[Huang Longguang] The Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Practice Path of Public Folklore in China
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Important: With the rapid development of globalization and the further advancement of urbanization, the situation where intangible cultural heritage was once relatively fixed in a certain place or nation is gone forever.
After "heritage", intangible cultural heritage increasingly originates from and transcends the local area, and has become a kind of mobile public cultural resource.
It not only serves as a source of cultural regionalism, but also promotes the world's diversity as a cultural heritage of a nation country.
Construction of symbiotic cultural ecology.
Public folklore has long been committed to the public practice of traditional folk culture in the community, adheres to the folk stance, and has a set of practical techniques and rich experience in a series of links such as the recording, education, evaluation, performance and development of cultural heritage, and uses it to make public The reflexive criticism tradition strives to avoid problems such as cultural objectification in public cultural practice.
For a long time, China's folklore has a clear tendency to apply folklore, which emphasizes "practical application." In the practice of contemporary intangible cultural heritage protection, it faces the danger of being assimilated by administration, and fails to fully adhere to the folk stance.
There is a lack of sufficient reflexivity within the discipline.
As a "stone from other mountains," public folklore can provide experience for the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China and provide a critical perspective for the theoretical construction of folklore.
Keywords: Intangible cultural heritage protection; public folklore; reflexivity; objectification; axiology
Author: Huang Longguang, PhD, Editor and Editor of the Editorial Department of the Journal of Yunnan Normal University
Public folklore translated "public folklore" in China in the early days.
In recent years, considering the unique super-community and cross-cultural public practice of public folklore, and its consistency with similar disciplines such as public anthropology, the translation of "public folklore" may be more appropriate.
Public folklore is an important branch of American applied folklore originated in the 1960s and 1970s.
After nearly half a century of development, the "practical school" public folklore, which once stood side by side with the "academic school" folklore, has been used in folk tradition records and archives., cultural display (performance), heritage education, tourism development and other related public practices, it has enhanced its academic content by continuously strengthening its own theoretical reflection.
At the same time, the academic school gradually accepted public folklore amid constant criticism.
Since then, theory and practice have been closely aligned, jointly promoting the overall development of the discipline of folklore.
Over the past 10 years, the domestic research results on public folklore have mainly focused on the translation and introduction of the history, theories and methods of public folklore, as well as the protection of intangible cultural heritage, for the needs of theoretical construction of folklore and the protection of traditional culture.
1.
Research summary and question raising
Looking at the current research results on public folklore, An Deming mainly introduced the origin and practical cases of public folklore in the United States, especially mentioning that theoretical criticism of traditional folk public practice is also part of public folklore.
Yang Lihui conducted relevant theoretical reflections on folklore scholars '"systematic intervention" in community culture and the controversy it caused, and reconsidered the role of folklore scholars inside and outside the college and other disciplinary contributions.
At the same time, it is pointed out that when public folklore scholars conduct cultural practice, they often lead to inequality of power in cooperating with and speaking on behalf of the community.
In 2007, Mr.
Ai Wei, then president of the American Folklore Society, came to China to give lectures and introduced the origin of public folklore and its differences and cooperation with academic schools.
Rao Qin and others translated the speech delivered by Mr.
Diem Loyd, then executive chairman of the American Folklore Society, covering the specific organization and operation of the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in the United States, pointing out that it is a landmark folk tradition public performance organized by public folklore.
Dr.
Li Hailun also introduced the history, purpose, principles and other substantive contents of the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, with special reference to the long-term impact of the Folk Life Festival on participants.
The author translated the academic speech delivered by Mr.
Robert Barron, editor-in-chief of the book "Public Folklore" and a well-known American public folklore scholar, at the University of China for Nationalities in 2008.
It mainly involved a brief history of public folklore and discussed the social value of public folklore to the discipline of folklore.
The significance, and the objectification challenges faced by public folklore.
Professor Zhou Xing is cautious when talking about the protection of intangible cultural heritage and public folklore in China.
He believes: "The growth of 'public folklore' in China, or the social practice of China folklore aimed at improving national well-being and inheriting cultural diversity, will help promote the generation and gradual expansion of the above-mentioned social living space, but it may also be assimilated and alienated by power and lose academic autonomy and dignity, or even become a favor of poor cultural administration." In 2014, the author was sent by the Ministry of Culture to the United States to participate in the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival and serve as a bilingual commentator.
