[Gao Xiaokang]"Post-World Heritage Application Period": Protecting the Sustainable Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage

This article is one of the "Anthropology" articles in the 11th edition of the 180th issue of China Social Science Journal.

The complexity of the status and effects of protection work since the application for the World Heritage Site shows that general protection concepts cannot solve the actual problems in protection work.

Each specific protection project must be studied and responded to as a special case, and the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" must be oriented to particularity.

If Kunqu Opera entered the UNESCO List of Representative Intangible Cultural Heritage Works, the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China has been under way for 10 years.

Since then, China joined the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004, established "Cultural Heritage Day" in 2006, and in 2011, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Law of the People's Republic of China." These phased signs show that the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" is receiving increasing attention in China; and the establishment of a list of tens of thousands of representative works from the national to local governments shows the enthusiasm for the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" across the country.

When China first joined the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, many scholars were still confused by the concept of "intangible cultural heritage." Just a few years later,"intangible cultural heritage" became a popular word known to all women and children.

Today, thousands of "intangible cultural heritage" projects have entered the list at all levels, and countless protection plans have been or will soon be implemented; at the same time, various places are still applying for new projects and planning new protection plans.

Some people speculate that after the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Law" is approved and takes effect, it may usher in a new round of more intense "intangible cultural heritage" craze.

The protection of "intangible cultural heritage" has entered the "post-cultural heritage application period"

At the end of 2010, when the author was inspecting Guizhou, some local officials talked about the current situation of "intangible cultural heritage" protection and believed that from the perspective of funding and human resources, the number and scale of existing representative projects is close to saturation.

Although there may be countless "legacy beads" out there, it is unrealistic to expand the unlimited expansion of "intangible cultural heritage" protection projects.

More importantly, does this vigorous scene really mean the prosperity and development of traditional cultural protection and inheritance? The impulse to pursue political achievements or commercial interests has led to the irrationalization of local government administrative decisions, which has brought various problems to the protection of "intangible cultural heritage": such as declaring fake "intangible cultural heritage","dead intangible cultural heritage", being fictitious or even making it real.

False protection, destructive "protection", etc.

Obviously, there is now a need to shift from blindly pursuing listings and projects to a more scientific assessment of the effectiveness and sustainability of protection.

In other words, the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" should transcend the development centered on investigation and application projects in the first 10 years and enter the "post-cultural heritage application period" from concept to strategy.

The "post-heritage application period" not only refers to the phased characteristics of the "intangible cultural heritage" protection work, but also means a re-examination and reflection of the "intangible cultural heritage craze" in the previous stage.

The "intangible cultural heritage craze" has aroused people's enthusiasm to re-understand and inherit traditional culture, but a lot of interest has focused on applying for directories and borrowing directories to obtain resources.

It can be said that the period centered on the application for cultural heritage was the enlightenment and popularization stage of "intangible cultural heritage" protection.

When the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" changed from enlightenment and popularization to a vigorous cultural movement and even a large-scale industrial development movement, the understanding and practice of "intangible cultural heritage" and the protection, inheritance and development of the entire traditional culture have also shown many misunderstandings and one-sidedness: What should be protected and how to protect it, especially after the sensational effect of the application for cultural heritage, problems arising in the sustainability of "intangible cultural heritage" protection have become urgent problems and difficulties in the reality of cultural development.

Against this background, the promulgation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Law can be said to be the right time.

Clarifying and confirming some basic concepts, purposes, government strategies and administrative work lines in the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" in the form of administrative law may have a positive effect on the development of this cultural construction undertaking to a new stage and guide the entire "intangible cultural heritage" The protection cause has gone beyond the previous application list movement and moved towards an orderly and in-depth development in the "post-cultural heritage application period".

Of course, the so-called "post-heritage application period" does not mean that the work of "intangible cultural heritage" investigation and application for representative projects has ended.

In fact, there is still a lot of investigation and declaration work to be carried out.

After the successful application and the publicity effect, many "intangible cultural heritage" projects were immediately looted for development and utilization before the measures for proper protection and reasonable utilization were implemented.

Cultural rights and interests were violated and the ecological environment was destroyed, resulting in successful application for the cultural heritage and the extinction of the heritage.

result.

