Theorizing Cultural Appropriation: Complications of Globalization and Power in Hybrid K-Pop
ORCID
0000-0003-2373-0607
Document Type
Article
Date
2024
Keywords
Cultural appropriation, K-pop, cultural borrowing, South Korea, neocolonialism
Language
English
Disciplines
Asian Studies | Critical and Cultural Studies | International and Intercultural Communication | Korean Studies
Description/Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to theorize cultural appropriation using a critical perspective that centers structural inequity and uneven global power by examining the case of South Korean media. This paper argues that cultural appropriation is a particular form of intercultural borrowing that relies on structural inequities of power, whereby a more powerful culture takes from a less powerful culture in such a way that it causes structural and representational harm to the borrowed culture. To clarify cultural appropriation as a particular form of cultural borrowing, I provide a typology of different forms of cultural borrowing before positing six criteria of cultural appropriation in order to challenge and problematize binary notions of borrowing as appropriative or appreciative. This shifts the understanding of cultural appropriation toward one that is multifaceted and complicated by different relationships of power.
Recommended Citation
Oh, D. C. (2024). Theorizing cultural appropriation: Complications of globalization and power in hybrid K-pop. Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 17(1), 25-50). https://doi.org/situcs.2024.17.1.002
Source
submission
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