After returning to China, he published a paper pointing out that American public folklore can maintain relative academic independence and work closely with the community in relevant public cultural practices.
Collaboration, respecting cultural inheritors and reflecting on the cultural objectification issues brought by itself have inspired the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China.
Based on a brief introduction to the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, which is a typical case of public folklore, Bi Chuanlong compared it with the organization of domestic folk culture festivals, mainly emphasizing the importance of public participation in cultural inheritance.
Barbara Bushrat-Giblett attempts to historically bridge the gap between academics and applied folklore practiced in the public sector, emphasizing the practical potential of applied folklore.
Through a survey on the reclusive and filial piety of the elderly in Japan, He Bin pointed out that folklore can move towards public folklore by providing support for social decision-making and residential design.
Providing intellectual support to society is also the inherent social value of the discipline of folklore.
By criticizing the essentialist tendency of Japanese folklore research, Yuka Suga advocated the Japanization of public folklore, and emphasized its constructivist characteristics of "becoming a member of the local area" from a folk perspective.
Gao Jing used the case of the public folklore of the Nuo Dance in Hehui in South Korea to emphasize the intervention of folklore scholars and the main role of the people in the activation of intangible cultural heritage.
Cheng Haoxin introduced the personal academic history of Benjamin Botkin, an advocate of American applied folklore, and his contribution to public folklore.
Gao Shu summarized the "three-pronged" mechanism of the Chinese Society for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Smithsonian Institution, and discussed the operating model of the Smithsonian Institution's "semi-official" and "private public assistance", believing that it can provide new ideas for China's administrative-led intangible cultural heritage protection.
To sum up, the current history and theoretical essence of public folklore, as well as the translation, interpretation and application of its typical model of the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival cultural practice, still need to be studied in depth.
Out of a cautious wait-and-see attitude and different academic interests, it has not really begun to compare public folklore with China folklore and its cultural practice, which has long had a clear tendency to apply folklore.
This is the inevitable process to realize the China of public folklore.
In addition, related to the first question, public folklore has so far failed to fully unleash its theoretical and practical potential.
This potential is manifested in providing a new practical model for the protection of intangible cultural heritage, and also providing reflexive for the entire discipline of folklore.
A theoretical perspective of sexual criticism.
In view of this, the author intends to re-examine the publicity and practicality of intangible cultural heritage, summarize public folklore and its reflection on cultural objectification and other related theoretical contributions, and think about the current public practice path for the protection of intangible cultural heritage, as well as the theoretical criticism of the discipline of folklore, etc., will teach everyone.
2.
Publicity: Characteristics of intangible cultural heritage
The basic characteristics of intangible cultural heritage are one of the important ontological attributes for a comprehensive understanding of intangible cultural heritage.
Although the relevant United Nations intangible cultural heritage treaties do not clarify the specific characteristics of intangible cultural heritage, they imply a kind of interculturality among nations and communities.
In 1998, when UNESCO's "Regulations on the Declaration of Representative Works of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" referred to the standards of representative works, it was mentioned that "it serves as a means to recognize the identity of ethnic groups and related cultural communities, as a source of inspiration and intercultural exchanges, and has an important role in bringing ethnic groups and communities closer together." Intangible cultural heritage plays a role in promoting exchanges among ethnic groups and communities.
The 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity stated that "in today's increasingly diverse society, harmonious relations and coexistence among individuals and groups belonging to diverse, different and developing cultural identities must be ensured." Policies that advocate the integration and participation of all citizens are a reliable guarantee for enhancing social cohesion, the vitality of civil society and maintaining peace." World cultural diversity is not only the status quo of cultural development among countries, but also the trend of building harmonious but different world cultures.
Xiang Yunju summarized that the basic characteristics of human oral and intangible heritage are: comprehensive, collective, inheritance and dissemination, national and regional, modeling and typing, variability, and symbolism.
The book "Introduction to Intangible Cultural Heritage", as a knowledge reader of intangible cultural heritage, summarizes the characteristics of intangible cultural heritage as uniqueness, vitality, inheritance, rheology, comprehensiveness, nationality, regionalism, group and history.
