Where is Living Labour in Fashion and Cultural Appropriation Debates?

This chapter aims to situate the debate on fashion and cultural appropriation within the broader, and crucial, context of transnational capital accumulation and the increasing devaluation of living labour. Its emphasis is on critically analysing the persistence and emotional intensity of the cultural appropriation debate as a manifestation of a deeper and more pervasive issue with contemporary transnational capitalism. To accomplish this, the chapter presents three appropriation allegations from different parts of the world that, at first glance, seem to have nothing in common. It then links these cases together by emphasising how they are signs of a deeper and wider malaise in the face of contemporary transnational capitalism, which is more concerned with endless, destructive capital accumulation and concentration through dispossession, including appropriation of culture, than it is with raising the productivity of labour. The chapter argues that if culture is to be practised as a liberating activity, it is imperative more than ever to maintain that living labour is what produces and reproduces culture, and it is this living labour that is systematically appropriated by capital.