Opinion of cultural appropriation?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

When done right it's one of the best things about human culture; when done wrong it's terrible and stupid. Overall I'll call it neutral.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Neutral.  And nobody does it better than Japan.

Personally, there's something I don't get about cultural appropriation.  Liberals seem to think it's great when we do it in America--it's "celebrating diversity."  But when other countries appropriate elements of American culture, it's considered a threat to their traditions.  How is eating at McDonald's or driving an American auto brand any more of threat to foreign countries than eating "ethnic" food or driving a foreign car a threat to America?

There actually is a sociological answer to this, but the problem gets catastrophized and sensationalized so much that I'm sick of discussing it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Neutral.  And nobody does it better than Japan.

Personally, there's something I don't get about cultural appropriation.  Liberals seem to think it's great when we do it in America--it's "celebrating diversity."  But when other countries appropriate elements of American culture, it's considered a threat to their traditions.  How is eating at McDonald's or driving an American auto brand any more of threat to foreign countries than eating "ethnic" food or driving a foreign car a threat to America?

There actually is a sociological answer to this, but the problem gets catastrophized and sensationalized so much that I'm sick of discussing it.

I'm actually powerful curious to hear about this. You got a link or some reading suggestions?

Part of the reason I'm sick of discussing it is that the sociological concepts themselves can come across as a little conspiratorial or histrionic but I do think they have some explanatory merit. Essentially it's that it's a form of hegemony and cultural imperialism, with that added twist that one important and powerful criticism of cultural imperialism theory in general is that if certain moral and cultural standards are better than others and thus that it's not a bad thing to impose them, and that this criticism doesn't really apply here because it's impossible to argue that McDonald's is objectively superior to what less-Westernized societies eat (I'm not going to argue with Oldiesfreak about American cars because that's a ridiculous equivalency and not really a 'cultural' issue in the same sense). We have a poster here who purports to believe in a 'free market of cultures' in which, by implication, American culture prevails because it's in some way intrinsically superior and cultures that are imperiled must be so because they have something the matter with them, but the real world doesn't work that way, and in any case it's an absolutely ludicrous argument to make about things like eating habits or (I'm thinking here about what the De Beers cartel has done to Japanese customs over the decades) wedding aesthetics. America is, simply, powerful enough to incorporate and mediate influences from other cultures in ways that those countries aren't. It's less about what is inherently more or less of 'a threat' and more about what a culture does or does not have the power to approach and mediate on its own terms.

Again, though, it's absolutely possible to overstate how much of a problem this is, and a lot of people in socio/anthropology, international relations theory, and related disciplines, especially people whose political inclinations lean New Left, appear to believe that no disadvantaged or dispossessed culture can show any resilience at all and that they're all absolutely helpless, pliant, and prone beneath the wheels of the mainstream white American juggernaut. Which is insulting to say the least.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also it's kind of silly to act like American culture is ONLY corporate stuff like McDonalds, btw DeBeers are not American (autos aren't really a good example, that's kind of like calling Samsung phones an aspect of Korean culture), there is American culture that goes beyond all that. Onion rings and cheese curds are very much American foods in origin, but is it an attack on the cultures of other countries if someone set up an independent restaurant there that served them? Is Japanese or Latin American culture threatened by playing baseball there? There actually are some minor leagues for what Americans call football in Switzerland and Germany, is that cultural appropriation or a threat to those places?

1. I know De Beers isn't American. It was founded by Cecil Rhodes, for God's sake. Sorry I didn't clarify that.
2. What you're saying is what I was trying to get at in my second paragraph. There are a ton of people in the social sciences who seem somehow congenitally incapable of saying 'this specific instance of X is a bad thing; that specific instance of X is not a bad thing'.