ARND SCHNEIDER

On ‘appropriation’. A critical
reappraisal of the concept
and its application in global
art practices*

This paper advocates a reconceptualisation of appropriation in order to provide a

better understanding of global art practices. In the first instance, I suggest we have to
consider the relation of appropriation to cultural change. Early twentieth-century
theories of cultural change and cultural contact (in German-speaking anthropology, in
the United States and in Britain) were clearly interested in the ‘migration’ of particu-
lar elements (symbolic and material) across cultural boundaries, but suffered overall
from a holistic view of bounded cultures. Recent theories of cultural globalisation, on
the other hand, do not pay sufficient attention to the individual actors (as opposed to
groups of individuals) in cross-cultural contact. Hybridisation, creolisation, transcul-
turation and other concepts focus more generically on mixtures of different cultural
practices in entire societies or groups of individuals, but less on individual strategies.
The paper suggests that we might think of cultures as open systems where individual
actors negotiate access to, and traffic in, symbolic elements which have no fixed mean-
ing.1
The approach here is primarily of a synthetic and theoretical nature. In order not
to distract from the main thrust of the argument, I will therefore offer only occasional
and brief examples.2 The article then critically discusses the concept of ‘appropriation’

* I am grateful to Peter Flügel, Jonathan Friedman, Stuart Morgan, Vivian Schelling and Chris
Wright for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also benefited from the comments of three
anonymous reviewers for this journal. A first version of this paper was delivered at the Biannual
Conference of the German Society of Anthropologists, Heidelberg, 3–7 October 1999. I am grate-
ful to Dorle Dracklé for having invited me. The paper is integrated into the research projects on
‘Artists as anthropologists. Recent trends of globalisation’ (University of East London) and
‘Globalisation, indigenous influences, and art production in Buenos Aires’ (University of
Hamburg) [Schneider 1999], as well as into a book project, Crossing borders. Contemporary artists
and anthropology by Arnd Schneider and Chris Wright. The support of the German Research
Council (DFG) for the period 1999–2002 (Senior Research Fellowship) is gratefully acknowl-
edged.
1 For recent critical assesments of the term ‘culture’ in anthropology, see Wimmer (1996) and
Brumann (1999).
2 Specific examples have been presented elsewhere (Schneider 1993; 1996; 2000). The work I draw on
is that of contemporary Latin American visual artists, mainly urban-based, who are inspired by,
and appropriate, indigenous cultures. Cf. n.1.

Social Anthropology (2003), 11, 2, 215–229. © 2003 European Association of Social Anthropologists 215
DOI: 10.1017/S0964028203000156 Printed in the United Kingdom
and evaluates the usefulness of applying the term ‘appropriation’ in the analysis of
cross-cultural communication in a global world. The focus is on the visual arts, yet the
discussion of appropriation has important implications for studies of diasporas in the
process of globalisation, since these involve particular conceptualisations of identity,
authorship and ownership of cultural and intellectual property.3
I am also interested in more general terms in the processes of cultural transmis-
sion,4 cultural exchange, and recognition of otherness,5 which, I argue, become oper-
ative through appropriation by individual artists. Thus my approach aims to shift the
traditional units of analysis in anthropology, namely from whole ‘groups of individ-
uals’ and bounded cultures (the traditional emphasis of anthropology, and of the
anthropology of art) to the individual producers of artistic works and their role in the
process of globalisation, as well as cross-cultural contacts generally. In fact, artists are
conceived of here as an ‘interface’ in this process, nodal points in the global system
that provide ‘entry into other cultures’ (Hannerz 1996: 39–42).
As Hannerz puts it succinctly,

The real significance of the growth of transnational cultures, one might indeed argue, is often not
the new cultural experience that they themselves can offer people – for its frequently rather
restricted in scope and depth – but their mediating possibilities. The transnational cultures pro-
vide points of entry into other territorial cultures (Hannerz 1992: 251).

Defining appr opriation

In the following I shall first comment on the term appropriation in contemporary art
practices, and then suggest a hermeneutic approach for understanding its role in pro-
cesses of cultural change and globalisation.
In art history, appropriation in the narrow sense has been defined as

The direct duplication, copying or incorporation of an image (painting, photograph, etc.) by

another artist who represents it in a different context, thus completely altering its meaning and
questioning notions of originality and authenticity (Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and
Artists: Stangos 1994: 19).