In response to this problem, an official in Guizhou Province engaged in the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" put forward a proposal to form a "cultural early warning" mechanism in the investigation and application work, that is, before a "intangible cultural heritage" project attracts social attention and development, research institutions and relevant government departments should take protective measures first to prevent pre-emptive and destructive development.

This concept of "cultural early warning" means that protection awareness and actions should be pre-positioned and strengthened, which may curb the impulse to proactively develop and make profits to a certain extent, thus playing a positive role in guiding the application activities in the "post-application period".

Facing particularity is the basic spirit of "intangible cultural heritage" protection

Another outstanding problem faced in the "post-World Heritage Application Period" is the complexity and diversity of new situations that arise in the process of continuing to implement protection after a large number of representative projects have been identified and protection plans have been formulated.

The investigation, declaration, review and identification of "intangible cultural heritage" projects all follow the prescribed procedures, and the specific protection plan and basic work route also form a roughly similar pattern based on the classification of the project.

However, the effectiveness of conservation planning implementation may vary widely.

For example, for embroidery, which is also listed on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage List, Su Embroidery now has tens of thousands of embroiderers engaged in the inheritance and development of this heritage; on the other hand, Guangdong Embroidery is worried about the lack of successors and even finding someone to repair the embroidery.

It is difficult.

In this case, it is obviously impossible to simply learn from the former's successful protection and inheritance experience to solve the latter's problems.

Such a situation is not uncommon in "intangible cultural heritage" protection.

Another example is that many places carry out folk tourism industry development projects in the name of "productive protection", some of which have been successfully developed while others have not been successful.

In this case, it is difficult to determine how to evaluate the effectiveness of such development, because in such cases it is not even possible to simply determine whether the success of industrial development can be counted as the success of "intangible cultural heritage" protection.

The complexity of the status and effects of protection work since the application for the World Heritage Site shows that general protection concepts cannot solve the actual problems in protection work.

Each specific protection project must be studied and responded to as a special case, and the protection of "intangible cultural heritage" must be oriented to particularity.

Facing particularity is not only a concrete countermeasure, but also the basic spirit of "intangible cultural heritage" protection, that is, protecting cultural diversity.

In just a few years, more than 80,000 representative projects have been reviewed and approved across the country.

Behind this huge number are different cultural groups and different types of cultural forms.

These various cultural forms constitute historical and regional ecological diversity.

Protecting different "intangible cultural heritage" projects in different ways so that the cultural traditions and personalities of various cultural groups can continue to be inherited, disseminated and developed in the contemporary cultural environment is an important way to promote the development of contemporary culture towards the construction of ecological civilization.

Taking the protection of traditional operas an example, Peking Opera and Kunqu Opera have successively entered the World Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

They have naturally received support from the government and the people, and their inheritance, dissemination and education are all carried out vigorously.

However, if we believe that the prosperity of Peking Opera and Kunqu Opera is the success of the protection of traditional opera, it is a misunderstanding of the protection of "intangible cultural heritage".

Under the impact of contemporary mass entertainment culture, most traditional cultural activities are in decline or even endangered state.

The protection of several major operas cannot replace the protection of various local operas, and may also affect the protection of the cultural diversity of China opera.

Although the 1950s was considered to be an era when local opera flourished, there was already a tendency for many local operas to transform them into Peking Opera, that is, using Peking Opera professions, qupai, and repertoire to transform local operas, weakening the local characteristics of local operas.

As a result, there were local operas but no local characteristics.

If today's opera protection work is still important operas and neglects endangered folk operas, such protection may still lead to the destruction of the traditional opera ecology.

In short, the direction of protection work in the "post-World Heritage Application Period" should be to position and plan specific "intangible cultural heritage" project protection work in the context of contemporary ecological civilization construction.

The "Intangible Cultural Heritage Law" puts forward two principles for the protection of "intangible cultural heritage": first, it should focus on authenticity, integrity and inheritance; second, it should be conducive to enhancing the cultural identity of the Chinese nation and safeguarding the country.

Unity and national unity are conducive to promoting social harmony and sustainable development.

These two principles emphasize that the object of "intangible cultural heritage" protection should be a cultural form that is still in the process of inheritance and has its own integrity.

At the same time, the protection and inheritance of this cultural form should be integrated into the recognition, sharing and sustainable development of the entire society.

During the ecological construction process.

(Source: China Social Science Journal; Author: Gao Xiaokang; Unit: China Intangible Cultural Heritage Research Center, Sun Yat-sen University)