[Wei Xiaoshi] When culture becomes a "heritage"

When I was doing an anthropological field survey in Yunnan, any behavior I did was not only associated with economic rewards, but also with a certain ideology: I had to use a certain "correct" attitude to communicate with local people before I could establish friendly relations with them, such as "promoting the spirit of cultural protection" and "helping local culture develop." Some local government officials and I mentioned the importance of "cultural security".

While lamenting the speed at which people create new ideas, I realized that this phenomenon actually confirms some kind of ongoing contradiction, probably a contradiction originating from "cultural heritage." In fact, the emergence of the word "cultural heritage" may have explained the fact that "you", as outsiders, are interfering in "our" cultural heritage "; we are the masters of this" cultural heritage ".

If we think about it from a different perspective, this may not be a product of the local people's "awareness of local protection".

We should also see that it is the behavior of us "outsiders" that makes them claim the "right to ownership" of cultural heritage in this way; because they have already seen some government officials and businessmen using them and then "breaking bridges" against them.

Therefore, what kind of social conflicts "cultural heritage", or "heritage" of culture, should bring to us is a problem we must face in the future.

Of course, disputes over "cultural heritage" are not just unique to our society.

American scholar Michael Brown began to research issues on globalization and cultural heritage as early as the 1990s.

He listed some cases for us:

Since the 1980s, American Indians and Australian aborigines have gradually begun to demand the government to return their material cultural heritage in museums; in Australia, indigenous people claimed ownership of kangaroo patterns and demanded that Qantas Australia Airlines stop using their "intellectual property"; in Peru, Andean Indians claimed ownership of a plant called Lepidium meyenii.

This plant has been developed as a sexual health supplement in many modern countries.

A local indigenous organization filed a property rights lawsuit against a nutritional company in the United States, claiming that property rights had been infringed; in India, the national government created an electronic database to "project" Indian traditional medicines.

The purpose of establishing this database is to prevent developed countries from arbitrarily "embezzling" Indian traditional medicine knowledge, which means that it is equivalent to including it under government protection; In Denmark, a toy website called "Bionicle" has been repeatedly attacked by a Maori hacker.

The hacker declared to the world that Bionicle is a Maori indigenous name on the replaced Internet page; currently, the Rockefeller Fund has established a project to promote the intellectual property rights of "marginalized communities", including "indigenous people".

These cases all show that "cultural heritage" is an expanding "quasi-global issue.

It originated in the Americas and Australia, two regions where white colonists established power, and is currently spreading to the world.

Before elaborating on the consequences of this contradiction, let's first look at how culture has transformed from an abstract common spirit into a "legacy" in modern society.

Culture is like air, something we take for granted, rely on for survival, and operate social mechanisms.

How can it become a commercial or non-commercial part of mass culture in the blink of an eye? Answering this question inevitably involves the history of cultural anthropology.

At the beginning, cultural anthropologists only "naively" hoped to explore foreign cultures "in the spirit of science." But the problem is that anthropologists did not fully anticipate the consequences of their "investigation" behavior.

As American cultural scholar Michael Brown said, when the "achievements" of anthropologists are digested by a mass society,"tradition" and "heritage" are created and become resources for people to compete for the right to speak.

Because of having the right to speak, people can control a group politically.

What deserves our reflection is that some scholars play this role unintentionally, while others knowingly commit it.

At the same time, Michael Brown also pointed out that the development of science and technology in modern society has also made culture a "heritage." Only when modern media entered people's lives did people have more ambition to discover foreign cultures.

And, more importantly, modern media libraries, networks, museums, university education) provide "ambitious people" with a display platform where they can commercialize their "heritage." When people create a certain aesthetic taste about "primitive culture" in the media, commodity value is generated.

As a result, primitive culture became a "heritage".

When people in mainstream society celebrate these "cultural heritage" with joy, whether it is out of their natural desire for possession or out of public sympathy for the "primitive ethnic groups" that they are grateful that intellectuals have "saved" the weak).

As a result of heritageization, numerous problems and contradictions arise.

