Paper short abstract:

This examines the extent to which material culture can be appropriated before it loses its claim to authenticity,while also exploring the effects of cultural appropriation - whether such is always wrong and how cultural ‘kleptomania’ can be distinguished from benign appropriation.

Paper long abstract:

This is an examination of the extent to which traditional material culture can be appropriated, or reinvented before it loses its claim to authenticity while also exploring the effects of cultural appropriation - whether such is always wrong and how cultural 'kleptomania' can be distinguished from benign appropriation.

"Authenticity means genuine, unadulterated or the real thing…" (Theobald, 1998)

Despite Theobald's confident assertion, disputes abound regarding the very existence of the concept of authenticity. Handler believes that it is a) a cultural construct of the western world; b) closely tied to its notions of individuality and inseparably bonded to this notion "Cultures are imagined as discrete, bound units, each unique - like a personality configuration…".

"Explaining anthropological notions of authenticity will give us yet another example of the startling degree to which anthropological discourse about others proves to be a working-out of our own myths." (Handler,1986)

In the reality of appropriation and contemporisation of traditional non-western textiles and dress, rationale and import of the item are rarely considered, gender boundaries are ignored; religious symbolism and reverence jettisoned; acurate provenance rarely given, all filed under 'ethnic' or 'tribal'.

The cultural boundaries obvious to the 'tribal' people whose cultures are being exploited are also rarely perceptible to the 'collectors' in their desire for the next 'new' thing, and often unwittingly subvert the boundary markers , going on to produce "…indigenous images constructed in relation to western concepts of primitivism, exoticism and 'authenticity'" (Conklin, 2008).