‘Originality’ and ‘authenticity’, of course, are notions central to the western canon of
art since the Renaissance. In more recent times, appropriation is sometimes charac-
terised more frankly, as a practice by which ‘an artist may ‘steal’ another pre-existing
image and sign it as his/her own’, whereas ‘reappropriation connotes “stealing”’ an
image, symbol, or statement from outside the realm of art’ (The Bullfinch Pocket
Dictionary of Art Terms: Diamond 1992). In terms of the western legal notion of indi-
vidual property, artistic appropriation implies an infringement of copyright, as
Coombe points out:

3 Cf. Coombe (1993; 1998); Strathern (1996); Ziff and Rao (1997: 1); Brown (1998); Harrison (1999a;
1999b); Benthall (1999).
4 Before culture can be transmitted, there is of course the related issue of ‘cultural acquisition’ (or
what in the past was called ‘enculturation’. For more recent approaches using the insights of cog-
nitive psychology, see Bloch (1991); Boyer (1993); Hirschfeld and Gelman (1994).
5 On recognition of otherness, see the interesting studies by Kubler (1991; 1996) regarding western
scholars of Pre-Columbian art.

216 ARND SCHNEIDER

 It is important to note here that the law assigns works a category and a degree of protection at
the time of origin, not at shifting points of public reception. Hence, an artistic work that copies
the work of another, regardless of the social critique or political point the artist believes she is
making, is a copyright infringement and remains one even if the artworld comes to regard the
work/copy as an authentic masterpiece (Coombe 1993: 257; cf. also Coombe 1998).

The late Latin appropriare, ‘to make one’s own’ (deriving from proprius ‘one’s own’)
is at the root of subsequent applications of the term and also surfaces in debates on the
return of ‘cultural property’, where the political implications of cultural appropria-
tion, both of tangibles (such as the Elgin Marbles) and of intangibles (i.e. ‘intellectual’
and ‘spiritual’ property) have been discussed at some length.6
Appropriation, copying,7 or even citation and reference to the work of previous
artists are established practices throughout the history of art (with obviously chang-
ing connotations according to the historical period), but they have become particu-
larly salient to ‘(post)modern’ art practices, which, as Rosalind Krauss highlights,
challenge traditional western notions of exclusive authorship and any accepted
supremacy of the original (high) over its copy (low) (1989: 8–10; also Schwartz 1996).
In contrast, Buchloh has characterised the strategies of appropriation and montage in
twentieth-century modern art as ‘allegorical procedures’ (1982: 46), implying obvious
changes of meaning in the process. On the other hand, appropriation for many Latin
American and other ‘Third World’ artists prolongs and extends the experience of what
they claim as the original, while also investing it with new meaning8 and serving as a
strategy for identity construction. This bears some resemblance to the original Roman
understanding in, for example, the appropriation of Greek art, where the practice had
a symbolically transformative character that went beyond mere copying (cf. Krauss
1989: 10).
Consequently, there is no ‘original’ after all. As Friedman (1997; 1999) argues, cul-
tures are always impure, consisting of heterogeneous elements ab initio. There is, so to
say, nothing before hybridity, in fact, the term is probably misleading, as it presup-
poses a transition from pure elements which, through a blending process, become
impure, or hybrid. For want of a better term, ‘originary syncretism’ has been proposed
by Amselle (1998: 1). It captures well the dilemma of the underlying terminological
contradictions between ‘originary’ and ‘syncretism’ (as syncretism, like hybridity, pre-
supposes an earlier non-syncretic state), and tries to dispel any notion of a reified orig-
inal state or homogenous culture.
Arguably, then, in a more general sense most cultural practice is ‘appropriation’ in
that it is part of a continuum (both historical and spatial) of all human endeavour in
this respect – an assertion not alien to the politically and culturally ‘disenfranchised’
in western contemporary societies, as the following quote, which comes from a

6 See n. 5.
7 My discussion, relevant to visual artworks, is interested in the process of copying, which implies
changes of meaning, not those pretending to have the same meaning, i.e. fakes, on which see
Phillips (1986–7). On virtually identical copies, or counterfeits with yet different values attributed
to them by collectors in the world of Rock and popular music, see Jamieson (1999).
8 Cf. also Paternosto (1996: 192), who makes the point more generally, following partly Kubler
(1962: 108) that artists across different cultures and in different historical periods can retrieve and
recreate meaning through appropriation (although Paternosto does not explicitly discuss the term).

