Cultural appropriation, coloniality and mobilities in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Since human expansion on Earth, the exchanges and interferences of different peoples have constituted the basis for infinite aspects of culture. The concept of cultural appropriation presupposes symbolic disputes, identity, comparisons and also forms of domination based on modernity and its effects today, coloniality. The article intends to stress the concept of cultural appropriation as a destabilization of ways of life, using mobilities, especially the automotive one, as an argument, in dialogue with the Anthropocene and the climatic emergency. In a quick tour of facts that concern this discussion, the text later focuses on the change in the modes of transport in Salvador over the centuries. This change aimed, ultimately, at the insertion of Eurocentered cultural aspects to the detriment of other social practices linked to the ways of moving that constituted this territory before the arrival of the colonizer.