Americans are cultural copycats. White suburban youths perform rap music, New York fashion designers ransack the world's closets for inspiration, and Euro-American authors adopt the voice of a geisha or shaman. The ownership of these art forms, however, remains contested. Do they belong to the community that originally generated them, or to the culture that has absorbed them? While claims of authenticity or quality may prompt some consumers to seek cultural products at their source, the communities of origin are generally unable to exclude copyists through legal action. Like other works of...
Americans are cultural copycats. White suburban youths perform rap music, New York fashion designers ransack the world's closets for inspiration, and ...