ABSTRACT

Culture and traditional knowledge are concepts developed and advanced by anthropologists over the past century or so. These have recently been appropriated and used in ways never envisioned by anthropologists, sometimes contravening the data, theory and models used by anthropologists to develop these concepts. It would be fair to say that initially most anthropologists welcomed this attention, with not a few embracing these appropriations. But there is little evidence to support many of the principal applied threads that have developed in critical politics, economic development and conservation. Anthropologists have an opportunity and an obligation to clarify and refine both concepts in the context of these (mis-)appropriations, and to clarify them for what they are: anthropological inventions used to define and enhance understanding, not to define movable property or motivate new forms of race (and racism).