O N ‘ A P P R O P R I AT I O N ’ 217
member of Group Material, an arts collective based on New York’s Lower East Side,
shows:

Well, let’s take this supposedly theoretical ideal of ‘appropriation’. With the high school kids that
I teach, there is an intrinsic knowledge about appropriation, because for them in a sense, all cul-
tural production has to be stolen. White culture historically never let you proclaim the culture
that you had. It’s not talked about, it’s not taught, it’s not on TV. And even within a group of
young artists – for graffiti writers, to bite something and make it your own is a sign of greatness.
Tap dancers build whole repertoires of stolen steps. There’s the idea within folk culture of how
imagery gets communicated, appropriated, and turned into new imagery (Member of Group
Material, interviewed by Critical Art Ensemble 1998: 29).

In what follows, I shall adopt an extended definition of cultural appropriation ‘as the
taking – from a culture that is not one’s own – of intellectual property, cultural
expressions or artefacts, history and ways of knowledge’ (Ziff/Rao 1997: 1, citing the
Resolution of the Writers’ Union of Canada 1992). The problem with such a definition
for many artists is that they appropriate cultures which at the same time are and are
not regarded as their own. In fact, the construction of new identities by these artists
often evokes ancestral ties to indigenous cultures, either by presumed biological
and/or cultural descent and belonging (even in those cases where artists descend from
Europeans), as well as ties to the international, still largely westernised art canon medi-
ated by the ‘art world’. Howard Becker (1982) introduced this useful term to the soci-
ology of art to describe the collective ensemble of producers (for example, artists,
critics), institutions (museums, galleries), the art-consuming public, and the artworks
themselves which are connected in complex social relations.9
A further issue is that the parameters used in the above definitions are problem-
atic, because meanings of ‘appropriation’ and ‘culture’ are shifting according to con-
text; especially since the latter has lost its exclusive definition as a bounded system of
shared values and artefacts (or material representations) of a social group. Also, as has
been pointed out in debates on cultural appropriation, those claiming a particular cul-
ture as their own, and thus challenging the ‘appropriation’ of elements of that culture
by others, often themselves use ethnocentric constructs of culture as unchanging and
what Coombe calls ‘possessive individualism’ (that objects, tangible or intangible
belong to individuals) (Coombe 1993: 253). Thus, operating with rigid notions of cul-
tures at both ends of the continuum between ‘origin’ and ‘copy’ leaves ‘appropriation’
in a straitjacket of cultural essentialism.
Could, then, ‘appropriation’ be re-established as a concept to conceive of the bro-
kering practices between different (and co-existing) cultural contexts by visual artists
(and others, in a variety of cultural domains such as music, fashion and cuisine)?
Obviously, such a reinstatement of ‘appropriation’ would have to account for the
social and political dynamics involved. A crucial question is: who appropriates what,
where and from whom? This implies a situating of appropriating practices in different

9 In the philosophy of art and art criticism, Arthur Danto (1964) first discussed the term in his essay
‘The artworld’. See also Danto (1992: 37), where he describes the historically conditioned insti-
tutional setting (museums, galleries, dealers and critics that confer on certain objects the status of
art). For sociologists in the functionlist tradition of Talcott Parsons such as Howard Becker, and
also for system theoreticians such as Niklas Luhmann, art is a sub-system (Teilsystem) of society
(Luhmann 1995: 215ff.; cf. Sevänen 2001).

218 ARND SCHNEIDER

power relations, which would go beyond the more formal approaches in art history
where ‘appropriation’ has been defined as taking something out of one context and
establishing it in a new one. Consequently, there would be a shift in emphasis towards
social practice and agency as advocated by some recent writing in the anthropology of
art (Gell 1998; Pinney and Thomas 2001). This in turn could account both for the way
cultural forms become diasporic (and change their meanings), and the way the actors
involved are often themselves in a diaspora in relation to what they claim as their cul-
tures of origin.

