[Wang Xianzhao] The cultivation of intangible cultural heritage research talents in my country faces three major problems

Intangible cultural heritage is the crystallization of human labor and wisdom, and is also a cultural treasure inherited from generation to generation in the long historical development of mankind.

As a non-renewable precious resource, intangible cultural heritage is undergoing tremendous changes with the trend of economic globalization and the acceleration of modernization, and its living environment is seriously threatened.

To protect and inherit intangible cultural heritage, in addition to comprehensively protecting and actively cultivating inheritors, the construction and quality of intangible cultural heritage research talent team have increasingly become bottlenecks restricting the protection of intangible cultural heritage in my country.

How to correctly understand and rationally utilize intangible cultural heritage research talent resources has become an unavoidable issue in the current process of promoting intangible cultural heritage protection.

Current situation of cultivating talents for intangible cultural heritage research

Judging from the current training and team situation of professional talents in the field of intangible cultural heritage research in my country, since various types of talents belong to different departments and training institutions and personnel management institutions are cross-mixed, a unified and coordinated management system has not yet been formed.

However, an objective fact that is obvious to all is that the number of professional research talents in this field is increasing day by day and are gradually standardized and mature in specific academic practice.

The increasingly diverse research institutions have established a platform for the growth of intangible cultural heritage research talents.

In recent years, as my country has continuously strengthened its emphasis on intangible cultural heritage research, many universities and scientific research units have established specialized institutions and special staff for intangible cultural heritage research.

Statistics show that after entering the 21st century, the number of intangible cultural heritage research institutions established in my country has shown a clear upward trend, especially the local intangible cultural heritage protection and research institutions established at the grassroots level have shown a good trend.

For example, since 2004, more than 30 units in my country's universities have consciously strengthened the protection of intangible cultural heritage and the construction of research disciplines, of which 9 have put forward clear discipline construction plans and relevant teaching requirements.

These intangible cultural heritage research institutions often undertake national and local research projects on the protection of intangible cultural heritage and cultivate relevant research talents, providing strong academic guarantees and academic support for the confirmation, protection, research and dissemination of intangible cultural heritage.

At present, there are many and relatively concentrated intangible cultural heritage professionals.

The hierarchical nature of cultivating talents for intangible cultural heritage research has taken shape.

Although it has been more than 20 years since the issue of the construction of intangible cultural heritage disciplines was raised in the 1980s and 1990s, it has not become a trend until recent years for universities and research institutions to truly carry out intangible cultural heritage research and talent training.

Undergraduate education has formed a certain scale.

At present, some colleges and universities have opened intangible cultural heritage majors, professional enrollment continues to be standardized, the number of applicants continues to increase, and the quality continues to improve.

For example, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Research Center of the Central Academy of Fine Arts has the Cultural Heritage Department of the College of Humanities to train undergraduate students, and dozens of undergraduate graduates enter society every year.

Master's degree training has entered the norm.

Compared with undergraduate students, postgraduate education pays more attention to professional characteristics and research capabilities, and has become an incubator for cultivating high-level talents in intangible cultural heritage research.

For example, China Academy of Social Sciences and China Academy of Art, as research institutions and universities in China that were the earliest in the construction of intangible cultural heritage disciplines and talent training, have trained hundreds of master's degree students in related majors in the past ten years.

Doctoral enrollment has attracted attention.

The goal of doctoral training insists on cultivating teachers and scientific research talents who focus on theoretical research and applied research talents, and has the characteristics of "academic consideration".

At present, some teaching and scientific research institutions in my country have recruited doctoral students related to intangible cultural heritage in some characteristic fields.

The above situation shows that my country's intangible cultural heritage research talent team has developed rapidly in recent years.

Although compared with the rapid development of my country's intangible cultural heritage protection work, especially compared with the situation of intangible cultural heritage research talents in some developed countries, there is still a significant gap.

However, overall, intangible cultural heritage research talents and research teams are constantly being enriched.

Problems existing in the team of intangible cultural heritage research talents

Research institutions are scattered and the value of talents is not fully reflected.

At present, although my country has established different levels and types of intangible cultural heritage research centers, research bases or research departments, different regions and departments have great differences in the purpose, form and research content of establishing institutions.

Some intangible cultural heritage research institutions are established by cultural management departments, some are recognized by education departments, some are established by educational entities themselves, and some social associations are temporarily established according to local needs.

This has affected the social recognition and professional characteristics of intangible cultural heritage research institutions to a certain extent.

At the same time, irregularities in institutions often lead to the phenomenon of multiple governments, duplication of construction and overstaffing, which brings corresponding problems to the use and management of intangible cultural heritage researchers.

For example, some do not have long-term development plans, but are just for the current application work of the region; some are to meet the current needs of discipline development; there are even phenomena that research talents are not available, suitable, or insufficient.

Career orientation is unclear and researchers lack identity.

Values, motivations and needs are important factors that restrict what career a person chooses.

However, due to the current social and organizational environment lacking rigid standards for intangible cultural heritage research institutions, some researchers have unclear positioning of their careers and often stray from intangible cultural heritage.

Outside of special research.

From the current follow-up survey of the personnel of some intangible cultural heritage research institutions, we can see problems such as dispersion of personnel and lack of unified planning for talent development, and even the phenomenon of "three too many" in the actual work of researchers.

First, there are many scattered soldiers, and some researchers only engage in intangible cultural heritage research based on temporary interests and do not have the knowledge reserve to specialize in this research; second, there are many part-time jobs, and some researchers have changeable identities and hold multiple positions, which affects the in-depth research work; third, there are many short-term research, and some intangible cultural heritage workers only do temporary research for immediate utilitarian purposes, without professional awareness or long-term goals.

Discipline development is not mature enough and overall collaboration capabilities are lacking.

Intangible cultural heritage research is a comprehensive discipline that really emerged after the promulgation of the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003.

Although some universities and scientific research institutions have initially established models for intangible cultural heritage disciplines, how to standardize these models into scientific systems seems to be inadequate.

The short development process of the subject not only shows the shortage of teaching content and teaching materials.

Moreover, the improvement of academic theory has become an urgent problem to be solved in the development of disciplines.

This situation shows that there is still a long way to go to truly establish an intangible cultural heritage education and talent training system.

Although some universities and scientific research institutes have established disciplines or courses on intangible cultural heritage, they are still in the exploratory stage and do not have enough faculty reserves.

In terms of teaching materials, some necessary professional teaching materials and literature accumulation such as "Research Methods of Intangible Cultural Heritage" and "Documentation of Intangible Cultural Heritage" are still quite scarce.

The phenomenon of following suit in the construction of intangible cultural heritage disciplines in some colleges and universities is widespread, resulting in duplicate construction and waste of resources.

At the same time, researchers are working on their own, and the situation of generally optimistic about micro research but relatively insufficient grasp of macro research may weaken the systematic construction of intangible cultural heritage disciplines and become a constraint on the long-term development of disciplines in the future.

Looking at the cultivation and construction of intangible cultural heritage research talents in my country in recent years, while certain achievements have been made, there are also problems of this kind.

To form a team of research talents that is compatible with the current situation and mechanism of intangible cultural heritage protection, it will surely be a long and complex journey.

The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Ethnic Literature, China Academy of Social Sciences)