Nine major characteristics of accumulation have no public nature, but mention that "the dissemination of intangible cultural heritage presents a living and evolving nature, which makes it possible to share intangible cultural heritage." Qiao Xiaoguang mentioned the publicity of intangible cultural heritage earlier: "The publicity of intangible cultural heritage has been ignored, and rural farmers as intangible cultural heritage have not yet received due humanistic care and relevant public issues.
The attention to the publicity of intangible cultural heritage is interrogating the human nature of the humanistic spirit of this era, and is also a touchstone for verifying whether the main cultural awareness and cultural creative decision-making in the national cultural concept are confident and mature." The strong tone between the lines is a social criticism of the lack of publicity in the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
For the first time, Liu Xiaochun clarified the two characteristics of intangible cultural heritage before and after heritage: local nature and public nature, and raised the important issue of how to balance and connect local nature and public nature.
Regarding the sharing of intangible cultural heritage, Liu Kuili discussed: "The sharing I mean here does not mean that different people can jointly perceive, feel, appreciate, taste, etc.
the same cultural object; it means that different people, different communities, and ethnic groups can simultaneously hold, enjoy, and inherit the same cultural creations." Liu Xicheng believes that the common and regular characteristics of intangible cultural heritage should be passed down orally and from generation to generation.
Different people (groups) share, share, and co-transmit the same cultural creation, which can only be achieved on the basis of recognizing the publicity of culture.
In summary, limited by the simplicity requirements of the United Nations and other agencies in formulating convention provisions, and the origin relationship between intangible cultural heritage and folklore, in the epistemology of the characteristics of intangible cultural heritage, the collectivity, inheritance, and fluidity of folk customs have been simply transferred to intangible cultural heritage.
On the one hand, publicity is equated with collectivity, and on the other hand, it focuses on the publicity of multi-subject interaction in the practice of intangible cultural heritage.
Among them, Liu Xiaochun's view that heritage brings about the separation of local and public aspects of intangible cultural heritage is to the point.
This is based on the grand context of intangible cultural heritage as the cultural heritage of a nation-state and the national spiritual and cultural imagination.
Publicity is one of the basic characteristics of intangible cultural heritage, and it becomes increasingly important with the increasing advancement of intangible cultural heritage protection.
For a long time, we have been accustomed to viewing intangible cultural heritage in a static and isolated manner, placing it in a relatively closed and slow idealized social environment, adhering to its national and local nature, and equating its sharing and co-ownership with national or local collective internal life, which mainly stems from the internal review of a cultural foundation theory.
At present, with the rapid advancement of globalization and the increasing innovation of modern transportation and communication technology, the world has become a mobile world.
In the past, the intangible cultural heritage unique to ethnic groups and localities has, with economic and social development and cultural exchanges, either passive or active, often overflows its fixed geographical scope and ethnic boundaries, and has become a cross-regional, cross-ethnic and even transnational public cultural heritage, thus extending in a wider space and in a longer period of time.
Sharing in a greater sense is based on an external understanding of the characteristics of intangible cultural heritage from a cultural situational perspective.
National, local, and global.
Localism and globalization are based on a kind of relativism and formed through continuous game of world cultural patterns.
Locality, nationality and worldliness go hand in hand, flow and complement each other.
Historically, the phenomenon of cultural flow and integration brought about by world trade has been prominent.
According to Fang Lili's research, before Yuan Dynasty, China only had blue and white porcelain.
Blue and white porcelain, as export porcelain specially for overseas Islamic market, was customized by Persian and Syria merchants living in China from 13th to 15th century to bring cobalt blue material from Islamic countries to Jingdezhen potters.
Islamic patterns and decorative styles such as plants, patterns, and characters on blue and white porcelain are popular in Europe and even around the world.
Specifically, the publicity of intangible cultural heritage has become more and more obvious with the inheritance of traditional culture.
Top-down administrative empowerment allows intangible cultural heritage to be reviewed and entered into lists at all levels, and the protection of intangible cultural heritage has become a national discourse and social hotspot.
The promotion and guidance of the state has also stimulated the enthusiasm of participation in folklore and other related disciplines engaged in the production of daily life knowledge, and stimulated the commercial sense of various capitals.
Therefore, under the manipulation of many entities such as the government, society, academic circles and business circles, with the performances of intangible cultural heritage at all levels and the productive protection of intangible cultural heritage such as traditional arts, intangible cultural heritage has gradually entered the public's vision and has not only become a nourishment for the national spirit, but also become a fashion element for the aesthetics of modern life.