Appr opriation, cultural change and globalisation

The effects of globalisation are not new, of course, nor is their study – as Sidney Mintz
(1995;1998) frequently reminds us. It is therefore useful to revisit critically some his-
torical antecedents of present concerns with the processes of cross-cultural contact
and globalisation (see also Gingrich and Fox 2002).
It is well known that the American variant of cultural anthropology (starting with
Boas and Kroeber), as well as early twentieth-century German and Austrian anthro-
pology (cf. Lowie 1937; Harris 1968; Mühlmann 1984; Gingrich 2002: 230), were eager
to investigate cultural difference and culture change. Of course, the models then pro-
posed of ‘cultural circles’ (Kulturkreislehre) and culture areas are long superseded, as
is the idea of bounded, homogenous cultures. What is of interest here is the fact that
terms such as ‘appropriation’ or ‘Aneignung’ (in German) – although rarely used
explicitly – were conceptualised through ideas of cultural contact and the exchange of
artefacts and belief systems between cultures (and their constitutive elements, such as
symbols). However, a problem of the early diffusionists – especially German and
Austrian ones such as Fritz Graebner and Father Wilhelm Schmidt – was that they
conceived of culture change as a rather mechanical process. As Thurnwald pointed out
in his critique of Graebner:

From the old so-called ‘evolutionary’ point of view this concept [i.e. Kulturkreislehre] differed in
that it assumed particular cultural centres and points of diffusion. However, how this transference
was realised and what effect it had psycho-sociologically, was not the preoccupation of Graebner
in his book Methode der Ethnologie. For him, transfers were realised mechanically, like transfer-
ring a piece from one museum case to another (Thurnwald 1931: 11; my translation).

It is not without irony, and rather uncanny that Thurnwald10 should refer to the
museum, a principal site of appropriation in late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury (colonial) anthropology – the practices and continuing sites of representation
which have been much critiqued by both discursive writing and visual artists’ instal-
lations.11
Early twentieth-century studies of ‘acculturation’ (promoted in the United States
by Herskovits, Redfield and Beals, and in Germany, for instance, by Thurnwald) or of
‘culture contact’ (in the British Commonwealth) were not of course questioning the
colonial politics of cultural appropriation, and on the whole were complicit with

10 On Thurnwald, see Melk-Koch (1989).

11 See Clifford (1988); Errington (1994; 1998); Karp and Levine (1991); Price (1989; 1993); Schneider
(1993; 1996).

O N ‘ A P P R O P R I AT I O N ’ 219
colonialism.12 The conceptual interest was in the dynamics of cultural change as a
result of increasing contact between cultures: usually between non-western cultures
that had come into contact with Europeans, or less often between non-western cul-
tures themselves. In early and mid twentieth-century anthropology cultures were con-
ceived as wholes, that is as symbolic representations and material manifestations of
bounded ‘groups of individuals’, as a famous memorandum on acculturation by
Herskovits, Redfield and Linton stated in 1936. As such, models of cultural change
and acculturation left little room for the consideration of the individual in society, a
problem which I contend still persists in anthropology, and especially in the anthro-
pology of art (see below, and Schneider 1996). The point was made indirectly by
Bateson ([1936] 1973) in his rejoinder to the memorandum in which he suggested
studying acculturation in relation to the individual child, calling this process ‘encul-
turation’. The overall neglect of the individual was not remedied by ‘culture and per-
sonality studies’ either, where individuals were simply conceived as representatives of
their culture (for example, performing to patterns, according to Benedict 1934, or to a
metaphysical ‘superorganic’, according to Kroeber 1917, or being moved by
‘Paideuma’, that is empathic emotion, according to Frobenius13).
Before structuralism’s ahistorical approach to culture, anthropologists of the
1920s to 1940s in Germany, Austria and the United States were still partly informed
by the broader schemes of earlier cultural evolutionists and diffusionists. Using par-
ticipant observation, they were particularly interested in studying cultural change and
culture contact as processes of cultural borrowing (kulturelle Entlehnung14) and more
specifically as appropriation, even ‘piratical acculturation’ – that is appropriation
through warfare, which some evolutionists saw as the earliest form of culture
(ex)change (cf. McGee 1898).15
To sum up, these early approaches ultimately aimed at uncovering the laws, rules
or at least a logic of culture change – the kind of grand theory of which the late twen-
tieth century understandably became suspicious (Gingrich and Fox 2002: 4 –5). Of
course, with the above I do not pretend to have exhausted the discussion on early
twentieth-century diffusionism in relation to appropriation and culture change; this
would merit a separate study.
Nevertheless it is curious, and perhaps symptomatic, that current concerns with
cultural hybridisation – despite attempts by Hannerz (1992; 1996), and Thomas (1991;
1999) for instance – have not yet led to a similar theorisation of the actual, material pro-
cesses of cultural change within the global system. As yet there has been no compre-
hensive attempt by post-modernists and post-structuralists to reveal the logic, laws or
mechanics of global cultural processes – supposing that there are certain regularities16
– that might compare in scope and breadth with the older acculturation paradigms.

