I thought the whole idea of cultural appropriation is that it was disrespectful of the culture that is being appropriated and is something done against the wishes of memebers of said culture.
That is now the definition that proponents of the term popularly use after backtracking from widespread push-back. Of course it's yet another case of bait-and-switch. The literal term "cultural appropriation" parsed at face-value does not suggest anything about disrespect; if one really wants to call out disrespect, they can just do so, there's no need for a buzzword in the first place. Racism is racism, disrespect is disrespect.
If the term doesn't clearly convey what it means, it's a shitty term, or it's designed to create friction rather than understanding. This is such a case, where those with identity-politics as a hobby and religion will talk out of both sides of their mouths.
Buzzwords are favored in media and op-eds because of their nefarious nature. We should dispense with them and communicate what we mean. Most of them share the same problem, e.g. "white fragility" ("well ackshuallyyy it just means that white people are uncomfortable talking about race" -- yeah? Then why call it that?)
What would be the appropriate means of providing attribution in case of Yoga? Would a rendition of Sare Jahan Se Achcha before each Yoga session suffice?
> Translated to FOSS
Applying copyright and trademark law to a practice that is a part of humanity's intangible cultural heritage is beyond farcical.
> Besides, I met plenty of people, both from India and not, complaining about the butchering of Yoga.
I've probably met a few orders of magnitude more Indians than you have, considering how I live in India. I have only heard of appreciation when foreigners adopt even superficial aspects of Indian culture. I don't see why Bharat Tyagis[0] get to be gatekeepers.
My Chinese colleagues were horrified by what is called Chinese food in India.[1] But the world would be a poorer place if we gave up this wonderful cuisine because of some misguided notions of appropriation. You can pry my manchurian[2] from my cold dead hands. Wait, did I just appropriate American culture and disrespect an impassioned defence of a cherished constitutional right?
If you still have a problem with cultural appropriation, please start with giving up the concept of zero and the positional notational system. Afterall, it's been butchered and misattributed to the Arabs for centuries.
> Applying copyright and trademark law to a practice that is a part of humanity's intangible cultural heritage is beyond farcical.
I never said to apply copyright and trademark to cultural heritage. I was making a comparison.
Besides, you just made a good example of appropriation: registering the name of a cultural item from another culture as your own trademark in another countries. It happened a lot of time with food.
> But the world would be a poorer place if we gave up this wonderful cuisine because of some misguided notions of appropriation.
I never said one should give up any cultural artifact. You are making a strawman after another.
Registering a trademark is a by-the-book example of claiming ownership of something. Especially when it goes together with introducing something to a population largely unaware of it.
> But you did say that cultural appropriation was not ethical.
Yes.
> So, we can continue with it as long as we feel bad about it?
No, and again, I never said that. I very clearly said that once attribution is given properly and mashups/variations are clearly identified there is no problem.
At this point I can't imagine that the attempts at arguing I'm reading are written in good faith and without an agenda.
> No, and again, I never said that. I very clearly said that once attribution is given properly and mashups/variations are clearly identified there is no problem.
I'm asking for the third time: What would be appropriate attribution for Yoga?
> At this point I can't imagine that the attempts at arguing I'm reading are written in good faith and without an agenda.
Is there something else that makes it unethical?