One of the great privileges of travel is discovering how much of the world you do not know.
Different food. Different customs. Different languages. Different beliefs. Different histories. Different ways of living.
For me, that is the point.
Travel should not mean flying thousands of miles simply to recreate home somewhere hotter. It should involve curiosity. It should involve discovery. Occasionally, it should involve discomfort. Above all, it should involve learning.
My own rule is simple:
Eat the food.
Learn the customs.
Respect the people.
Ask questions.
Give credit where it matters.
Don’t pretend expertise you don’t possess.
That, to me, is cultural appreciation.
Yet if we follow the most extreme interpretation of cultural appropriation to its logical conclusion, the modern traveller faces something of a problem.
A very stupid problem.
Welcome to Thailand. Please Do Not Touch the Culture
Imagine arriving in Bangkok.
You are British.
You see a Thai restaurant.
Danger.
You are not Thai.
Ordering pad kra pao could apparently constitute cultural appropriation.
Tom yum?
Absolutely not.
Green curry?
Steady on.
Som tam?
Clearly reckless.
Perhaps you should retreat to McDonald’s.
Problem solved.
Except McDonald’s is American.
Worse still, multinational restaurant chains routinely adapt their menus to local tastes. So now American cuisine is adapting itself to Thai culture while Thai consumers are apparently appropriating American culture by eating hamburgers.
This is becoming complicated.
Perhaps a steakhouse would be safer.
Unfortunately, even our supposedly familiar foods are not culturally pure.
Pizza?
Italian.
Tea?
Asian origins.
Coffee?
Not British.
Chocolate?
Its origins lie in Mesoamerica.
Potatoes?
South American.
Tomatoes?
Also from the Americas.
Chilli peppers?
Again, the Americas.
At this point, our ethically purified traveller may have to survive on tap water while attempting not to think too deeply about the historical development of glassware.
This is what happens when a potentially useful concept is pushed beyond the point of common sense.
The World’s Worst Holiday
Let us imagine the fully compliant, culturally non-appropriating traveller.
They arrive in Egypt.
They cannot eat Egyptian food because they are not Egyptian.
Locally made clothing looks suspiciously cultural, so best avoid that.
Traditional music?
Dangerous territory.
Local crafts?
Probably best not.
Maybe they should avoid learning traditional cooking too.
Perhaps asking questions risks extracting cultural knowledge.
So they remain in their international hotel.
After seven days they fly home, having successfully interacted with almost nothing.
They can proudly announce:
“I respected Egypt so much that I made absolutely no attempt to understand it.”
A triumph of modern tourism.
Adventure Is More Than Geography
There is a difference between travelling somewhere and actually experiencing it.
You can visit Cairo, photograph the pyramids from a coach window and return to an international hotel buffet.
Technically, you have visited Egypt.
But how much have you actually experienced?
Adventure does not always involve ropes, crampons, deserts or jungles.
Sometimes adventure is sitting in a restaurant staring at a menu you cannot understand and ordering something because the person at the next table says:
“Try this.”
Sometimes it is wandering through a souk and asking how something was made.
Sometimes it is discovering that a dish you thought represented an entire country actually belongs to one particular region.
Sometimes it is learning that something you believed for years was completely wrong.
Those are some of the best moments in travel.
Because every day should be a learning experience.
Food: The Universal Passport
Food is perhaps the easiest way into another culture.
Sit down at a table almost anywhere in the world and you immediately begin learning.
Why is this ingredient used?
Why is the food cooked this way?
Why is a particular dish associated with a festival?
Why does cuisine change between regions only fifty miles apart?
Food contains geography, religion, agriculture, climate, economics, migration and history.
And almost none of the world’s cuisines developed in complete isolation.
Tomatoes travelled.
Potatoes travelled.
Chillies travelled.
Tea travelled.
Coffee travelled.
Spices travelled.
People travelled.
Recipes travelled with them.
Then somebody tasted something unfamiliar and thought:
“That’s rather good.”
And another cuisine changed.
Human culinary history is essentially thousands of years of people borrowing, adapting and improving one another’s ideas.
If we decide that borrowing food is inherently immoral, humanity has some enormous reparations to organise.
Italy may have to return the tomato.
Ireland should probably surrender the potato.
Britain must reconsider tea.
Thailand and India will need a difficult meeting about chilli peppers.
Japan may have to explain curry.
The United States should prepare to hand pizza back to Italy.
Human cuisine becomes one gigantic historical crime scene if every borrowed ingredient constitutes cultural appropriation.
Fortunately, most people have traditionally used another word for this activity.
Cooking.
