[Wang Jianmin] The protection of "intangible cultural heritage" should stimulate the subjectivity of ethnic minorities

The author and students do field research in Tashkurgan

Since the protection of intangible cultural heritage was launched, cultural protection has become an important issue in contemporary China, and diverse minority cultures play an important role in it.

However, cultural protection work in ethnic minorities and their inhabited areas in China faces various difficulties.

In addition to "shortage of funds" and "outdated facilities," the reasons that people hear most about are "lack of talents" and "low cultural quality."

Cultural confidence of ethnic minority people is frustrated

The current overall plans, strategies and specific measures for cultural protection and development in ethnic minority areas often come from the outside.

Tourism development is mostly carried out in accordance with the imagination of superior leaders or tourism companies that are not fully consistent with the actual situation of the local area.

The exploration of local artistic resources is relatively insufficient.

Ethnic minority people cannot creatively use the cultural and artistic resources of local society according to local conditions and ethnic groups.

Decide on the path and method of their own cultural protection and development.

Therefore, in discussions on the protection, development and tourism development of ethnic minority cultures, some people often think that local people lack the commodity awareness of cultural development, do not have the qualities to adapt to the development of modern tourism industry, and cannot actively participate in cultural protection, development and tourism development.

In addition to questioning the accuracy of the above judgment, we should also see that even today, when cultural diversity is emphasized, the saying that ethnic minorities are culturally backward is still quite common in China, and has virtually become a dominant discourse, constantly undermining the cultural confidence of ethnic minorities.

The reason why this phenomenon of local people's lack of self-confidence in their own culture is relatively common is that on the one hand, when the subjective protection and utilization of cultural resources are limited, cultural self-confidence is repeatedly suppressed and frustrated.

It is a choice that local people have no choice but to take when it comes to values respected by mainstream society.

On the other hand, under the premise of the continuous internalization of foreign modernization, specialization and evolution, a unified modern market value system is used to measure the behavior of local people, and the modeled operation of "success models" is used to seek expectations.

The inevitable reaction brought by benefits.

Therefore, for ethnic minorities, due to their weak position in the overall society, they either allow external forces to operate and only receive corresponding remuneration as song and dance performers, or in order to obtain better social evaluation in the overall environment, they often act in accordance with the preferences and requirements of mainstream society, and even use foreign aesthetics and their cosmology, values, and morality to transform and replace the concepts, meanings and emotional expressions contained in their own cultural heritage.

The result of doing so is often counterproductive.

Cultural heritage disappears faster amid the clamor of protection.

The protection of "intangible cultural heritage" culture should be led by local people

If we conduct more in-depth research on the cultural protection issues of ethnic minorities and their areas and rethink them from a new perspective, we will find that the more important reason why cultural protection in ethnic minority areas is that the culture has not been fully established.

Conscious actors have lost their power over their own development and cultural disposal.

The deeper reason is that the value of the traditional culture of ethnic minorities has been ignored, and the cultural and artistic traditions of ethnic minorities that adapt to the natural environment and their livelihood methods have failed to maintain their due status in development.

It should be realized that treating national culture as a tool that can be used or discarded at will is one of the manifestations of modern instrumental rational thinking.

It is precisely because culture is used as a tool that it can be manipulated at will to adapt to the needs of modern society's continuous pursuit of change and innovation.

However, for ethnic minorities living in national culture, national culture is actually their way of life and the source of their life value and meaning, rather than being used or discarded as a tool at will.

Therefore, paying attention to and mobilizing the rights of cultural heritage owners and practitioners is the most important aspect of intangible cultural heritage protection.

At present, some projects have been carried out for cultural inheritors.

Although there are still some problems in theory and practice, the importance of the emphasis on subjectivity in the protection of ethnic minority intangible cultural heritage is beyond doubt.

Focus on localization and cultural creation

The protection of ethnic minority culture does not simply collect culture as a material form statically, or use multimedia means to "dynamically" preserve it as suggested by some experts, nor does it seek to create an isolated and full of foreign imagination.

Cultural island.

Cultural protection itself should include cultural creation.

While a culture with vitality continues, it is also developing.

Cultural creation based on local cultural ethics, values and aesthetics should be encouraged and addressed.

Moreover, since cultural protection is based on cultural diversity, the importance of cultural protection is based on the value of cultural diversity to the survival and continuation of current and future human society.

Intentional or unintentional unity should be avoided in cultural protection and development.

Integrate ideas and maintain and develop the respective characteristics of each village and community.

It should be further emphasized that only creative cultural heritage based on its own cultural logic has greater vitality.

Practice has shown that this kind of cultural creation is difficult to achieve simply through external forces and the so-called "cultural industry" model, or there are related "successful" cases that often abandon the dominant position of the local people and push them to the global and modern float.

Above, it is difficult to find their own joy of creation, and we cannot expect the local people to continue independently for a long time after a certain stage of project implementation.

Only when cultural practitioners are fully independent and creative can they exert their subjective initiative.

With the intervention of broader social forces, by fully controlling and mobilizing the cultural resources of the nation, cultural heritage can not only be protected, but also be further developed and utilized to achieve community development.

Develop a participatory cultural protection and development model

The participatory cultural protection and development model widely implemented in relevant projects at home and abroad in recent years combines external intervention with endogenous development, which can effectively establish the confidence of local cultural creators and explore their potential as subjects of protection and development.

Such participatory models need to coordinate the efforts of several aspects: how governments at all levels, especially local governments, as masters and regulators in the allocation of resources and power for poverty alleviation and cultural protection, can better serve cultural protection and development, providing a larger stage for such development, rather than using power to grab resources; As cultural practitioners, how to make inheritors of ethnic minority intangible cultural heritage exert more subjective initiative rather than becoming actors at the mercy of directors to passively walk on the show; as ethnic minority cultural elites, how to summarize, summarize, and improve their own cultural heritage.

The sense of responsibility is transformed into more pragmatic work; How can researchers and art professionals recognize the connotation of national cultural heritage and achieve broader understanding and interpretation while respecting local resources; how to integrate the role of various forces in dialogue so that the subjectivity of cultural owners and practitioners can be demonstrated, from simple informed consultation to active protection and development of ethnic minority cultural resources.

With population growth, lifestyle changes and increased expectations of economic benefits, culture may become a sustainable development resource in order to avoid damage to the ecological environment.

Although many areas inhabited by ethnic minorities do not necessarily have the fertile farmland that agricultural residents of the Central Plains expect, they are far away from the city, with beautiful mountains and rivers, beautiful scenery, unique architecture, rich rituals, and unique culture.

They are becoming tourist hotspots for contemporary urban people.

However, at present, in tourist spots across the country, including tourist attractions in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, cultural tourism projects are modelled, tourist souvenirs with the natural and cultural characteristics of the tourist areas are lacking, and cultural practitioners often have a weak degree of participation, drowning cultural performances and The passion for creation.

Relevant tourism projects not only fail to give full play to the role of ethnic minority people in tourism development, but also wantonly misinterpret ethnic minority culture, use it as a manipulation tool for commercial hype, and unscrupulously claim the ownership of cultural heritage as cultural resources."embezzling".

Therefore, how to overcome these short-sighted phenomena in the current protection and development of ethnic minority cultures and stimulate and mobilize the people's subjectivity has become a focus that must be emphasized in the future protection, development planning and implementation of ethnic minority cultures.

Author's unit: School of Ethnology and Sociology, Central University for Nationalities)