What is cultural ecology?

The application of ecological method in cultural research is a new interdisciplinary subject, which studies the resources, environment, state and laws of cultural existence and development. Cultural ecology came into being in the mid-20th century. With the prominence of cultural issues and people's attention to the ecological relationship of modern media such as TV and Internet, it became a prominent school after 1990s. "Cultural ecology" is different from "ecological culture", which is characterized by culturology with ecology as the main method. Cultural ecology is an ecology with culture as its research object. Cultural ecology is faced with the task of accelerating discipline construction, and its perfection and application will promote the development of culture and social progress.

Ecological culture is a cultural transition from a culture in which man rules nature to a culture in which man and nature live in harmony. This is a fundamental change in people's values, which has solved the change from anthropocentrism to the harmonious development of man and nature. The important characteristics of ecological culture lie in observing real things, explaining real society and dealing with real problems with the basic viewpoints of ecology, understanding the research methods and basic viewpoints of ecology with a scientific attitude, and establishing a scientific ecological thinking theory. Through understanding and practice, an ecological theory combining economics and ecology has been formed. The formation of ecological theory makes people gradually increase the color of ecological protection in real life.

Ecological culture is a new culture. It is necessary to adapt to the new world trend, publicize widely, and improve people's understanding and concern about ecological culture through the comparison between traditional culture and ecological culture, which is conducive to the development of resources, the protection of the virtuous circle of ecological environment, the promotion of economic development and the benefit of future generations.

From the ecological point of view, human beings have three living environments, namely, natural environment, social environment and normative environment, and cultural ecological environment is mainly composed of social environment and normative environment. "Cultural ecology" refers to the ecological relationship formed by the internal and external factors that constitute the cultural system and their interaction.

Cultural ecology is a more complicated system than natural ecology. She includes both people's ideological and moral qualities and people's scientific and cultural qualities. It is not only a tradition formed by thousands of years of historical and cultural accumulation, but also an important subject facing the impact of foreign culture and cultural innovation. Cultural ecological construction not only has the task of hardware production of cultural products, but also the task of soft environment construction to shape a beautiful mind.

What distinguishes human beings from other creatures is that they not only have natural attributes, but also have social attributes; Man is not only a natural person, but also a social person; The living space of human beings is not only a natural space, but also a humanity space with distinctive historical heritage and distinctive national characteristics. Therefore, the ecological environment, as the sum of various external conditions for human survival and development, includes cultural factors in addition to biological, abiotic, geographical and human factors. It covers life style, historical tradition, customs, folk crafts and so on. , including representative settlement patterns and architectural styles.

Culture has duality, which is not only the sum of material and spiritual wealth created in human survival and development, but also has a great influence on human survival and development. Therefore, the survival and development of human beings can not be separated from a good natural ecology, and the harmonious development between man and nature can not be separated from a good cultural ecology. The rich historical, cultural and social significance contained in cultural ecology has an important influence and function on the formation of human nature, the cultivation of human quality and character, and the cultivation of personality and spirit of different nationalities. Destroying the cultural ecology of human life and cutting off the historical and cultural traditions of life may not be as direct as destroying the natural ecology, but it will profoundly affect its own development.

The 20th century was the era of big industry, and the 20th century (265,438+0) entered the information age and the era of globalization. The changes of the times have also changed our cultural ecology.

The culture in the big industrial era revolves around production, emphasizing social will, group will and group morality, and more for the function of education. In the era of globalization and information technology, culture revolves around consumption. The culture around consumption is more about leisure and entertainment and the publicity of personal will.