Therefore, the internal inheritance of intangible cultural heritage is still going on.
At the same time, The horizontal dissemination of intangible cultural heritage has obviously accelerated.
Inheritors of intangible cultural heritage have stepped out of the "reserved land" of intangible cultural heritage and asked for various help and opportunities from the government, society and even the market to participate in a series of intangible cultural heritage public practices such as exhibitions, performances and exchanges, and transactions.
This cultural practice of face-to-face communication with the external society helps them gain expression space and cultural dignity, thereby stimulating their enthusiasm and initiative in inheriting intangible cultural heritage.
Finally, it will drive the group inheritance within the origin of intangible cultural heritage.
If we connect the publicity of intangible cultural heritage with the folk cultural practice of public folklore, there can be more intersection between the two.
If folklore's participation in the recording, evaluation and research of intangible cultural heritage is regarded as public practice, then we have already involved the public folklore practice of intangible cultural heritage protection, but it has been in the special context of administrative-led for a long time.
Next, such work is more presented as an applied folklore practice.
3.
The unique value theory of public folklore
Public folklore refers to a representation and application of folk cultural traditions in new frameworks and new contexts inside and outside their native communities.
This representation and application is usually completed through the collaboration of cultural inheritors and folklore scholars or other cultural experts.
In the United States,"applied" folk customs or "applied" folk customs originated from the mid-19th century when the U.S.
Bureau of Ethnic Affairs (BAE) began to collect, record and preserve Indian traditional culture that was facing extinction, leaving a native history for an America without Indian culture in the future.
and folk data.In 1888, when the American Folklore Society (AFS) was founded, Roger Abrahams believed that folklore had a public purpose, namely, to give dignity to traditional communities and their way of life through the attention of folklore scholars, and to "forge" Americans.
In 1950, Ralph Beals first used the term "applied folklore".
Academic folklore scholars, led by Richard Dorson, began to constantly criticize applied folklore, and even believed that applied folklore scholars were the promoters of pseudo-folklore.
In 1967, Ralph Rinzler pioneered the federal Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
The Smithsonian Institution also established the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
Academic folklorists and applied folklorists gradually participated in this public folk life festival that collaborates with communities and inheritors to display cultural traditions.
In 1976, the U.S.
Congress established the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress to "preserve and display American folk life." Since the 1980s, most folklore scholars engaged in the public practice of folk culture prefer to be called "public folklore scholars" rather than "applied folklore scholars".
They have begun to reflect on applied folklore such as ideological interference and power inequality.
Related issues, thus formally establishing the concept and method of the branch of public folklore.
It can be seen from the above that American public folklore originates from the early application of folk customs such as the investigation and recording of native American folk traditions.
It aims to build American national character and speak for traditional communities, thereby helping to achieve national identity.
Public folklore, with a strong practical nature, continued to mature in the continuous debate with the academic school, which adhered to the so-called purely academic school, until the two factions gradually reached a reconciliation and merged, which itself constructively developed American folklore as a whole.
With the continuous advancement of the protection of intangible cultural heritage advocated by UNESCO, Robert Baron and other famous American public folklore scholars have begun to combine their own theory and practical experience and uphold the unique value of public folklore to participate in intangible cultural heritage research.
In helping communities self-express and demonstrate folk traditions, public folklore is a "bottom-up" collaborative local cooperation, rather than the dominant social practice of applied folklore that has always been "top-down".
In a series of public cultural practices, the real community stance of public folklore is actually not to speak for the community, but to help the community make its own voice heard.
"While recognizing that heritage intervention inevitably involves non-equivalence of power, public folklore strives to mitigate and reduce these imbalances, such as its efforts to enable communities to present their culture in their own way." In the display of folk traditions at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, public folklore follows two basic principles: adhere to folk aesthetics and respect inheritors of folk culture.
In 2014, the author once served as a bilingual commentator for an inheritor of ancient Miao songs at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, which was a narrative presentation called "TeaHouse".
At that time, the elderly female inheritor of the Miao nationality told the ancient Miao song "Mother Butterfly" in a completely relaxed state.
When the old man was happy, his speech suddenly became faster, and sometimes he kept repeating what he had said before.
However, I, the bilingual presenter, was a little busy because we were asked not to interrupt the inheritor's narration process as much as possible.
