Does it exist? At what point does borrowing from a culture become stealing from it? Can we borrow from a culture without taking something away from it? Does culture even belong to any person or group of people?

Disgus.

um...

I don't really think you can steal culture. I don't think that two cultures can come into long-term contact with each other without borrowing from each other and being altered over time. I don't think that culture is particularly static...it is changing all the time.

I would call it cultural appropriation. And I think these are questions that have to be examined contextually and in terms of hierarchy. You can "borrow" from American culture without doing much damage, because it's dominant and wants to impose its way of being on others anyway. But I think use of indigenous agricultural and environmental knowledge is an example of very problematic cultural appropriation. It exists on the same continuum as colonialism, because you are effectively saying that the culture's only or most important purpose is to serve your more dominant culture.

I think that pretty much every time something is qualified as "exotic" a cultural appropriation is happening. Western culture objectifies cultural practices it doesn't understand, and puts them on display in order to simultaneously Other and appropriate. Think of every museum you've ever been to.

I second what Lawyer said. That's it.

I think it's intriguing how the United States have "forced" their culture in almost every country in the world. It's almost like all of us are americans. I have perfect understanding of American culture and I'm not american. It's weird. Lets discuss that.

Yeah, I definately agree with this - we call ideas exotic all the time, and use it as a way of making the Other, non-Self culture seem different and therefore lesser.

I think we do steal cultural ideas though - the way we use religious symbols or phrases as things like tattoos often offends people - we not only make it ours but make it tacky.