[Shi Aidong] Academic responsibility in the protection of intangible cultural heritage
With the promulgation of the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003 and the promulgation of the "Opinions on Strengthening the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in my Country" by the China government in 2005, a wave of "Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Movement" suddenly broke out across the country.
The imported concept of intangible cultural heritage has quickly become a fashionable label in academia.
The original concepts of folk culture, folk customs and other quickly gave way to intangible cultural heritage.
Although according to the current understanding of scholars, there is almost no difference in the connotation of these concepts, most of the current "intangible cultural heritage scientists" are also those who were originally called "Folklorists".
The difference between concepts lies in the context in which they arise and the ideology to which they are associated.
In the government's "Opinions", the concept of "intangible cultural heritage" is closely followed by the "Opinions on Protection Work".
Local officials and scholars who are good at understanding the above meaning all understand the subtext behind the "Opinions": any folk phenomenon, as long as it can be labeled as intangible cultural heritage, means that it has achieved legal status as "culture", which is followed by the ability to be "protected" and even declare project funds.
As soon as intangible cultural heritage became popular, a strange subject category such as "Intangible Cultural Heritage Science" was quickly born.
A large number of universities such as Sun Yat-sen University, East China Normal University, and Central China Normal University quickly followed up and pieced together teams to establish various intangible cultural research institutions with similar names.
It is as if adding the word learning to the name of any event can become a subject of knowledge.
Many scholars have begun to recruit graduate students in the field of intangible cultural heritage before they themselves have figured out the ins and outs of the special concept of intangible cultural heritage.
Under the banner of the protection movement, various interest claims have been able to appear on the stage of drama.
Scholars, businessmen, local officials, and folk subjects, who wouldn't want to get a piece of the cake while it's hot? Folklore scholars and non-folk scholars who have a slight connection with folk culture have tacitly formed a temporary community of interests.
No one wants to expose that the new dress on the emperor's body is actually just a virtual myth.
In order to gain the trust and support of society and obtain sustained benefits and resources, scholars are gradually deified intangible cultural heritage as a symbol of the national spirit, and use nationalist discourse to manipulate themselves into guardians of the national spirit.
However, the splendid and poor performances of scholars in the conservation movement in recent years have gradually reduced "folklore" and "intangible cultural heritage scientist" in pan-folklore to a mildly derogatory term.
Academic research and cultural criticism are two different approaches to work.
The former is the work of scholars, and the latter is the work of public intellectuals.
The so-called research means careful grinding and careful investigation.
The object must be concepts or real images that have existed.
From this perspective, humanities can only speak of the past, and all humanities scholars should be historians.
When scholars judge the value of intangible cultural heritage and offer suggestions on protection, they are actually speaking as public intellectuals rather than scholars.
As Mr.
Liu Kuili pointed out,"Without in-depth research work, there will be no truly meaningful, scientific, and historical protection.
Each scholar can only observe things from his own perspective and get corresponding understandings according to the degree and side of his contact with the objects, so it is impossible to have no limitations.
The pursuit of truth and practical application are not consistent and unified on all occasions.
But the reality is that in the passion of inheriting and protecting intangible cultural heritage, scholars are busy doing things and neglecting thinking.
There are more discussions at the countermeasure and operational levels than theoretical and speculative excavation and interpretation." Academic research must be done slowly and meticulously, while academic movements must make money with great fanfare.
From the perspective of academic history, any academic process dubbed a "movement", although lively for a while, ultimately ends with a significant decline in academic standards.
The human resources in the folk culture research community are so limited that when everyone is keen on practical application, the human resources engaged in specific research will inevitably be greatly weakened.
Without specific research to support, scholars are no better than a public intellectual.
In fact, in the raging movement for the protection of intangible cultural heritage, scholars play more like god makers than researchers.
The title of scholar is just a bluff mask for participating in the ball.
The Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Movement is, to put it bluntly, a masquerade ball.
Cooperation between academia and current politics and business will inevitably come at the expense of academic independent thinking.
The conservation movement itself does not have much academic elements.
Once a scholar breaks away from specific research in his field of expertise and intervenes in public topics, he no longer has any advantages over public intellectuals.
During the two sessions in 2008, various media rumored that the government of Jining City, Shandong Province was holding a small note allegedly jointly signed by 69 academicians of the China Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering, claiming to build a "Chinese Cultural Symbol City" as the vice-capital of China's culture.
This farce signed by academicians was questioned by all parties in society.
Scholars certainly have the right to care about current situations, but scholars who speak about current situations are only speaking as ordinary people.
The authority of scholars can only be limited to academic fields.
When scholars do not speak in their own professional fields, it is wrong to use titles such as academicians, professors, and doctorates to coerce public opinion.
When Guan Gong walked into the kitchen carrying the Green Dragon Crescent Knife, his skills at deciphering oxen were no better than those of the nameless cook.
What qualifications did he have to judge the cook? The so-called intangible cultural heritage protection is just a plan of action.
It is a comprehensive decision made by local governments and specific cultural inheritors after weighing the interests of all parties.