12 Cf. Asad (1973); Kuper (1988). On anthropology during the Third Reich, and the roles of specific
anthropologists such as Thurnwald and Mühlmann, see Hauschild (1995).
13 cf. Haberland (1973); Kramer (1985); Giordano (1997); Heinrichs (1998).
14 On cultural borrowing, see Beals (1953: 623); on Entlehnung, see Mühlmann (1984: 227).
15 ‘Piratical appropriation’ of course contains the concept of stealing, or inappropriately taking from
the Other – the same idea used by many present-day indigenous communities when protesting
against licentious exploitation of their cultural resources by outsiders. For a recent elaboration of
‘piracy of identity’, see Harrison (1999a: 241).
16 See also Inda and Rosaldo (2001) for a recent overview, but with little emphasis on individual
agency in the processes of globalisation.

220 ARND SCHNEIDER

 Regarding future research, we have to ask whether processes of cultural change in
a global setting are distinct from those between ‘single’ cultures previously investi-
gated through paradigms of acculturation or culture contact, or whether the rate of
change simply accelerates or becomes qualitatively different, and now functions
according to parameters other than those that operated in the past. Finally, the status
and usefulness of cross-cultural comparisons as indicators of globalisation have to be
assessed and contrasted with superseded notions of acculturation.17

Appr opriation as hermeneutic pr ocedur e

The point here is not to revive the antiquated theories of acculturation and culture
change of the early twentieth century, but to reconnect with the interest in appropri-
ation and focus on individual practices that mediate between different cultural levels
in the process of globalisation.
For anthropology, it is important to develop a proper concept of appropriation:
one that takes into account (i) the ‘original’ context of an artefact and its producers;
(ii) the artefact itself; and (iii) the appropriating person or agent. Further to what has
been said in the introduction, I should emphasise that most often there is no absolute
original (which is why I use inverted commas), but just a context in which something
has been known to be produced for the first time (which might yet be a variation on
a previous theme now lost).
From a hermeneutic point of view, a new concept of appropriation then has to
retain the ‘understanding’ or ‘comprehending’ nature of the appropriating act. At the
same time, it has to reinstall the intentions of the ‘originating’ producer, whilst doing
justice to the artefact. From a purely hermeneutic of view, the aspiration for such an
encompassing concept probably must remain unfulfilled.
Thus Ricoeur, one of the few contemporary philosophers who has specifically
written about appropriation, points out that:

An interpretation is not authentic unless it culminates in some form of appropriation (Aneignung)

if by that term we understand the process by which one makes one’s own (eigen) what was
initially other or alien (fremd)’ (Ricoeur 1981: 178; German in original)

Appropriation is opposed to distanciation by Ricoeur, but its practice does not mean
taking simple possession of the other. To the contrary, the term implies in the first
instance dispossessing oneself of the narcissistic ego in order to engender a new self-
understanding, not a mere congeniality with the Other (Ricoeur 1981: 191–3).18
‘Relinquishment is a fundamental moment of appropriation and distinguishes it from
any form of ‘taking possession’ (Ricoeur 1981: 191).
Yet anthropology, which owes its very nature (encompassing ethnographic
research and cultural analysis) to the producing, ‘originating’ cultures, cannot stop
here. It cannot privilege, as during its colonial past, the appropriating practices of the
powerful, nor can it just stop at the artefact and its interpretations, as hermeneutic
philosophers must do with ‘texts’. Somehow, anthropology must find a way to reveal,
as social and cultural relations, the actual mediating process which – via objects,

17 For some useful discussion of comparative research on contemporary world arts, see Fillitz (2002).
18 Ricoeur is inspired primarily by Gadamer’s Truth and method; see Gadamer (1960).

