When is appropriation appropriate?

The answer is almost always. Cultural borrowing and exchange are the fuel of human creative progress.

The idea that “cultural appropriation” must be guarded against, and rooted out, is arguably one of the wobbliest ideas that the era of identity politics has given us. Cultural appropriation is a vastly bigger and healthier process than its opportunist edges: in a very real sense, it is the engine of human intellectual progress.

04.2024 | Carlos Amato

The Secret of Happy Places

“He’s not in a good place”. “She’s in a good place right now.” The terminology of self-help and pop psychology uses place as a metaphor for happiness or unhappiness – and with good reason.

09.2023 | Carlos Amato

The Numbers Game

Has the data analytics revolution made football better in the last decade? Your answer may depend on whether your own favoured team has become better – or worse.

04.2023 | Carlos Amato

The recall of the wild city

We’ve seen our owl twice. The first time was during a winter dusk: he drifted across our vista from the balcony of our apartment in Johannesburg.

12.2022 | Carlos Amato

The big deal about small nations

Are tiny societies happier than big ones? Plucky Cape Verde and many other thriving little nations seem to confirm that hypothesis. But the case for subdividing the world’s broken big countries is much harder to make …

06.2022 | Carlos Amato

Raak wys to the rejuvenating power of slang

My two-year-old son calls his sandals his “scandals”. So does his five-year-old brother. And so do his parents, come to think of it.

08.2021 | Carlos Amato