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Cultural Laundering

Cultural Laundering is a term that is used to describe how individuals and groups may attempt to appropriate aspects of another culture in order to gain access to advantaged and privileged worlds that are otherwise closed, or limited to them. In contrast to cultural appropriation, it describes how less powerful groups seek acquire and use dominant culture for instrumental means. Much in the way that money laundering 'washes' cash that is legislated against due to its dis-preferred origins, so too does cultural laundering provide cultural capital for those seek to gain access to hegemonic institutions and social groupings. The term was first used to describe how international schools offer a cultural product of White international 'Englishness'. In reifying this cultural feature, international schools generate great distinction, appealing to a global upwardly mobile demographic. This term is linked to the concept of the imperial gaze, and was first used by Gardner-McTaggart (2018) in The promise of advantage: Englishness in IB international schools.