O N ‘ A P P R O P R I AT I O N ’ 221
artefacts, ideas and language – takes place between culturally different social actors. Of
course, in an ideal speech situation with perfectly equal individuals – or for that matter
a social or political situation – Hegel’s old assertion would still hold: that it is through
marking out or defining personal property (as well as taking spiritual possession of it)
that the individual as a person endowed with individual will is constituted, and that it
is precisely through the transfer of property that individuals manifest their free will
(one to give or transfer, the other to take or appropriate).19 The problem here (as not
only Marx realised), is that despite the fundamental equality of the exchange relation
itself, people in such transactions are not equal, which is both true for transactions
within societies and between societies. Anthropology, then, has to develop a concept
of appropriation that takes account of the inherent inequality in transactions as cul-
tural transactions (as opposed to economic transactions20), and yet allows for the
possibility, following partly Riceour, of ‘understanding’ by appropriating.21 The latter
is required because concepts of appropriation have all too often focused exclusively on
the economic and legal aspects of appropriation,22 even when discussing cultural
change. Such approaches therefore neglect the possibility of understanding in the
hermeneutic sense, that is changing one’s own cultural practices as a result of inter-
preting the other’s artefact (or any other cultural manifestation).
A move away from formalist approaches, as advocated by Coombe (1993: 249),
who distinguishes between intellectual, cultural and real property, thus allows differ-
ent types of property and their appropriation to be analysed as cultural constructions
of things and persons. However, when in an unequal relationship from the viewpoint
of the Other, appropriation appears as alienation. In the history of philosophy,
especially in Hegel and Marx, this has been a much discussed concept. Here, however,
alienation is useful because it restores to the ‘appropriated’ a status as experiential sub-
ject, albeit a status that is less powerful than the appropriating agent. Alienation also
has implications for movements of cultural resistance, for example, among indigenous
people, where appropriation is contrasted with ‘cultural autonomy’: the right to deter-
mine the disposal of one’s own cultural traditions (Todd 1990: 24). This is especially
the case in post-colonial societies where artists’ appropriating and reinterpreting prac-
tices are situated as claims against the unequal power relations of the world system.
How, then, can we develop a concept of appropriation that comprehends the
process linking artists, artefacts (and their ‘original’ producers) and the new artworks
resulting from the appropriative process? One possibility is by introducing a concept
of ‘agency’, as Gell (1998) has done, focusing on actors rather than objects of art.
Although Gell does not specifically focus on appropriation, one could construct a
model which takes account of the intentionalities of the actors involved and of the
functions artefacts and artworks (or parts of these, such as symbols) perform within
their respective social context. Yet with this procedure we would not really have
explained the transformative aspect, manifested in the final artwork (including incor-

19 Cf. Philosophy of right, §§ 38–40, 50–60.

20 For which, see such classic writings in economic anthropology as Mauss (1990), Sahlins (1972) and
more recent reconceptualisations such as Strathern (1989).
21 See also Moore (1990: 94–7).
22 Arguably, our usage of ‘cultural appropriation’ falls under the category of ‘abstract appropriation’
(as, for example, it is present in property rights), and not ‘concrete appropriation’, that is the
material appropriation qua extraction of natural resources (for these terms and a full discussion of
the ‘appropriation of nature’, see Ingold 1986: 12).

222 ARND SCHNEIDER

porated symbols of other cultures) as a result of the appropriating process, nor the
change induced by the artist in the art world or his or her society more generally.
Therefore, let us return for a moment to the hermeneutic approach. I suggest
developing a concept of appropriation based on understanding the other – or the
other’s products: artefacts – that is appropriation as a practice and experience of ‘learn-
ing’, similar to what Paternosto (1999: 22) has outlined, albeit only in preliminary
form, for the work of contemporary abstract artists inspired by ancient Latin
American art. Learning through visual experimentation then stresses the transforma-
tive aspect of appropriation, as suggested earlier.
Following this line of reasoning, we would arrive at a concept that reconciles the
element of agency, with the element of ‘understanding’. This might also resolve a
rather formalist contradiction in the classic canon which set an inferior practice of
appropriation (implying copying) against the superior idea of creativity (implying the
originating genius).23 Now, concerning contemporary art, we can still ask what the
‘original’ intentions were of those from whom artists appropriate, without falling into
the simple trap of assuming ‘dialogue’ (what Ricoeur’s concept of appropriation is
obviously not about). What would have to be restored is the intentionality of the
Other, by giving it its proper voice, and as such, dealienating it from the act of appro-
priation.24
So far, the anthropology of art has not sufficiently investigated and theorised
appropriation as a major feature of culture change. The term is conspicuously absent
from most subject indexes, including most recently Gell (1998). One exception are
Marcus and Myers, who suggest that appropriation concerns the art world’s ideology,
discursive practices or microtechnologies for assimilating difference (other cultural
materials) in various ways. Such an assimilation of difference is generally accom-
plished by stripping cultural materials of their original context, or using representa-
tions of an original context in such a way as to allow for an embedding of this
influence within the activities and interests of producing art’ (Marcus and Myers 1995:
33).
Thomas (1999: 141; 2001) also calls for a theorisation of the term, but is more
occupied with the politics implied in Australian ‘white’ settler art appropriating
Aboriginal culture. And despite evocative titles, such as ‘Appopriating images’
(Tomaselli 1996), writing in the field of visual anthropology has not theorised appro-
priation either.
Thus the way forward, as I suggested earlier, is to conceptualise appropriation as
one of the principal practices underlying any culture contact or exchange, and there-
fore underlying any dialogical situation of ‘understanding’ each ‘other’.25 This aspect