Jamie Oliver and the Great Jerk Rice Emergency
Douglas Murray, in The Madness of Crowds, discusses the controversy surrounding Jamie Oliver and his “Punchy Jerk Rice”.
Oliver was criticised because the product differed substantially from traditional Jamaican jerk cooking.
There is a perfectly legitimate argument there.
If somebody from Jamaica looks at the ingredients and says:
“That isn’t proper jerk,”
then perhaps we are about to learn something useful.
Authenticity matters.
History matters.
Names matter.
But a culinary argument about whether something is authentically jerk is very different from arguing that a British chef should not be cooking food inspired by Jamaica in the first place.
Jamie Oliver is a chef.
Cooking food is rather central to the job description.
Celebrity chefs routinely discover recipes from around the world, interpret them and adapt them for people cooking at home.
That may mean substituting an ingredient that is expensive or difficult to find.
It may mean simplifying a process requiring specialist equipment.
It may mean attempting to recreate something on a family budget from ingredients available in an ordinary supermarket.
Sometimes the adaptation works brilliantly.
Sometimes it is terrible.
Sometimes an entire Caribbean island may collectively wonder what on earth just happened.
But there is an important distinction:
You can get a recipe wrong without committing a moral wrong.
If someone sees Jamie Oliver’s recipe, becomes interested in Jamaican cooking, discovers Scotch bonnet chilli and allspice, visits a Caribbean restaurant and eventually travels to Jamaica to experience the cuisine properly, Jamaican culture has not been diminished.
It has travelled.
It has created curiosity.
It has influenced somebody.
That is cultural appreciation.
The sensible criticism is:
“Jamie, that isn’t authentic jerk. Let me show you how it’s really made.”
Excellent.
Now we are learning.
The absurd response is:
“You are not Jamaican. Leave Jamaican food alone.”
One opens a conversation.
The other closes it.
And travel should be about opening conversations.
The Cultural Quarantine Model of Tourism
If extreme cultural appropriation theory were applied consistently, tourism boards would need to rethink their advertising.
Thailand:
“Amazing Thailand — please don’t eat anything.”
Italy:
“Come for the scenery. Leave the pasta alone.”
Mexico:
“Please admire the culture but step away from the tacos.”
Japan:
“Welcome. Sushi is none of your business.”
France:
“You may look at the croissant.”
Jamaica:
“The music is playing, but you are not authorised to enjoy it.”
Egypt:
“Please visit the pyramids without developing an interest in Egyptian civilisation.”
It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous.
Cultures do not survive by being hermetically sealed from everyone else.
They survive because people live them, teach them, share them, value them and sometimes adapt them.
Egypt: Where There Really Is Something Worth Getting Angry About
Egypt also provides a much better example of what genuine cultural exploitation looks like.
Following the political upheaval surrounding the Arab Spring, archaeological sites in Egypt became vulnerable to increased looting and illicit excavation.
Objects disappeared.
Sites were damaged.
Antiquities entered international markets.
Egypt continues to pursue the recovery of cultural objects that were removed unlawfully.
That is something worth taking seriously.
Removing an archaeological object, smuggling it abroad and selling it for private profit is not cultural appreciation.
It is theft.
Yet none of this provides an argument against visiting Egypt.
Quite the opposite.
Visit the Great Pyramid.
Go to Saqqara.
Walk through Karnak.
Explore Luxor.
Visit the Valley of the Kings.
Employ an Egyptian guide.
Listen to Egyptian archaeologists.
Eat Egyptian food.
Stay in Egyptian hotels.
Use Egyptian businesses.
Ask questions.
Learn.
Tourism is an important part of the Egyptian economy, as it is for many countries around the world.
The traveller who pays entrance fees, employs guides, eats locally and stays in local accommodation helps give economic value to the preservation of cultural heritage.
There is a very simple rule here:
Take photographs.
Take knowledge.
Take memories.
Do not take antiquities.
Even a relatively small box of crayons should be sufficient to understand the distinction.
Tourism Can Be Cultural Appreciation in Practice
The same principle applies throughout the world.
People visit Peru to see Machu Picchu.
Jordan for Petra.
Cambodia for Angkor.
Italy for Rome and Pompeii.
Greece for Athens.
France for its art, architecture and cuisine.
Britain for Stonehenge, castles and historic cities.
Nobody seriously argues that an Egyptian tourist looking at Stonehenge is culturally appropriating British prehistory.
Nor should they.
The traveller’s responsibility is not to avoid other cultures.
It is to engage with them respectfully.
Pay the entrance fee.
Observe conservation rules.
Do not remove anything.
Do not vandalise anything.
Behave appropriately at sacred sites.
Use local businesses.