At most, what scholars can grasp is a one-sided truth about folk customs.
They neither need nor can they have a global perspective.
A scholar's knowledge only represents his understanding of past folk customs, and does not mean that he has the right to make value judgments on the current cultural situation.
The specific cultural inheritors are the parties involved, while scholars are just other bystanders.
How to deal with various intangible cultural heritage is the responsibility of cultural inheritors.
Inheritance and mutation are two sides of the same coin.
Choosing which part of the existing cultural heritage to inherit or which part to discard depends on the needs of the cultural inheritors themselves, not the ideal picture of others.
Many so-called scholars are often willing to serve as emperors 'teachers, pointing fingers at local governments and local cultural workers on the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
Once the protection movement fails, these scholars will of course leave without having to bear any responsibility for the mistakes in decision-making.
According to the social division of labor, scholars should shine in their own professional fields without having to intervene in local affairs.
Similarly, local governments and cultural inheritors have no obligation to realize dreams for scholars.
However, once intangible cultural heritage is deified by scholars, what follows is the requirements of scholars for the authenticity of the deified objects.
The life culture as heritage is often kidnapped by scholars '"authenticity","original ecology" and "original flavor"."Original flavor".
Just as once a young woman is dubbed a "virtuous woman" by moralists, she loses her freedom to interact normally with men and continue her normal life.
People's Spring Festival is already well celebrated.
Scholars insist on protecting a good Spring Festival.
Under the banner of promoting traditional culture, they warn people that the Spring Festival should be celebrated this way and not that way.
They use authoritative words to coerce people to squeeze the Spring Festival train home to make dumplings, induce people to use deafening firecrackers all night long to exorcise evil spirits, and overturn various abandoned folk phenomena, giving them various cultural and even national "meaning." Everyone has the right to spend their Spring Festival in the way they want.
Some people like excitement and others like tranquility.
Why do you think that not celebrating the Spring Festival in the way you scholars suggest means that it has "no cultural connotation"?
In the 2007 national holiday reform plan, folklorists unanimously believed that May Day was a Bolai festival without any cultural connotations, and suggested moving the holiday time of the May Day holiday to traditional festivals such as Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and New Year's Eve to promote national traditional culture.
Scholars thought that this move would be warmly supported by the general public.
Unexpectedly, once the reform plan was announced, it would attract harsh criticism from a large number of netizens.
The reason was no other than that the May Day holiday was cancelled and the actual interests of the working class were not reflected in the holiday reform plan.
People's expectation for the reform of holidays is to add traditional festivals as legal holidays on the basis of retaining the May Day holiday.
Therefore, cultural inheritors are more concerned about how their lives can be "more comfortable" than how they can be "more meaningful".
Their culture is real life itself.
Whether a culture is recognized by the people does not depend on whether it is traditional or modern, but whether it can bring practical benefits to people's lives.
Cultural inheritors must seek the greatest practical benefits from the inheritance and development of tradition, but scholars obviously only pay attention to the traditional nature of culture and do not regard the "actual interests of the masses" as the primary consideration.
Cultural inheritors and their living worlds are the research objects of folklore rather than transformation.
As elites among cultural inheritors, local cultural workers are "research objects" rather than "researchers." Therefore, there is no reason for scholars to demand these local cultural workers based on truth-seeking standards.
Scholars must clearly distinguish between this identity difference.
A responsible scholar should be a true gentleman when faced with local cultural workers.
Scholars do not have to "interfere" in their work as cultural holders or cultural authorities, but should "pay attention" to their work and calmly observe and think about whether or how a new cultural phenomenon can become a new tradition invented at present.
Only by distancing themselves from the people, and only by being bystanders can scholars not be interfered by emotional factors, and can they not be confused by others, and can they more truly understand how traditional culture is interpreted, utilized, and created among the people., passed down.
When a scholar looks on the sidelines, he is a scholar; and when he actively participates in it, in fact he has become a special party.
In the current work of protecting intangible cultural heritage, scholars mainly act as public intellectuals or cultural commentators to appeal and mobilize at symposiums of various media and cultural administrative departments, and do not go deep into the investigation and research of practical issues.
In the process, they appear to be enthusiastic but not intellectually invested.
Once a professional academic worker breaks away from specific research in his professional field and is keen on public topics, he no longer has any advantages over public intellectuals.
On the contrary, scholars 'excessive involvement in real life hinders the public's freedom to a certain extent.
life.
Personal information Shi Aidong, born in 1968, male, from Xinfeng County, Jiangxi Province, associate researcher at the Institute of Literature, China Academy of Social Sciences.
His main research interests are the academic history of folklore and storytelling.
Representative papers include "Superimposed Units: The Structural Mechanism of the Sustainable Development of Epics","The Disorderly Growth of Stories and Its Optimal Strategies","Memory and Reconstruction of Folk Stories","Heroes Kill Sister-in-law-From" Xiao Feng Kill Min "Looking at Jin Yong's Inheritance and Transformation of Traditional Heroic Motifs in Novels","Report and Analysis of Story Communication Experiments", etc.