TheSubjectBoundaryofAcademicResearch:ACaseStudyofStoryHistoryResearch

SHI Aidong

The boundary of an academic research subject refers to limits of research subject matter, theme, research materials, as well as the theoretical and methodological approaches used by the research subject. This boundary can be divided into two parts, the research material boundary and the discussion boundary. The research material boundary should be specific, exclusive and operational. For research materials which might be inside or outside this boundary, criteria for selecting materials should be established during the research. The subject boundary in specific research is not set in stone, it can be adjusted according to judgement of the researcher. However wide or narrow the research scope might be, the range of materials used in the research should always be logically explained. And the standard for selecting materials must be consistently maintained throughout the research. If the subject boundary is regarded as the ideal academic boundary, the operation boundary becomes the application boundary during the implementation of the research ideal. The operation boundary is usually manifested as a sampling method, and serious academic research tends to apply cluster sampling method and type sampling method. In lack of academic self-sufficiency, the operation boundary can only be considered as transitional plan subordinated to the subject boundary, which means a return to the subject boundary is required for later academic discussion.

Keywords: philosophy of science; history of folk literature; story studies; academic research subject; research materials

LocalizationandGeneralization:TheArcheologyofKnowledgeofTotemTheoryintoChina

ZHANG Duo

Totem, a cultural research concept from the West, has become a basic concept in Chinese scholarship since it was introduced to China by Yan Fu in 1903. Over the past hundred years, Chinese scholars have applied totem theory to the study of ancient Chinese society, art history, folklore and minority culture. The concept of totem has been adapted by several generations and gradually become an academic discourse with localization color. However, at the same time, the phenomenon of the generalization of the totem concept has become increasingly prominent, leading to many criticisms and reflections. The archaeology of knowledge of “totem” provides a mirror for how to reshape China’s own conceptual discourse and better explain local phenomenon on the basis of digesting and absorbing Western concepts.

Keywords: totem; totemism; folklore; mythology; conceptual history

TheIdeologicalResourcesofHandicraftandItsReflectionsonModernLife

MENG Fanhang

Technology is an essential element of human beings. It has two dimensions: the experiential and the engineering, which correspond to the spontaneous order and the instrumental order. These two orders sustain the operation of human society in a relatively balanced way. After entering modern society, engineering technology advanced by leaps and bounds and gave birth to the theory of technological omnipotence. Meanwhile, spontaneous order has been overwhelmingly suppressed by instrumental order, leading to a state of constant anxiety of modern life. Both art and handicraft share the “gene” of spontaneous order. Art completes the criticism of instrumental order with its radical reflexive actions. However, art can barely connect tradition and communities, because it intrinsically contains abundant individual factors and its function of shaping public relations has been alienated by mechanical reproduction. On the contrary, handicraft is the focused manifestation of experiential technology, which includes originality, community factors, and embodied practice. Therefore, handicraft has the potency to connect the traditional empirical world, awaken the spontaneous order, and then reshape the world of free living.

Keywords: handicraft; modern life; experiential technology; spontaneous order; embodied practice

Feedback,orMutualFeeding?ExplorationoftheInternalLogicoftheDevelopmentofFolkLiteratureandArt

LIU Aihua

With the development of the internet technology, the ecology of folk literature and art has undergone drastic changes and is constantly moving forward under the “coaxing”. Due to the inclusiveness of folk literature and art, it also feeds elite literature and art, popular literature and art in the process of self-feeding. Of course, in a strict sense, the three forms of people’s literature and art are increasingly infiltrated and integrated, more closely related to each other, and in a state of integration and mutual feeding. Therefore, to cope with the reconstruction of generative context, efforts should be made from three aspects: adhering to the “people-oriented” orientation, integrating into the major national strategies, and actively participating in cross-border integration, following the internal logic of its development, and promoting the integration and mutual learning of literary and artistic forms to meet the needs of the development of the times.