In a country, commercialization plays an obvious role in promoting culture, but it also easily leads to vulgarization of culture. Vulgarization goes against the essence of culture, and vulgar cultural products are not desirable. The important role of commercialization in spreading civilization cannot be ruled out, and it should also exist openly and reasonably in the development of human social civilization. However, because commercialization aims at maximizing economic profits, it will also lead producers of cultural products to maximize their audience. Cultural products with strong traces of commercial operation do not pursue deep meaning and value, but only for audience consumption, recreation and entertainment. Ignoring the spiritual civilization essence of cultural exchange. The spread of commercial mass culture has greatly satisfied the modern people with increasingly strong subjective consciousness; As a result of this satisfaction, the commercial value of culture has soared rapidly. The two complement each other and are mutually causal. Because it is a priority to satisfy most people's content with the law of large numbers. Everything is the pursuit, and the purpose of everything is to get the highest ratings, the highest circulation, the highest click-through rate, and finally win the rolling financial resources of investors. However, behind the false prosperity is the desertification of cultural ecology.

Cultural ecology needs to be balanced. Arthur, former chairman of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers? Okun insists on a basic position: society needs the market, and society must restrain the market; All kinds of values other than commerce must be protected from the potential tyrant of monetary scale.

Culture is the most basic foundation for a country to compete with other nationalities in the world. Some people say that China movies have entered mainstream western cinemas. But how many blockbusters come in from abroad every year? Don't say that European and American countries, even Asian countries, can't compare the quantity of Korean and Japanese cultural products entering China with that of China cultural products entering their countries. The quantity indicates the trend. The future of globalization is reflected in the younger generation, not that we are influencing the West, but that the West is influencing us. It is not that the West knows and approaches us better, but that we know and accept the West better.

Hollywood is here. With the expansion of culture, Mulan, a traditional Chinese story, was adapted into a cartoon by Disney. Many people like watching the cartoon Mulan. However, after careful reading, you will find that Mulan in comics is no longer the traditional impression of Mulan in China. In addition to the oriental symbols in the visual image, she is a typical western woman in her bones. The classic themes familiar to China people were interpreted by Americans, which tampered with our cultural spirit. The United States used its own cultural imagination and deduction to put it in this bottle called Mulan, and then shouted that it would be exported to China to make a lot of money. More importantly, she has imperceptibly eroded the next generation, and the children's minds have been implanted with American ideas. After a series of China classics such as Yang Jiajiang, The Journey to the West and Sun Tzu's Art of War were tampered with in Hollywood, how should our younger generation understand our own traditional classics?

Hollywood is a cultural factory, not a UNESCO, nor does it engage in cultural protection projects. Although Hollywood explores the historical theme of China, it is interested in the future market and cultural communication. Their impulse to explore new themes is to satisfy their pursuit of commercial profits and to share the big cake in the world film market. They use western values and cultural standards to create our traditional national themes, operate according to their skillful business logic and push them to the world. They transformed an oriental, China, national and traditional cultural theme into a western, American, Hollywood and postmodern film text.

Compared with the aggressive cultural expansion of Hollywood, we should really think deeply about these cultural resources that have been integrated into the blood of our nation and the enthusiastic attitude of foreign artists towards China's traditional themes.

Non-renewability is one of the characteristics of cultural ecology. Once many traditional styles change, the historical and cultural heritage is destroyed and the living environment is destroyed, it will be a loss of human civilization and a historical regret. This should not be the result of modernization, but the distortion of modernization, which will harm mankind itself. From this point of view, the importance of protecting cultural ecology is very far-reaching.

Innovation is an effective guarantee. In Gadamer's words: "Tradition is not a ready-made thing that we inherit, but is produced by ourselves, because we understand and participate in the progress of tradition, and thus we further define tradition ourselves." Efforts should be made to establish a good new cultural ecological environment. On the basis of sublating the traditional culture of our ancestors, in more complicated social practice, we will constantly enrich its content, enrich its connotation, increase its elements, and even reorganize the traditional functional structure, making it a brand-new form, a new tradition that suits our times and reflects the historical trend, and gathering the treasures handed down from generation to generation with modern new ideas, and transforming it into a great cohesive force and internal driving force of reality.