[Shi Yilong Abibula Kader] Cultural Subject: The Core Factor of the Intrinsic Value of Heritage

The emergence of the World Cultural Heritage Movement is closely related to a series of social changes and transformations that have taken place in the political, economic and cultural fields of the contemporary world.

Almost all traditional value systems and cultural categories are being rebuilt in accordance with the requirements of the basic development direction of modernity.

Social transformation has caused the rupture and disappearance of cultural traditions

All levels of modern society deny traditional value systems and lifestyles to varying degrees, which promotes the establishment of new lifestyles and new cultural types that meet the requirements of modernity.

In this process, due to the inevitable substantial disintegration and rupture between traditional social types and modern social types in terms of core value systems and continuity, this has largely led to the rupture and disappearance of the collective memory formed by people's traditional culture with a long history.

Heritage is valued as a resource with authentic characteristics because it carries a certain group or individual's memory of the past, and memory is the basis for building modern self-identity.

Heritage belongs to the expression, memory, identification and inheritance of the community of special groups of people.

It is the common property of specific and special nations, ethnic groups, groups, clans, families, and communities.

They have long regarded these heritage as traditional relics and inheritances.

For example, judging from the successful application of world heritage projects by China, the Zhoukoudian site in Beijing, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the royal mausoleum of the Ming and Qing Dynasties carry the long historical memory of the nation and are launched to the world as cultural symbols of the Chinese nation.

Heritage has been promoted worldwide from a static cultural precipitation state as a local cultural tradition, making it transcend its original living environment and enter an extremely complex three-dimensional relationship model of politics, economy and culture.

In this environment, due to the multipolarity, complexity, capitalization and politicization of the network of relationships involved in heritage, the heritage protection movement is increasingly troubled by these factors, and the entire protection movement is in a dilemma.

Crisis of subjectivity expression of heritage

UNESCO's interpretation of heritage and definition of heritage concepts have obvious overall impacts of universalization and stereotyping tendencies.

The concept of heritage proposed through this process of patterning and universalization inevitably has a certain strategic color.

As a result, we see that the concepts such as world outlook, outlook on life, and values attached to cultural heritage and cultural landscapes formed during the interaction between people and between people and nature have been ignored or marginalized by "modeled heritage" or "heritage" in the heritage protection movement.

Therefore,"patterning of heritage" or "patterned heritage" not only conflicts with the holistic view of culture, but also violates cultural differences and diversity.

It undermines the original nature of the heritage.

Heritage is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon.

From the macro perspective of cultural genetics, any heritage as a cultural phenomenon was created by a certain person or group in a specific historical stage and entered a state of actual existence.

Therefore, the creator of the heritage, the specific historical stage in which the heritage was produced and the geographical space in the geographical sense are the core factors of the intrinsic value of the heritage.

Therefore, it is the actual subject of the heritage that interprets it.

The subjectivity of heritage clarifies the ownership of heritage, and the inheritance of heritage ensures the continuity of heritage.

Today, as globalization is sweeping and modernization is changing, the "pure land" of heritage is destroyed, the context of conscious development of heritage has been "cut off", and "heritage" is "abused" in today's society, like products produced on assembly lines., either put on shelves and become cultural products that can be purchased by anyone, or become a symbol for buyers or players to show their identity and role; It has become a name for certain local material and intangible culture, which is essentially a manufacture of power or external forces.

Whether it can become a heritage is no longer up to the subject who owns the heritage, but the quantitative criteria listed by external forces for the review of the heritage; the value of the heritage is no longer passed down from generation to generation, but as a common link of memory and identification for the group to which the heritage belongs.

Instead, it has become a cultural capital that can gain fame and fortune and an item that can continuously create considerable profits; Heritage is no longer unique to the subject and can serve as a symbol of the subject, but has become an assembly line product that can be repeatedly produced and copied.

As a result, the reference to heritage in today's heritage movement is no longer the essence and content of the original heritage, but has actually become a symbol embezzled by today's era and society.

The ownership and subjectivity of heritage are undergoing a process of diversification in structure.

In this process, heritage has long been integrated into the competition between different social forces and seize their subjectivity.

The market-oriented impact of heritage

Mass tourism, as an inevitable result of modernity and post-industrial society, and the ensuing large-scale population movements, have accelerated the frequency of contact between various cultures in both time and space, and brought great benefits to tourism in cultural heritage sites.

Stimulation.

In this way, heritage penetrates into all parts of the local economic development mechanism with its own special appeal.

This potential resource characteristic of heritage induces local governments at all levels to convert cultural heritage into special cultural products or even commercial products to promote local economic development.

As a result, national cultural heritage has become a new generation of special commodities that people can freely buy and sell-cultural heritage commodities.

Its value and significance are completely treated in accordance with the value laws and principles of the commodity market, and the unique historical intrinsic value of the heritage itself is completely ignored.

As a special cultural resource, heritage has quickly become a "cash cow" used by people to make large amounts of profits in the era of consumption.

Driven by interests, in some places, individuals or departments engaged in collecting and protecting heritage have formed a series of procedures in the process of collecting and protecting heritage, which have obvious profit-maximizing characteristics, and even artificially create "heritage".

This kind of cultural heritage industry, which pursues the purpose of maximizing capital profits, not only ignores the protection of the "original ecology" of the heritage, but also destroys the ecological and cultural background of the heritage generation, thus causing huge alienation of the heritage in terms of genetics and other aspects., and distorting the cultural value of the heritage.

If this situation spreads and continues, it will bring great misunderstandings and threats to the originality and authenticity of culture, and create crises.

What is even more eye-catching is that the rise of the cultural heritage industry (commercialization of heritage) and its spread to varying degrees have largely contributed to the mutual transfer of the historical belonging of culture between subjects and objects in a completely economic way, thus providing a large space for existence and development for the "otherization" of culture.

The object of heritage becomes the subject of a certain cultural heritage through economic means, and cultural heritage is interpreted at will, resulting in its alienation.

In short, the various crises faced by the operating mechanism of the World Cultural Heritage Movement always seriously warn us that in the process of collection and protection, we should move towards a comprehensive perspective, that is, we must combine a multidisciplinary research perspective with cultural criticism and reflection.

At the same time, from the perspective of a cultural holistic view, all cultural heritage of a certain nation should be incorporated into the development model of the cultural system.

Only in this way can cultural heritage protection and research achieve sustainable development.

(Author's unit: Center for Anthropology Research, Xiamen University; School of Marxism, Xinjiang Normal University)