Michael Brown points out that "most of the time, people in the original place don't get the corresponding economic rewards." More often than not, native resentment stems from a sense that outsiders control them, and native people feel that they are no longer owners of culture.

What's even more frightening is that they've lost a sense of local social identity." Regarding the consequences of "heritage", art historian Deborah Root once described it as follows: At the beginning, cultural elements from their native places to the outside world were just a kind of "cultural theft", and in the end, it was a kind of "cultural extinction."

Therefore, it can be said that in the process of cultural "heritage" to a certain extent, it is a kind of popularization), it is difficult to say that what is brought to the indigenous people is not a kind of harm.

In the case of the North American Indians 'Sweet Lodge (local soul ritual), some Indians feel offended because some white white-collar workers regard their most sacred rituals as an "adventure" experience or, in short, an alternative leisure).

It's like, would we feel comfortable if foreign hippies rehearsed a certain traditional practice of "Our China" as an entertainment comedy? Michael Brown points out here that this popularization of "heritage" threatens Indian communities because it "weakens the line that defines 'native' and 'foreign'." In my opinion, this kind of behavior is undoubtedly no different from forced intermarriage, which has seriously damaged the sense of identity of the local ethnic group.

Just as in any society, when most people see a foreign man and a local woman walking together, people will instinctively feel "occupied".

This "cultural contradiction" has spread in the Americas and around the world, and these areas are all characterized by a clear colonial history.

In these areas, the issue of "cultural belonging" was caused by the colonial history.

The influence of modern media, books, the Internet, museums, university education) is tantamount to adding fuel to the colonial conflict, making the indigenous people feel that "those people have not only robbed our land, but are also preparing to suck our souls dry." This contradiction is like the spread of AIDS from monkeys to humans, it can be spread from colonial regimes to non-colonial regimes.

In a country where indigenous peoples and I mean a broad concept) are the main political subject, modern media technology will cause people to "create" history for their own identities.

Therefore,"our historical heritage" will surely be created accordingly.

To give a few examples, in China, as "intangible cultural heritage" has been included in the discussion of mass media, more "heritage" has been created accordingly.

Some groups claim to be a member of a certain ethnic group; others claim to be an ethnic group other than the 56 ethnic groups that have not been recognized by the government.

In short, many groups always have various reasons to claim that their group is "unique".

The emergence of this situation is closely related to the curiosity of scholars.

On the other hand, this thinking model has also produced a number of "cultural products" in recent years.

For example, some people recorded several songs in the 1970s and 1980s and made them into cassettes; some people had enough "local appeal" to gather traditional artists to set up an "ecological teaching center." These products all have the value of becoming commodity profits.

The reason for this situation is nothing more than the political-commercial shock caused by the launch of the "Intangible Cultural Heritage" movement in China.

In China's bureaucracy, local governments/groups do receive political and economic benefits.

I am not saying that such a phenomenon is absolutely negative, but we must be aware of the social contradictions it may create: the waste of social administrative resources and the harm it causes to ordinary people.

Both of the situations mentioned above constitute the possibility of "heritage contradictions" in China.

It is foreseeable that in the near future,"traditional cultural heritage issues" are likely to become a three-way game between the government, academia, and local "public opinion" in China.

Of course, it is worth noting that the participation of various NGOs may also become another force.

The driving force behind NGOs actually comes from a group of emerging bourgeoisie interested in culture.

They have received international education and are disgusted with the country's "cultural mutual assistance" and academic "sitting and discussing").

Before the above-mentioned forces reach a consensus on "cultural heritage", there must be a process of "competing with each other".

For example, if various places compete for the title of "intangible cultural heritage", starting from the community to the provincial government, they must spend a lot of energy to organize gorgeous performances.

In this process of competition, it is a huge waste of administrative resources.

In this process, we don't know how much benefits are brought to the common people and how much rewards are brought to the construction of public culture in the community.

What we can know is that after all the dust settles, the sense of spiritual loss brought to the local community will be huge.

There is no way.

People are such an imaginary animal.

When material needs are met, creating history and "cultural heritage" has become a pleasure for the public.