23 Cf. Coutts-Smith (1991: 28); for creativity in art and anthropology, see Lavie et al. (1993), and
Whitten and Whitten (1993).
24 On the related discussion of ‘alienability’ and inalienability’ of objects in gift exchanges and
European and non-western encounters, see Thomas (1991). There is also something to be said
about visual artworks being inherently ‘inalienable’ art forms because they are complete in them-
selves and not supposed to be changed in their finite forms. This contrasts with theatre and music,
where representation varies with performance (cf. Zolberg 1990: 169–71).
25 Maranhão (1986); Crapanzano (1990). Toren (1991: 277) speaks of the ‘fugitive conservatism’ of
appropriation in post-colonial situations where, paradoxically, new elements are introduced while
conserving other elements of a specific culture (she takes the example of tapestry representations
of Leonardo’s Last Supper in Fiji).

O N ‘ A P P R O P R I AT I O N ’ 223
of appropriation has to do with the essential elements of difference that mark out the
degrees of divergence and convergence between cultures, and the ‘alterative’ processes
of recognising such differences. Boon pointed to the process of how cultures, perfectly
commonsensical from within, nevertheless flirt with their own ‘alternities’, gain criti-
cal self-distance, formulate complex (rather than simply reactionary) perspectives on
others, embrace negativities, confront (even admire) what they themselves are not
(Boon 1982: 19, his italics).
Appropriation needs cognitive difference (even and especially when it arises out
of sameness [Harrison 1999b: 239]). However, historically speaking, it has occurred
frequently in situations of real power difference, where ‘appropriating the non-
western in a western context always underlines the subjective agency of the west, and
the unequal passivity of the other’ (Barkan and Bush 1995: 13).
Conversely, it is precisely in its own appropriations of the west that the non-west
becomes the active historical agent in this ‘alterative’ encounter, one that subverts and
deconstructs the ideological terrain of its present and former colonial masters (one
only has to think here of such classic works as Julius Lips’ The savage hits back,26 or
Jean Rouch’s films such as Les maîtres fous [1953], for example). It is in these instances
that the alienating aspect of appropriation is contested, and an attempt is made to tran-
scend what remains in terms of dialogical exchange, a dissymetry of power and rep-
resentation.27 In situations of economic dependency and restricted access to
international art markets, appropriation can develop a dynamic sui generis, as
Camnitzer emphasises in his analysis of Cuban art (1994: 302). Appropriation in Cuba
is both an historically well established practice, based on the experience of cultural
syncretism, and a practice that can work in several directions: these include appropri-
ations from past and present indigenous and African cultures in Cuba, as well as from
international art. In practical terms, appropriation also re-signifies imported elements,
and often uses them as replacements in aesthetic solutions where specific parts,
elements or ingredients have not been available locally.28
Appropriation in its broader cultural sense (coupled with cognate terms such as
adoption or assimilation) is of interest here, as it is through this strategy and its mech-
anisms and techniques, of which appropriation within contemporary art constitutes a
special case, that symbols and artefacts currently migrate not only from one culture to
another, but in the context of globalisation (i.e. in a globalised art market/‘art world’)
also become available on a worldwide scale (undergoing a concomitant process of
commodification and re-contextualisation [cf. Appadurai 1996 and Thomas 1991]). As
mentioned before, appropriation in its formal sense means a taking out of one context
and putting in another, yet the extended meaning that I have been advocating sees it as
a hermeneutic procedure, which consequently implies not only that cultural elements
are invested with new signification but also that those who appropriate are being
transformed. As Thomas commented wryly on the early asymmetrical exchanges

26 Cf. Lips (1937).

27 Cf. Moreiras (1995: 3).
28 Camnitzer gives the revealing example of the Cuban painter Amalia Paláez, who tells in an inter-
view ‘about a visitor who, seeing a painting in progress, expressed surprise and admiration about
the sudden elimination of black in her work. He interpreted it as an unexpected creative renewal
of the artist, while th real reason was that her supply of black had run out and she was unable to
replace it (a fact she did not reveal to the visitor).’ (Camnitzer 1994: 315–6, referring to Seoanne
Gallo 1987: 192–3).