Facts have proved that judging from the enthusiastic response of the audience on site, this narrative context and relaxed atmosphere that make the inheritor feel natural and comfortable make the entire story more realistic and more recognized and accepted by the public.
Richard Kurin, who was former director of the Smithsonian Museum's Center for Folklore and Cultural Heritage, believes that the greatest advantage of the Folk Life Festival is that it "displays, introduces and explains one's own culture in the inheritors 'own voice." In fact, there is no Ministry of Culture in the United States.
In addition to the funding required for the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival comes from the U.S.
federal government and national tourism departments such as the National Endowment for the Arts, many also come from different cultural institutions, companies and private donations.
Therefore, 1 - 3 years before the Folk Life Festival comes, a professional team of society officials, folklore scholars, etc.
will be organized to go to the fields to carefully select traditional folk projects to be displayed.
During the selection process, they will always follow the folk stance and try to avoid possible administrative interference caused by the ideological imposition behind project aid funds.
In fact, in all relevant practical links such as planning, organization, performance, and coordination of the entire Folk Life Festival, folklore scholars are given enough space to fully exert their professional knowledge and abilities.
Within the discipline of public folklore, due to the inevitable ideological imposition of folklore on the community in the early period, coupled with the continuous criticism and opposition from academic folklore scholars in the later period, public folklore has developed a professional reflexive spirit and questioning traditions.
"Professional reflexivity and conversational approaches, both of which are believed to increase community ownership of heritage initiatives...
With respect for our field practices, professional reflexivity-the inherent power imbalance and ongoing self-questioning and reconciliation of 'authority' issues has become a strong tradition in the discipline and within it." With the professional reflexivity within the discipline and the dialogic collaboration in community cultural practice, public folklore constantly reflects on the authority attached to the work of the public sector, as well as the timely adjustment of the power imbalance in dialogic collaboration with the community, so that when the community involves its own folk traditional resources and cultural practice, public folklore can not only "return to the people", but also ensure the ownership of the community's own cultural traditions.
Finally, we will try our best to help the community achieve cultural self-determination in the inheritance, display, protection and development of a series of folk traditions.
In addition, the suspicion of "cultural zoo" caused by organizing cultural inheritors to display in the mainstream world outside the community has caused public folklore to be controversial and criticized.
This is also one of the main contents of self-reflection of public folklore, namely cultural objectification.
In this regard, Robert Barron faced up to and admitted that the cultural practice of public folklore brings about the problem of cultural objectification.
"Since the 1980s, when developing means for communities to demonstrate their own traditions, public folklore has recognized the objectified dimension of its work and is aware of the results of objectification," he noted.
Objectification mainly appears in three key issues involved in the concept of public folklore: cultural intervention, cultural brokering and organizational framework.
In intervening in local culture, public folklore scholars always remind themselves to use the principle of value neutrality to suspend the tune.
In cultural brokerage, they must coordinate all parties from a folk standpoint to help the community achieve cultural self-determination.
In the organizational framework of traditional cultural display, we fully respect the opinions of cultural inheritors to avoid the discourse hegemony brought by folklore scholars 'professional knowledge and regard them as living and equal cultural elites with cultural skills.
At the same time, if objectification is inevitable, critics of public folklore are called on to pay attention to the fact that public folklore plans and organizes public cultural practices such as the display of traditional culture, so that cultural inheritors gain dignity and status, and the significance of revaluing their traditional culture from the outside in.
Barbara Bushrat-Giblett, analyzing the "mistakenly divided" academic and applied schools of American folklore, said,"In short, the potential of applied folklore is to provide critical perspectives for the entire discipline." Applied folklore here actually refers to the practice of folklore in the public sector.
The practical contribution of public folklore at the application level is the emphasis and adherence to the folk position, that is,"helping the community speak on behalf of the community itself" rather than "speaking on behalf of the community." Its theoretical contribution is more to promoting reflexive theoretical criticism of the entire discipline of folklore, which is also the potential of public folklore.
4.
Public folklore path for intangible cultural heritage protection
The local, national and public nature of intangible cultural heritage makes it not only the historical lifeblood and cultural capital of the local and ethnic groups, but also a kind of public knowledge and cultural welfare shared by the whole society.
Drawing on the concepts and experience of public folklore and traditional cultural practice, combined with the current actual situation of intangible cultural heritage protection, the public folklore path for intangible cultural heritage protection, in addition to exhibitions and performances, can also be considered from aspects such as heritage records, heritage assessment, heritage education and Heritage development.