Learn what you are looking at.
That is responsible travel.
The Segregation Problem Nobody Likes to Mention
There is also an uncomfortable destination at the end of the extreme appropriation argument.
If people should only participate in things belonging to their own ethnic culture, what exactly are we advocating?
White people eating white people’s food.
Black people listening only to black music.
Asian people cooking only Asian food.
Everyone dressing according to ancestry.
Everyone remaining within their assigned cultural lane.
That is not multiculturalism.
That starts to look remarkably like segregation wearing fashionable terminology.
Successful multicultural societies work precisely because people interact.
They share food.
They share music.
They learn languages.
They marry each other.
They borrow traditions.
They adapt recipes.
They produce new art.
They create new cultures.
Trying to prevent that in the name of cultural sensitivity would be one of history’s stranger own goals.
Respect Is Not Fear
Responsible travellers should care about causing offence.
That is simply good manners.
Observe local customs.
Dress appropriately.
Ask permission before photographing people where appropriate.
Do not treat religious buildings as theme parks.
Do not assume your own culture is superior.
And do not spend two weeks somewhere before returning home as a self-appointed authority on its civilisation.
All perfectly sensible.
But respect and fear are not the same thing.
A traveller terrified of engaging with another culture will learn very little.
And somebody who learns nothing while travelling has essentially spent several thousand pounds changing the background of their photographs.
“I Don’t Know. Tell Me.”
Perhaps the most useful sentence in travel is:
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
There is no shame in not knowing something.
Ignorance accompanied by curiosity is simply the starting point of education.
Ignorance accompanied by absolute certainty is something else entirely.
Good travellers observe.
They ask.
They listen.
They sometimes discover that their original assumption was wrong.
Excellent.
That is what learning looks like.
Every country you visit should leave you knowing something that you did not know when you arrived.
Every person you meet potentially knows something that you do not.
That is not threatening.
It is one of the great pleasures of travel.
Appreciation Is Not Ownership
Cultural appreciation does not mean claiming another culture as your own.
It does not mean pretending expertise you do not possess.
It does not mean commercial exploitation.
It does not mean stealing artefacts.
It means recognising that another culture contains something of value.
Something worth seeing.
Something worth tasting.
Something worth understanding.
Perhaps even something worth crossing half the planet to experience.
Surely that is closer to admiration than insult.
Less Outrage. More Curiosity.
There are genuine examples of cultural exploitation.
There are stolen antiquities.
There are sacred objects treated disrespectfully.
There are communities whose traditions have been commercially exploited without recognition.
There are histories of cultural suppression.
Those deserve serious debate.
But when we use the same moral language for someone stealing a 3,000-year-old Egyptian artefact and someone ordering Thai curry, we do not strengthen the concept of cultural appropriation.
We trivialise the serious cases.
Sometimes somebody cooking another culture’s food is not oppression.
Sometimes wearing something bought from a local craftsperson is not cultural theft.
Sometimes listening to unfamiliar music is not exploitation.
Sometimes visiting the pyramids is simply awe-inspiring.
And sometimes somebody eating Thai food is simply hungry.
The World Traveller’s Rule
Perhaps we have made all of this unnecessarily complicated.
The world traveller’s rule can remain remarkably simple:
Arrive curious.
Behave respectfully.
Eat adventurously.
Ask questions.
Listen carefully.
Spend locally where possible.
Leave the archaeology where you found it.
Then return home knowing more than when you left.
Conclusion
World travel and cultural sensitivity do not conflict.
They belong together.
The entire purpose of travel is exposure to difference.
Different foods.
Different histories.
Different beliefs.
Different languages.
Different landscapes.
Different ways of living.
If we become so frightened of cultural appropriation that we refuse to participate in anything outside our own ancestry, we have not created a respectful multicultural world.
We have created billions of tiny cultural cages.
I prefer the alternative.
Eat the food.
Learn the customs.
Respect the people.
Ask questions.
Give credit where it matters.
Don’t pretend expertise you don’t possess.
Visit the pyramids.
Eat the curry.
Try the jerk chicken.
Learn how somebody else makes it.
Ask why.
Listen to the answer.
And perhaps try cooking it yourself when you get home.
You may get it wrong.
Civilisation will probably survive.
Because cultural appreciation is not theft.
Curiosity is not oppression.
Travel is not appropriation.
And sometimes a plate of food really is just a plate of food.
If somebody still insists that the proper way to respect the world’s cultures is never to eat their food, wear their locally made clothes, listen to their music, participate in their traditions or experience their heritage, I remain perfectly willing to hear the argument.
But at that point, I think we genuinely may need the crayons.
