Study On Urbanization And The Conservation And Utilization Of Local Folklore Cultural Resources

The contemporary urbanization process in China has made the issueof conservation and utilization of local folklore cultural resources beingincorporated into an urbanized social context. The Central WorkingConference of Urbanization held in December2013specially mentionedcultural inheritance in the process of new pattern urbanizationμ, in whichprinciples of constructing beautiful towns with historical memories,regional features and ethnic characteristicsμ were proposed. Aiming tohelp promote the inheritance and development of folklore culture incontemporary urban society to serve urban social construction, the mainpurpose of this dissertation is to explore how to conserve and make use oflocal folklore cultural resources in a transforming social context which isproduced by rapid urbanization process.The dissertation takes the dragon boat culture in Wen-rui Tong riverbasin in Wenzhou city as an example. It integrates the study of localcultural resources· conservation and utilization with urban society·s cultural development and social cohesion. Through analyzing dragon boatculture by regarding it as a local knowledge system and elaborating itsroles in maintaining social identity and collective consciousness, inimproving social integration and cohesion, as well as in building sense ofplace and improving the city·s cultural ecology, the paper discusses aboutdragon boat culture·s significance to socialdevelopment of Wenzhou city.According to its current situation in terms of inheritance and development,the thesis also proposes countermeasures which aim at enhancing theeffectiveness of the conservation and utilization of this heritage. Thewhole dissertation consists of six parts.Part Ⅰ is an introduction. It first introduces the origin andsignificance of the chosen topic of this paper, then reviews literature thatare relating the conservation and utilization of folklore culture,urbanization and cultural development, and the dragon boat culture inWenzhou. Literature review thus helps defining the study·s target andposition. General idea of the study and the research methods are alsoexplained in this part.Part Ⅱ discusses urbanization from the perspective of folklore andstates folklore studies· entry point and main concern in this research field.The relation between folklore culture’s conservation and utilization andthe building of cultural ecology in urban city is analyzed. This part alsoproposes and elaborates the viewpoint of nourishing towns with folklore culture and employ folklore·s locality to build sense ofplace·μ.Part Ⅲ presents an overview of Wen-rui Tong River basin, whichintroduces the region’s past history and urbanization status quo. Specialattention was paid to adjustment of administrative divisions which hasoccurred within Wenzhou’s three main administrative districts (Longwan,Lucheng and Ouhai) in recent years. The origin, development andfeatures of traditional dragon boat culture in this region are alsointroduced in details.Through synthesizes materials from fieldwork and literature, part Ⅳfirst discusses the historical inheritance and new development trends ofthe dragon boat culture in Wen-rui Tong River basin, then analyzesinfluences which affecting the culture’s sustainable inheritance anddevelopment from both inside and outside.Part Ⅵ analyzes social functions of the traditional dragon boatculture by regarding it as a local knowledge system, and argue that inorder to conserve and utilize this cultural heritage better, one of thesolutions is to facilitate and guide it to transform from local smalltraditionμ to urban public culture. Specific countermeasures for thegovernment on how to lead the conservation and inheritance of theheritage are also provided.Part Ⅶ is a conclusion which summarizes contents and mainviewpoints of the dissertation.