1.
Heritage records
The basic work of public folklore is to record folk traditions, and the basic work of intangible cultural heritage protection is heritage records.
A comprehensive record of intangible cultural heritage includes the cultural ecology with the heritage itself as the core and the entire intangible cultural heritage knowledge system in which details such as the display and performance of the heritage in public practice are interactively shared.
Since 2006, the State Council has identified a total of 1372 national intangible cultural heritage representative projects in four batches, with a total of 3154 sub-projects based on application regions or units.
Coupled with the list of intangible cultural heritage projects at the provincial, municipal and county levels, China's intangible cultural heritage is huge.
In addition, there are many unidentified traditional cultures still flowing alive in daily life.
In 2010, the "China Intangible Cultural Heritage Digital Protection Project" was launched, mainly based on the collection, collation, recording and reporting of text materials such as texts and texts for intangible cultural heritage declarations in various places.
In 2011, the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Law of the People's Republic of China" stipulated that the state should take measures such as identification, recording, and filing to protect intangible cultural heritage.
In 2013, the former Ministry of Culture issued the "Implementation Plan for the Rescue Record Project of Representative Inheritors of National Intangible Cultural Heritage during the 12th Five-Year Plan" period, and subsequently formulated the "Work Specifications for Rescue Records of Representative Inheritors of National Intangible Cultural Heritage", which specifically provides the techniques and standards, covering the dictation of inheritors, project practice and inheritance teaching, and plans to complete the rescue records of 300 elderly and frail representative inheritors within 8 - 10 years.
The specific work of digital recording of intangible cultural heritage is actually organized and implemented by full-time staff of cultural centers in all provinces, districts, cities and counties.
Regarding public practices such as intangible cultural heritage displays and performances, they are basically organized and implemented by relevant functional departments at all levels, and news reports replace professional records.
In contrast, the Center for American Folk Life, established in 1976, has a collection of 6 million folk archives, including 400,000 audio archives from 1890 to the present.
"Our mission is to preserve and present American folk life...
One of our most important functions is to preserve the world's largest archive of folk life materials, including songs, stories and creative expressions of people from the United States and around the world." To date, almost every state in the United States has a program to record and display the state's folk cultural heritage, most of which employ highly trained experts.
The center first published the professional folk survey and recording manual "Folk life and Field work: An Introduction to Cultural Documentation" in 1979, which has now been published in its fourth edition.
This manual has become a step-by-step manual for conducting field surveys on relevant folk customs.
The American Folk Life Center has become the world's number one folk life archives center.
The public performance of folk traditions at the Folk Life Festival is recorded on-site by a professional team and is equipped with full-technical coverage such as full-process photography, shorthand and sign language interpretation, interviews with inheritors and experts.
It is sorted out and filed and is uniformly entered into the Smithsonian Institution Folk Life and Cultural Heritage Center.
Preservation.
The record of intangible cultural heritage is a true and complete record that requires technical and professional nature.
It involves more professional knowledge and skills and less ideological interference.
At present, on the one hand, our comprehensive recording and preservation of intangible cultural heritage urgently needs to be strengthened; on the other hand, professional and applicable field survey recording operating procedures within the discipline of folklore need to be deepened.
(2) Heritage assessment
Public folklore intervenes in the community to carry out relevant cultural practices such as professional recording and public display of folk traditions, and must be based on a certain evaluation of the value and current situation of folk traditions.
Adhering to the folk stance and respecting cultural inheritors are important principles.
"The evaluation system of modern folk customs should be a working framework that is generally compatible with multiple protection goals, a modern knowledge framework of intangible cultural heritage, and an application framework that provides protection operations." The current protection of intangible cultural heritage in China implements a project review system.
The identification of intangible cultural heritage and its inheritors on the national, provincial, municipal and county four-level lists requires heritage evaluation based on the declarations of various localities and units.
The main body involved in the evaluation of intangible cultural heritage should be composed of inheritors and intangible cultural heritage experts.
However, in actual implementation, it is mainly reviewed by the administration and academic circles.
The absence of the inheritors leads to their de facto objectification, and the academic circles often face the danger of being assimilated by the administration.
Some scholars bluntly said,"Experts from mainstream ideologies and academia have the right to speak, while traditional culture and its carriers have become objects to be evaluated, recognized and named by competent departments and academia.
