Hei Yi Zhuang Folk Songs Aesthetic Anthropology

This doctoral dissertation researches the folk songs of Black-cloth Zhuang in the academic perspective and the foundational theory of aesthetical anthropology. This paper is composed of four chapters and amounts to approximately 180,000 words.Chapter One discusses the ideological background, meaning, content and method of the research on the folk song of the Black-cloth Zhuang. The first ideological background is aesthetical anthropology which developed through the integration of aesthetics and anthropology during the 1990's in China. This aesthetic anthropology research advocates research and explanations of questions and phenomenon of aesthetics by taking the concept system, method and materials of cultural anthropology. This is done so that the abstract thinking of aesthetics can be based on sound concrete investigation and abundant materials of anthropology, thus making aesthetics consider the tradition of appreciation of the beauty in folklore and be aware of native questions. The second ideological background is The Study of Zhuang, the latecomer in research on the Chinese national minority, which researches the Zhuang people systemically. This paper considers that taking the arts of brink, national minority and hearing in the aesthetic field can break the tradition of previous aesthetic research, because previous aesthetic research gets the aesthetic principle from metaphysical thinking about main stream arts, canonical arts and visual arts only, and can only be beneficial to aesthetics for drawing the appreciative experience from the arts of brink, folk and hearing. At the same time, the research on the folk songs of the Black-cloth Zhuang can be beneficial to add to the knowledge about the whole culture of the Zhuang people as well as to found the ethnoaesthetics of the Zhuang because the Black-cloth Zhuang group is an ancient branch which integrates the characteristics of the south Zhuang and the north Zhuang group. This study uses the method of combining field work and reading documents; the method of whole research and comparative research; and the method of crossing disciplines; inquiring systemically and thorough the live aesthetic idea and cultural function of the folk songs of the Black-cloth Zhuang. The study also explores the institution of folk song society which is different from the one of modern society, and the changes of culture and society reflected from the ups and downs of folk song.Chapter Two is entitled "Folk Song Society: Aesthetic Existence and its Crisis". This chapter reveals the essence of folk song society in the view of modernity theory, by thinking of it as a traditional society and common society, and by discussing the ways of aesthetics existence which live with the folk song as the core of the Black-cloth Zhuang society. This paper describes the picture of aesthetic existence that live with the folk...