Keywords: folk literature and art; elite literature and art; feedback; mutual feeding; the internal logic

Fang,Pai,andFamily:LineageUnitsandtheGrandGenealogyoftheNation:CasesofGenealogiesintheSongDynastyandinSouthChina

ZHANG Xiaojun

The study discusses theFang/Paistructure of the lineage units in South China, mainly the cases in Fuzhou, in an attempt to reflect on the rise of private genealogies of the scholar-officials in the Song Dynasty under the background ofWenzhiRenaissance (cultural-governess Renaissance), and its influence on the genealogies in South China in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties, and thereby to understand how the grassroots society in South China, through these genealogies, incorporated into the grand genealogy of the nation. “Fang” has long been in existence as a unit of descent groups. The national tradition thatFangserves as a lineage unit is probably inherited from the Tang Dynasty. When the royal lineage file was being revised in the Song Dynasty, Fan Zhongyan’s system of Yi lineage and Yi village directly used “Fang” as lineage unit. Using “Pai” as the genealogical unit of the lineage to define the descendants of the same earlier or earliest ancestry is mainly discovered in lineages of South China after the Ming Dynasty. “Family” was not an original lineage unit. The Confucian scholar-officials in the Song Dynasty took family genealogy as an important carrier to promote the Confucian orthodoxy, which not only promoted the development of lineages in South China after the Ming Dynasty, but also turned “Family” into a lineage unit. The rise of private genealogies among the scholar-officials in Song Dynasty and the “genealogy-making” movement in grassroots society in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties, reflected the process of nationalization of the genealogies in grassroots society.

Keywords:Fang;Pai; Family; lineage; genealogy; South China

要想合理的評(píng)估北部灣經(jīng)濟(jì)區(qū)區(qū)域經(jīng)濟(jì)整合度、當(dāng)前區(qū)域經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展程度、以及北部灣經(jīng)濟(jì)區(qū)發(fā)展過程中存在的問題，首先必須對(duì)北部灣當(dāng)前區(qū)域經(jīng)濟(jì)水平有一個(gè)準(zhǔn)確的評(píng)價(jià)。因此本文主要選取以下指標(biāo)來對(duì)當(dāng)前北部灣區(qū)域經(jīng)濟(jì)一體化水平進(jìn)行評(píng)估(見表1)。

BeautyOnSale:Researchon“theConcubineMarketofSuzhou”

WANG Ning, ZHANG Jingyi

Wo Kan, a poet living during the Qian Long to Jia Qing reigns of the Qing Dynasty, in his 20 poems theZhuZhiCi(bamboobranchpoems)oftheConcubineMarketofSuzhou, provided abundant information about the concubine market in Suzhou of that time, which was no less complex and detailed than Zhang Dai’s account of the one in Yangzhou. Based on theZhuZhiCioftheConcubineMarketofSuzhouand other related documents, with the purpose to compensate the academic negligence that “the concubine market only flourished in Yangzhou”, this paper engages in a thorough research in the following aspects of concubine market in Suzhou: the origin; the time period, term and categorization; deal procedures; the glossary of marketing; regulation regarding makeup and skills; the participation: expenses and profits; marketing strategies; the comparison with Yangzhou concubine market; the regional distribution and aftereffect; other evidence and further discussion.

Keywords: the concubine market of Suzhou; Suzhou; the concubine market of Yangzhou; male power; women’s life history

CostumeFolkloreofBowShoesintheMingandtheQingDynastiesandtheConstructionofFemaleIdentity:CenteringonFolkSongsintheSamePeriods

SHEN Yuanyuan

Women’s foot-binding experience in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties brought about the costume of bow shoes, and also gave birth to many folk songs describing bow shoes in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties. The social status of foot-binding and bow shoes given by ritual norms in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties and male literati, made bow shoes the symbol of the construction of female’s class identity. Women in those periods used body perception and gender experience to project the sense of interaction between self-identity and social context into the folklore of dress, which was mainly reflected in the fashion consumption of metropolitan women, the etiquette and customs of rural women, and the female identity anxiety caused by the flow of the involved sex field between city and countryside. In this regard, bow shoes became an important symbol of the construction of female identity in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties.