In actual work, according to the prescribed application procedures, the carriers of culture have no say from the most basic application." Even in ordinary folk art and intangible cultural heritage performances at all levels, folk artists, intangible cultural heritage inheritors, etc.
are basically arranged "how to exhibit" and "how to perform" from selection to appearance.
Folk scholars, as experts in folk customs public practice, are far less popular than news media because journalists are good at creating momentum and scholars are brave in criticizing.
The United States and China have different histories and national conditions, and the contexts in which public folklore carries out relevant cultural practices are different.
Cultural practices related to public folklore in the United States are also funded by federal and local governments such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, and public institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution.
However, the main job of these institutions is to review application projects and provide financial support.
They also have relevant requirements and supervise the specific use of funds.
However, public folklore scholars, as hired cultural experts, can have considerable independence to carry out cultural public practices.
Therefore, Public folklore is mainly faced with the problem of how to better collaborate closely with the community and avoid cultural objectification as much as possible, which is achieved through the reflexivity and self-questioning of public folklore.
In our work such as the participation of folklore in intangible cultural heritage assessment, we sometimes have to face the problem of game with administration due to ideological and other reasons.
At the same time, we lack necessary reflection on the discourse hegemony that intangible cultural heritage and its inheritors may exert.
The research orientation from ancient "collecting customs", modern "going to the people" to contemporary "looking downward" shows that we lack a sufficient self-reflexive spirit within the discipline.
(3) Heritage education
Intangible cultural heritage contains the blood of national spirit, and educating citizens on intangible cultural heritage is an important way to build national character.
The United Nations Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage mentions that in order to ensure that intangible cultural heritage is recognized, respected and promoted in society, it mainly includes: publicity and dissemination of information to the public, especially young people; specific education and training for relevant communities and groups; Informal knowledge dissemination.Public folklore in the United States participates in informal education of heritage.
For example, Michigan participated in the 1987 Folk Life Festival.
It first organized its own Folk Life Festival at Michigan State University, and secondly created a long-term planning project for folk and cultural heritage.
It organized folklore scholars to compile folk teaching books specifically for primary and secondary schools.
China adopts a government-led model for the protection of intangible cultural heritage.
By compiling textbooks and establishing subject directions, we are trying to establish an intangible cultural heritage science.
Intangible cultural heritage has entered formal university education, while informal education has become an auxiliary method.
At present,"intangible cultural heritage entering campuses" is very lively as a special education, but there is a general lack of participation by professional folk scholars, and it faces problems such as conflict with mainstream education, insufficient funding, lack of teacher teaching materials, and adaptation of intangible cultural heritage.
In addition to the traditional display and education of museum intangible cultural heritage objects, exhibits, and pictures and texts, the national cultural museum may be an effective innovative education model.
"The intangible cultural heritage transfer of the National Cultural Museum is a constructive rather than a pure and blunt theoretical propaganda.
It emphasizes the process of cultural transfer itself and is a participatory and experiential transfer model." In 2011, the author participated in the "Yuxi City First Training Course for Inheritors of Ethnic Minority Folk Literature" activity of the Mekong Subregion Ethnic and Folk Culture Training Center of Yuxi Normal University in Yunnan Province.
At that time, a total of 105 students from three classes of Yi, Hani and Dai were recruited in Yuxi City.
Most of the students were folk artists, and a small number were college students.
The teaching adopts a method in which professional university teachers teach a small number of general courses on ethnic history and culture, and folk artists teach folk literature and art to each other on the spot.
Although some practical problems such as failure to record the entire teaching process, they are generally well received by folk artists and college students, which greatly stimulates the enthusiasm and cultural confidence of folk artists.
After the students graduated and returned to their hometowns, Yi students from Xinping County, for example, spontaneously organized relevant folk literature and art teaching activities locally.
Therefore, emerging festival organizations such as the public practice of ethnic cultural transmission in the museum, the revival of traditional festivals, and the folk life festival can be used as effective models for public practice of intangible cultural heritage, but the public participation of society and the voice of folklore scholars must be ensured throughout the process.
right to speak.
(4) Heritage development
Heritage development is a controversial topic, but it is a fact that heritage contains commercial value.
