Thinking Thoughts

[chasingtides]

So theoretically I'm reading Jorge Luis Borges at the moment, but I still have my Mongolian and Sami research bouncing around my skull and trying to find a monster of the week to put in my lgbtfest entry. My brain's all over the place.

When does something become cultural appropriation? When is something culturally yours to begin with? Where are the lines?

(To note, I have a vague idea of what is culturally "mine." It's a fairly limited group, but I've been told by others that there are things that are culturally mine that I don't think are - and vice versa. I'm also interested in seeing where people think the line is - when are you stealing someone else's culture and when are you drawing on it?)

I suppose this could be in any life aspect - religiously (I know this comes up in the pagan community), in art or writing, in lifestyle (with the stereotypical weeabo coming up). Thoughts?


As an unrelated addendum: It's snowing like anything here. It was 60F yesterday. I'd better not have my classes called off because of snow.

Comments

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I figured it would be something like that. It's one of the reasons that I (generally) like the reconstructionist community. Because (again, generally) there's acknowledgment that we're doing our best and there are many interpretations of the evidence we have and we are deviating in many ways (what with living in a modern world), there does seem to be less "You're doing it WRONG because you disagree with me." (And there's a lot less of the "And Bridghid is a mother-maiden-crone goddess who was worshiped in medieval Sicily.")

(Admittedly, I'm more of the nonfluffypagans school of thought than anything else, religiously speaking, which, admittedly, isn't to everyone's taste. However, I tend to describe it as a "use your common sense" take on paganism - of course, being opposed to willful ignorance. It tends to put me in a specific place when I interact with people online in terms of paganism.)