224 ARND SCHNEIDER

between Europeans and indigenous peoples in the Pacific: ‘To say that black bottles
were given does not tell us what was received’ (Thomas 1991: 108). More recently,
Thomas has pointed to appropriation as a two-way process, and to the inherent
‘unstable duality’ between rejection and acceptance of both giving to and taking from
the Other (Thomas 2001: 139, 150).
One effect of the appropriation of European (western) elements in non-western
contexts is often the subversion of their ‘original’ meaning, a process which can be con-
fusing to a western observer, as there is an inclination in the west to take familiar terms
at face-value, especially when analytical categories, such as hybridisation, syncretism,
imitation and copying all make reference to the supposed existence and validity of an
original form from which secondary meaning can be derived. Gombrich (1966: 83–8)
suggested that subsequent stylistic categories of art (like Classical, Romanesque,
Gothic) basically mask two essential categories: the classical and the non-classical,
which were used as exclusive terms to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – or by
extension, I would argue, between tradition and innovation, ‘originals’ and derivations.
Friedman (1999) similarly has deconstructed the concept of hybridity as a masked
essentialism.29 The point I made already is that if there is no ‘original’ after all, any
notion of a composite original can only be arrived at through the study of the distri-
bution, or epidemiology, of its many variants.30 While undoubtedly one part of human
creativity is capable of creating ex novo, another part continuously recomposes,
realigns and rejoins old elements, while slightly altering them to create new forms,
sometimes in almost endless variations on one form (cf. Kubler’s 1962 notion of
‘series’). Within post-colonial discourse such a subversion of meaning is a more general
feature, where peripheral ‘third world’ cultural practices assert their right to appropri-
ate and reinterpret cultural artefacts from the centre,31 as a claim of post-colonial soci-
eties against the uneven ‘power geometry to the processes of globalisation’ (Inda and
Rosaldo 2001: 13). Appadurai (1996: 32) has spoken of ‘indigenisation’ in this context,
but I prefer the term ‘appropriation’, as it does not carry the reifying undertone (‘the
indigenous’) at the receiving end, and can be used by any group or individual however
their identity is constituted, whether they are western or non-western.

Conclusion
To summarise: appropriation, I suggest, is more than one-to-one transferral; its
hermeneutic potential implies a resignification of meaning against the background of
a structural imbalance between what (or who) is appropriated, and what (or who) is
alienated. A revised concept of appropriation is also advocated in order to do justice
to individual actors in the global context; individual agency having been neglected
both by earlier paradigms of culture change and by more recent theories of global-
isation and the anthropology of art. The emphasis on social agency has to be

29 The Argentine anthropologist García-Canclini (1995), on the other hand, presented a powerful
thesis of understanding Latin American cultures as hybrid cultures. Cf. also other recent work by
Acha et al. (1991); Rowe and Schelling (1991); Yúdice (1992); Chanady (1994); Echevarría (1994);
and Larraín (1996).
30 Similar to what Lévi-Strauss claimed for the meaning of myth: i.e. that ‘a myth’ is constituted by
all its variants. See also the work by anthropologists on the epidemiology of concepts by Latour
(1986) and Sperber (1996: 77).
31 Cf. also Thomas (1991); Kramer (1993 [1986]); and Taussig (1994).

O N ‘ A P P R O P R I AT I O N ’ 225
contextualised by the transformative act of appropriation, which, as outlined above, is
better understood as a hermeneutic practice.
This is to say that explanations for appropriative choices will have to be sought by
investigating the interplay between changing definitions or conceptualisations of cul-
tural traditions and nationhood and individual identity claims. It is at the intersection
of the two that the recognition of otherness operates – a feature that is vital to the
appropriation process itself.

Arnd Schneider
Department of Sociology and Anthropology Institut für Ethnologie
University of East London Universität Hamburg
Longbridge Road Rothenbaum chaussee 67/69
Dagenham RM8 2AS 20/48 Hamburg
United Kingdom Germany
Email: [email protected]

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