The Difference Between Preserving Culture and Profiting From It

Culture is everywhere. It is in the designs embroidered within cloth, songs the generations share and songs to transmit, stories of the elders, the way artisans make cloth, and the symbols used are more than just there for their visual value.

However, when something from the cultural sector goes into the market come a number of important questions:

When does sharing culture turn into its exploitation?

Preserving a culture and making money from that is not always an easy choice. Art and craft sales, music, clothing or design sales can bring monetary benefits to the community and help keep the traditions alive in the community. Meanwhile, cultural expressions can be copied, commercialized, even marketed, without offering anything significant to the people who developed and preserved them.

An appreciation of difference starts with an appreciation of culture as a living thing, not just a thing to collect, to display, or monetise.

Culture Is More Than an Object

Imagination for cultural heritage generally involves imagining historic buildings or archaeological sites, museums or artifacts. However, a lot of culture is undefined and invisible.

This can involve traditional music, dance and storytelling and traditional way of life, including rituals, crafts, design, ceremonies, knowledge and skills handed down from generation to generation. According to WIPO, TCEs are forms of expression linked to a traditional cultural expression, which can be part of the identity and heritage of Indigenous and local communities. 

In the case of a handicraft, it is the value that goes beyond the material.

Transmission of knowledge could be from generation to generation through a woven pattern.

Traditional art is an important object that may portray a community's interactions with its environment. A special skill could be passed down from generation to generation within the family.

The things can be taken out of their context and end up being marketable items only, which can lose something.

When Does Cultural Appreciation Become Appropriation?

Cultural exchange is not inherently harmful. Cultures have always influenced one another, and creative exchange can lead to new forms of art, music, design, and expression.

The concern arises when cultural elements are taken without understanding, acknowledgment, consent, or consideration for the communities from which they originate.

This is where the conversation around cultural appropriation becomes important.

Appropriation can involve using culturally significant symbols, designs, practices, or knowledge while removing them from their original meaning—or benefiting financially from them without fairly recognizing the people who developed and preserved them.

The issue becomes particularly complicated when a community's cultural expression is turned into a commercial product while members of that community have little control over how it is represented or who profits from it.

WIPO notes that Indigenous and local community entrepreneurs can face difficulties protecting their intellectual property and preventing the misappropriation or “free-riding” of their cultures by third parties.

The question, then, is not simply:

“Can culture be sold?”

It is:

“Who controls the sale, who benefits from it, and how is the culture represented?”

Profit Is Not Always the Enemy

Preserving and commercializing are thought to be polar concepts. These are not always.

Traditional masters of art and craftsmanship are also forms of livelihood in many communities. Sustainable markets for such skills can generate income, employment and keep the younger generations learning the traditional skills and give communities economic independence.

Entrepreneurship utilizing traditional knowledge and cultural expressions can help build community identity and provide employment and income, WIPO acknowledges.

This distinction matters.

Commerce can be a part of cultural preservation if the artisan receives fair remuneration for the traditional crafts, has a significant say in the presentation of the crafts and can access opportunities that enable them to benefit from the selling of the crafts.

When it is embezzled, stripped of its cultural context and repackaged under a different name and with most of the profits appropriated by an outsider, the economics might be quite different.

The product can be a similar item.

The ethics are not.

Preservation Should Not Mean Freezing Culture

One more misunderstanding deserves correction: When it comes to culture, traditions should be maintained in the same way.

Culture isn't stagnant. 

According to the UNESCO definition, intangible cultural heritage is something that has to be ongoing in the lives of its community, continuously recreated and passed on from generation to generation. Safeguarding is not a freezing of traditions in a supposedly Historical, “pure” form. 

Many traditional motifs can be enriched with imagination by a young artist. An artisan can have the flexibility to explore current materials.

Traditional methods can be reintroduced into a community for the first time in front of a new audience.

Not all these changes are necessarily detrimental to a cultural heritage. They can keep it alive.

The key issue is, who will make the changes?

UNESCO has laid out ethical considerations on the primary role of communities in the protection of their own ICH as well as through inclusive consultation, dialogue and consent.

The Difference Is Agency

The most obvious difference between preservation and exploitation is their role.

Who do you believe is telling the story?

Who will determine the acceptable content?

Who represents a traditional picture?

What are the cost savings or benefits to whom?

Who do you think can refuse?

But, most of all, who will decide what will come next?

The involvement of communities must be integrated. UNESCO considers that the protection of cultural heritage should be made by the people of the community itself and focuses their efforts on a community-based approach. 

That alters the functions of an outside.

Rather than owning a story, an institution, business, collector, designer or a cultural organization can be a partner to that story.

Rather than glean information, it can be used to generate opportunities.

It does not speak for a community, but can provide areas in which the community speaks for itself.

What Ethical Cultural Preservation Can Look Like

There are many ways of doing cultural heritage responsibly. It can be fair compensation for artisans.

This can involve giving credit to the fitting of communities and individual creators.

It can involve the historical and cultural context of a ritual before its use.

It may involve the securing of proper rights prior to turning culturally appropriate resources into commercial products.

It can refer to investing in skills training which will enable younger generations to carry on traditional methods.

It may include developing market opportunities to which artisans can sell their products directly.

It could mean giving up on the idea that any and all aspects of a culture have to be productized.

There may be some traditions which would be suitable for releasing to the public. Some can be holy, private or community specific.

Respecting that difference is the first step to preservation.

Culture Should Not Have to Choose Between Survival and Livelihood

It is not the objective to separate culture from the modern world.

The intent should be to help communities to advance their culture, on their own terms.

This could involve modifying conventional craft to sustainable livelihoods. It may involve imparting to young people skills passed down from their grandparents to their parents. It may involve producing modern artworks rooted in cultural heritage with a contemporary aesthetic and sensibility.

Preservation may sometimes be facilitated by commercial success.

However, money does not equal "preservation".

When a culture's patterns are found on more goods or the culture's traditions are developed in different countries, it is not a culture that is preserved. It is retained when the knowledge, meaning, skills, identity and community that gave rise to the traditions are able to sustain them.

The difference is that.

Profiting from culture is a question that asks, “how much can this be worth?”

Preserving culture is posing the question: “How can this go on?”

The best ones that do ask both questions but don't leave the people who have passed down that culture behind.