[Bao Jiang]"We are very special"

[Core Tip] The essence of cultural heritage practice is cultural innovation.

It is the expression made by heritage practice subjects based on cultural consciousness in various forms of expression-"We are very special"; moreover, it is not to speak their own words behind closed doors, but An invitation to talk to the world.

In the so-called "post-industrial era", the field of economic activity around the world has gradually expanded from the production and consumption of daily necessities to the production and consumption of symbolic products.

In this context, cultural heritage practice is an area full of opportunities, challenges and competition.

As a policy issue for international organizations, there are two UNESCO conventions directly related to cultural heritage practice, namely the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage adopted in 1972 and the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage adopted in 2003.

From world cultural and natural heritage to intangible cultural heritage: changes in cultural outlook are the key

According to the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, cultural and natural heritage includes the following three categories.

Cultural relics: Buildings, stele carvings and stele paintings of outstanding universal value from a historical, artistic or scientific point of view, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, caves and combinations; buildings: individual or connected buildings of outstanding universal value in terms of architectural style, distribution characteristics, or combination with environmental scenery from a historical, artistic or scientific point of view; ruins: Human projects, joint projects of nature and man, and archaeological sites that have outstanding universal value from a historical, aesthetic, ethnographic or anthropological perspective.

According to the Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, intangible cultural heritage refers to the various social practices, conceptual expressions, manifestations, knowledge, skills and related tools, objects, handicrafts and cultural venues that are regarded by communities, groups, and sometimes individuals as part of their cultural heritage.

This intangible cultural heritage is passed down from generation to generation and is constantly recreated as communities and groups adapt to their surrounding environment and interact with nature and history, providing these communities and groups with a sense of identity and continuity, thereby enhancing cultural diversity.

Respect for human creativity.

On the surface, the change between the two conventions seems to be just an expansion of the scope of culture, that is, an extension from the field of material culture to the field of intangible culture.

If we delve deeper into the truth, we will find that changes certainly involve the expansion of cultural coverage, but the key is changes in cultural concepts, which are reflected in two aspects: one is the change of the main body of cultural heritage, and the other is the change of the "dynamic" culture of cultural heritage) and the change of the concept of the inheritance of "static" culture.

Intangible cultural heritage is not so much a supplement to the world's cultural and natural heritage, but rather an updated form of cultural heritage concepts.

First of all, the world's cultural and natural heritage emphasizes the universal value of cultural heritage from the perspective of modern disciplines.

That is to say, the value scale for measuring cultural heritage is consistent, that is, based on the value of modern disciplines history, art, science, archaeology, ethnology, anthropology, etc.) as the benchmark; intangible cultural heritage no longer emphasizes the universal value from the perspective of modern disciplines, but takes specific communities, groups, and sometimes even individuals as the value subjects.

Secondly, the protection of world cultural heritage is characterized by "braking for tranquility" and avoiding the loss of cultural heritage through the intervention of scientific and technological means; the protection of intangible cultural heritage emphasizes "moving for tranquility", that is, realizing the inheritance of cultural heritage through continuous reconstruction.

Examining cultural heritage practices in the context of global cultural latitude and longitude

Clarifying the conceptual relationship between world cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage is the first step in sorting out the practice of cultural heritage theoretically.

Back to practice, the source of the concept of cultural heritage is UNESCO, so clarifying this relationship requires focusing on the global cultural context.

First, the cultural dominance of modernity.

This is mainly reflected in the following aspects: secularized life occupies the vast majority of our time; the political system based on the state is still the rigid structure of the current world; and economic globalization is deepening day by day.

Second, the existence of non-modern culture.

In China,"human feelings" supported by meals, mahjong, gifts, etc.

are an indispensable dimension of daily life.

On the surface,"rational economic man", one of the core concepts of modern culture, has achieved exclusive status, but human relations, as an undercurrent, have a power that cannot be ignored in social life.

Third, the essence of cultural diversity is the diversity of forms of integration of modern and non-modern cultures.

In a cultural sense, what we are in is a living world in which you and you are in me, rather than a splicing of isolated cultural islands.

Looking at cultural heritage practice in such a latitude and longitude, we will find that cultural heritage practice is far more complex than its definition, because it is rare for the practice scene to be not a single piece of white paper to be vacuumed (or even a single color of culture to be homogenized).

Generally, it is colorful and diverse).

Intangible cultural heritage emphasizes the subjectivity of specific communities, groups, and sometimes individuals.

In practice, it may encounter some difficulties, such as competing for exclusive rights over specific cultural matters, arbitrarily interpreting or over-interpreting specific cultural matters, and eager for quick success in practice., etc.

There are three reasons why these situations occur: First, regardless of UNESCO, at the national and local levels, and no matter how it is defined, heritage recognition has authoritative significance because of its political relevance; second, this definition means that the definition of heritage is based on collective subjectivity and sometimes individual subjectivity, which lacks the objective dimension; Third, this definition presupposes communities and groups with homogeneous culture, ignoring the possible cultural diversity within communities and groups, as well as the possible differences in meaning of the same cultural matter due to different groups of people involved.

According to the research of Co-reach China-EU cooperation project "Cultural Heritage in China: Paths of Change, Tasks of Change," the identification of cultural heritage subjects is the core content of interdisciplinary cooperative research on cultural heritage.

Ethnographic methods based on long-term field surveys are an effective way to discover and identify cultural heritage subjects.

The identification of cultural heritage subjects includes two levels: "heritage subject" and "heritage practice subject".

Heritage subjects refer to the direct cultural relevance of specific cultural heritage projects, such as ancient cities, ancient neighborhoods, ancient villages and towns, and ancient buildings to indigenous residents, and ancient books, documents, and oral legends to successors.

Heritage practice subjects refer to cultural expressors under the name of specific cultural heritage projects, such as public cultural heritage sites for citizens and their agents, cultural heritage products for legal persons, and cultural heritage works for authors.

The essence of cultural heritage practice is cultural innovation based on cultural consciousness

From the perspective of ontology, there are two basic forms of the relationship between culture and people, namely,"cultural people" and "human culture".

In the concept of human beings in culture, culture comes first and people come later, and culture builds people.

In this sense, on the one hand, people are in a state of being accustomed to culture, which can be called "at ease"; on the other hand, the existence of people reflects the existence of culture, and the differences between people in different time and space are essentially cultural differences.

In the concept of human culture, human beings come first, culture comes second, and human beings create culture.

It emphasizes human initiative and reflection.

In this sense, culture is people's "consciousness" under two references and its symbolic expression, such as creativity, writing, painting, architecture, environmental planning, event planning, etc.

Specific to the practice of cultural heritage, it takes the person of culture as the body and uses human culture as its use.

Cultural heritage practice often appears in the form of individuals, places, traditions, and special, and takes them as the body, but it is rooted in the current global cultural scene and is based on tensions such as individuals and society, local and global, tradition and modernity, special and universal.

Cultural re-creation is used.

The essence of cultural heritage practice is cultural innovation.

It is the expression made by heritage practice subjects based on cultural consciousness in various forms of expression-"We are very special"; moreover, it is not a conversation invitation to the world behind closed doors, but a conversation invitation.

Author's unit: Institute of Sociology, China Academy of Social Sciences)