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Special Feature

How the Social Imaginary Gives Rise to Co-action:Contradictory Values and Intangible Cultural Heritage Consensus in Beijing’s Jingxi Fanhui

Xi Ju
p. 29-37

Abstract

The concept of community has become the dominant focus of academic discussions in the field of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) research. Some scholars have criticised the idealised usage of this concept as obscuring the empirical tensions and suggest that it should be replaced by “actor-network.” Instead, this article argues that even when there is no real network among actors, heritage community may still rely on social imaginary to exist. It is the relationship that people establish between the present and the past that is key to understanding the safeguarding of ICH. This article focuses mainly on the Jingxi fanhui, a national ICH festival in Beijing’s western suburb. The entire area has been almost deserted for nearly 20 years, as the villagers are now dispersed in Beijing city. But every year during the traditional Lantern Festival days, former villagers still return to the abandoned villages to attend the parade ceremony, even though there is no real social network linking them. People are driven by different values, which are often diverse and contradictory, to participate in the ceremony. The common imagination of their community is rooted in a shared understanding of what heritage means to the groups. It’s under the flag of national ICH that the consensus is reached, a sense of community is fostered, and the village festival continues, even after village life has ceased to exist.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 24 April 2021. Accepted on 30 June 2022.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on March 2024.

Outline

Question of heritage community: Actor-network or imagined community?
History of Jingxi fanhui
The different motivations of the participants
“This is our ancestral heritage”
“When I come to the festival, I find myself different”
“This is a flower of an ancient folk art”
“Develop a tourism economy through the Jingxi fanhui”
The value of the past and the concept of heritage

First lines

Question of heritage community: Actor-network or imagined community?

China ratified the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereinafter referred to as the Convention, and intangible cultural heritage as ICH) in 2004. Since the elaboration of this text, the Chinese government has maintained an intense involvement in domestic policies regarding ICH, in contrast with other countries where civil society plays a significant role (Song and He 2019). Whether at the governmental level or at the level of nongovernmental initiatives, the notion of community has become an essential keyword in studies and practices of ICH all over the world (Noyes 2006; Adell et al. 2015: 8-18; Jacobs 2018). It was already the case in the 2003 Convention and the following explanatory documents, where the notion of community was given preeminence. Nevertheless, in its Chinese utterances, this somehow ubiquitous notion has never led to a consensus. Close to the concepts of ...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Xi Ju, “How the Social Imaginary Gives Rise to Co-action:Contradictory Values and Intangible Cultural Heritage Consensus in Beijing’s Jingxi FanhuiChina Perspectives, 132 | 2023, 29-37.

Electronic reference

Xi Ju, “How the Social Imaginary Gives Rise to Co-action:Contradictory Values and Intangible Cultural Heritage Consensus in Beijing’s Jingxi FanhuiChina Perspectives [Online], 132 | 2023, Online since 01 March 2024, connection on 10 June 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/14576; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.14576

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About the author

Xi Ju

Ju Xi is Associate Professor, School of Sociology, Beijing Normal University. No. 19, Xinjiekouwai St, Haidian District, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China(jessyca_ju@bnu.edu.cn).

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