Keywords: folk songs in the Ming and the Qing Dynasties; bow shoes; female identity

FromtheMirrorImageof“Locality”to“ChinaintheStory”:theModernTensionandSignificanceofLocalStories

JIANG Fan

Keywords: local stories; locality; intertextuality; modern China; Huang Zhenhua’s story

AStudyofPoeticPracticeofFolkStories:AnAnalysisBasedonLiuDefang’sStorytelling

WANG Dan

China has a systematic poetic theory and practice. Folk stories are full of poetic language, poetic thinking and poetic spirit. The content, form and technique of poetics enhance the literariness and aesthetics of folk stories, and are also the way for inheritors of folk stories to reflect life, express views and construct social relations. The poetics in Liu Defang’s folk stories is a cultural identity and cultural consciousness based on the interaction of natural ecology, social history and regional tradition, and also a cultural practice based on local knowledge, social system and people’s life. As an important direction of folk story research, story poetics should not only attach importance to the life meaning of the story, but also emphasize the literary aesthetics of poetics. It should not only start from the analysis of the story text, but also focus on the investigation of the story telling, comprehensively and dynamically understand and explain the creation, inheritance and development of folk stories, and then discover the people’s life, people’s feelings and people’s wisdom.

Keywords: poetics of folk story; regional tradition; life endowment; literary aesthetics; cultural identity

TypesandFunctionsofNegativePotentialEnergyProvidersinFantasyStories

ZHU Jiayu

The negative potential energy providers play the role of getting protagonist into trouble in fantasy stories. According to the ways of action, they can be divided into three types: peremptory, threatening and hindering. In addition, according to the impact of the role on the overall experience of the protagonist, the effect can also be divided into three types: progressive, unchanged and regressive. Because a single action has dual functions, the type of negative potential energy providers is compound. Meanwhile, the type of negative potential energy providers determines the protagonist’s experience. The cooperation between them and the helpful roles reflects the organic characteristics of role composition. In addition, the negative potential energy providers are also the key to the growth of the story and the combination of different types of stories.

Keywords: folk tales; storytelling; morphology; role; function

AbandonedGods:Human-GodRelationsintheHouseholdReligionSpace:BasedonaFieldSurveyinXiagangVillage,Dongguan,Guangdong

MAI Yunyan, WU Chongqing

In villages of southern China, where family idol worship is popular, many family idols have been abandoned outside the household and placed at community altars and village temples, presenting alternative ways of “dealing with” the gods under special circumstances. In Xiagang village, Guangdong, for example, believers choose to “invite” the gods into their households for worship based on the “Natural” experience, and the gods are “invited” into their homes as “Long-Term Guests ”. However, when the gods are not in harmony with the external environment or when the daily sacred practices of the family are in disorder, the believers avoid talking about whether the gods are spiritual or not, preferring to “send them away” on the grounds that they feel “Not Natural Enough”. “Natural”/“Not Natural Enough” is the common interpretation of “inviting” and “sending” the gods by believers in the household belief space, which reflects the cautious attitude and the small-scale initiative of people in dealing with the relationship between the human and the gods.

Keywords: family idols; idol worship; human-god relations; household belief space; popular beliefs

“HerbalsHavingLife”and“Self-deification”:TheMoralReconstructionofYaoMedicinePractitionersinNorthernGuangdong

WANG Qin

Since the 1960s, religion has become the key to rebuilding the relationship between man and nature. The ecological resources in the world religion, indigenous culture and customs have been discovered one after another, while the decline of “tradition”, especially the de-sanctification of “nature”, has been ignored by the academic circles. The “tradition” of Yao people in northern Guangdong about the spiritual power of herbals refers to the reciprocal morality between man and nature and between doctors and patients. With the commercialization and marketization of Yao medicine, “tradition” becomes “custom” and herbals are no longer sacred. Yao medicine practitioners rationalize their behavior against “tradition” by emphasizing medical experience, operating cost and living situation; use the concept of “herbals having life” and the analogy of “human life” and “herbal life” to reshape the effectiveness of herbals and the morality between man and nature; create miracles and show medical ethics through the way of “self-deification”, and reshape the effectiveness of herbals and doctor-patient morality. The reflexive moral narrative and practice of individuals are the moral resources that reintegrate people into moral groups.

Keywords: environmental ethics; environmental folklore; religion; ethnomedicine; ethical self