiscrimination to equality: stereotypes and the life cycle in the United States and Europe. American Journal of Comparative Law 60, 75–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoshino, K (2006) Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. New York: Random House.Google Scholar