A Study On The Cultural Ecology Of Changyang Folk Songs

Culture is the result and comprehensive performance of interaction of human beings and environment. It is an important way to comprehend the emergence and changes of culture by researching interaction relationship between external environment and culture. As a kind of folk art forms, Changyang Mountain Songs have a close relationship with daily life as well as the cultural ecological environment. For that reason, the thesis takes Changyang Mountain Songs as the research object and aims for exploring the interaction relationship between these songs and cultural ecological environment under the guidance of holistic and interactive research thoughts. In general, the study is in order to explain the reasons of inheritance and evolution of these local songs, also expound their structures and functions with the analysis of the local cultural ecological environment.This paper is consisted of four chapters while the introduction and conclusion parts are not included.On the foundation of clear historical development venation of Changyang Mountain Songs, chapter one divides the development process into three development stages, namely the inheritance and evolution stages (before 1973), prosperity stages (from 1973 to 1984) and decline stages (after 1984), puts forward the theoretical presupposition that the prosperity development of Changyang Mountain Songs during the 1970s and 80s did benefit from the positive interaction among the nature, society and culture.Chapter two introduces the cultural ecological environment of Changyang Mountain Songs in detail. Concretely speaking, it involves three aspects:1) The natural environment of Bjiaomiao Village(quondam Leyuan commune) is characterized by the mountainous topography and sub tropical monsoon climate, its location is far away from county; 2) In the highly centralized planned economical and political system, the collectivized economic model which bases on the people’s commune system replaces the economic model of small peasant economy during the mid of 20th century;3) When tendency of pan-politicization is mixed with daily life, the traditional values centered on family are weakened while the collective, revolutionary and proletarian conceptions are built up.Under the theoretic framework of interaction relationship among the nature, society and culture, the cultural ecological environment and Changyang Mountain Songs are split into multiple parts to make a concrete analysis of each specific question in the third and forth chapters. These two parts aim at explaining the positive functions of Changyang Mountain Songs in improving labor productivity, coordinating social relations and riching the connotation of local folk culture.The concluding part analyzes the running mode of Changyang Mountain Songs in the cultural ecological environment, and also makes a point that specific natural environment, material production(economic life), social organization structure and ideology build a balanced cultural ecology system for these local songs during the 1970s and 80s. In this system, orderly cohesive operation of all elements make this kind of folk art forms develop stably and continually. Given this, when the Changyang Mountain Songs are going through some difficulties, we cannot only lament, but explore and balance the relationship between the songs and the cultural ecological environment, thereby making them obtain the sustainable development.