American public folklore regards traditional folk customs such as folk songs, stories, and handicrafts as cultural landscapes, and combines them with unique natural and historical resources for heritage tourism development.
Public folklore scholars mainly conduct field surveys in the community, work with local cultural inheritors, record storytelling and folk singing, and guide and compile relevant travel guides, so that "heritage inheritors stand from the secret 'backstage' to the 'front stage of the performance', from' aphasic spokespersons 'to the main narrator who speaks directly to the audience." The American Heritage Corridor Tour is a tourism project affiliated with the Northwest Heritage Resources Agency.
Most of its tourist routes are funded and developed by the Washington State Arts Council Folk Art Program.
Among them, the popular "Tour Around the Falls" is mainly developed by the National Foundation for the Arts, the Washington State Arts Council, the Washington State Department of Commerce, the Washington Tourism Commission, and the Northwest Heritage Resources Agency.
Among them, the "Southern Route Tour Around the Waterfall" allows tourists to travel most of the journey south on the Waterfall Loop Landscape Expressway and drive 236.5 kilometers along U.S.
Route 2.
Several landmarks are introduced along the route.
The accompanying CD contains local heritage inheritors.
Stories and family history narratives, handicrafts displays, music performances, etc.
Due to the professional participation of public folklore scholars, this project has attracted many tourists and settlers over the years.
Travel guides place special emphasis on the value of community residents, arguing that "they reflect the diversity of the minority and professional communities that live in the area, and they shape the cultural landscape there...
that's their heritage, their cultural community and a place of profound significance." At present, in the development of domestic intangible cultural heritage, the productive protection of artistic intangible cultural heritage is a way to develop while disputes.
Academic circles have conducted theoretical discussions, such as proposing that we should pay attention to inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, encourage them to teach apprentices, improve skills, produce more high-quality works, and collect inheritance records and data.
In particular, the collection of records and data archives in the inheritance and practice link has the meaning of public folklore.
However, on the whole, at present, most of the active participation of folklore in the development of intangible cultural heritage still remains at the theoretical level.
conclusion
At present, with the great improvement of domestic transportation and communications and the advancement of the overall development of urban and rural integration, the pattern of intangible cultural heritage relatively attached to a specific place and nation for a long time is changing, with rapid compression of time and space and social mobility.
Intangible cultural heritage flows and fills it in a broader public time and space.
Heritage makes intangible cultural heritage highlight a kind of heritage regionalism on the one hand, and on the other hand, make it a symbol of nation-national spirit on a global scale.
As a common cultural heritage of mankind, it constitutes a diverse and symbiotic cultural ecology of the world.
The mobility and publicity of intangible cultural heritage give folklore a lot of space to participate in the public practice of intangible cultural heritage.
China folklore has always participated in national cultural construction and social practice.
Some folklore scholars have participated in practical work such as the evaluation and acceptance of intangible cultural heritage at all levels as members of expert committees.
However, it is worth noting that in public practice related to intangible cultural heritage, folklore scholars may face the danger of being assimilated by administration.
They have not fully adhered to their folk stance, and there is a lack of sufficient reflexivity within the discipline of folklore.
UNESCO's Ethical Principles for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage states that "all interactions with communities, groups and relevant individuals who create, protect, maintain and disseminate intangible cultural heritage shall be characterized by transparent cooperation, dialogue, negotiation and consultation, and shall be premised on voluntary, prior, continuous and informed consent." The public flow and practice of intangible cultural heritage must be based on the confirmation of the ownership of intangible cultural heritage by the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage and their communities.
All public cultural practices related to intangible cultural heritage, whether involving administrative assignment or commercial development, must ensure that the ultimate beneficiaries are the inheritors and their communities, maximize their interests, and ensure that the ultimate goal is the sustainable development and diversity of the heritage.
Sexual sharing.
Public folklore faces a series of issues such as cultural objectification in cultural practice, and promotes the construction of the disciplinary theoretical system with its reflexive criticism tradition.
It is worth learning from China folklore, which has long been accustomed to being administration-led and has obvious tendency to apply folklore in cultural practice.
In relevant public practices such as the recording, education, evaluation, performance and development of intangible cultural heritage, scholars should try their best to maintain academic independence, adhere to their folk stance, respect the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, and constantly reflect on possible objectification and other issues, and promote the process of China of public folklore.
The original text is contained in the fifth issue of National Art in 2020.
Please refer to the paper version.