| Since the 1970 s,as a new interdisciplinary subject,anthropology of aesthetics has been paid more and more attention in the west.Among them,the research method of anthropology of aesthetics proposed by Van Damme provides a set of systematic theories for domestic anthropology of aesthetics.Van Damme puts forward the theory of "contextualism" of his book,Anthropology of Aesthetics: Perspective and Methods,and proposes to use anthropological methods for aesthetic issues study——when investigating in a sociocultural context to study a aesthetic phenomenon,the investigator can use ethnographic methods to record the local aesthetic phenomena and put the phenomena into a bigger sociocultural global context and pay attention to the link of sociocultural ideals with aethestic standard.Van Damme points out that sociocultural ideals is decided by the society's time and space's changing situations,and local aesthetic preference would change influenced by above two elements.Firstly,in the "contextualism" theory Van Damme claims the collected aesthetic empirical data should be put in a larger social cultural matrix,through develop systemic contact between these data,to compare the different aesthetic preferences in the local context of cross-cultural perspective to explain some of the underlying patterns or repetitive principles,further discuss how they are produced in the changing social and cultural environment systematically preference differently.This bottom-up theory model is different from the tradition way of aesthetic significance thinking.Van Damme chooses the study perspective of anthropology and the theory of evolution,and transforms the definition of "contextualism" from past research background as the research object,in the traditional aesthetics of art and social relations,solves the problem of the opposition between art and society,emphasizes the beauty in the context to be constructed,provides a new perspective for the research of contemporary aesthetics.Secondly,the theory of "contextualism" put forward by Van Damme is composed of text view,context view and aesthetic view.The text of "contextualism" refers to the aesthetic phenomena existing in different cultures and the aesthetic preferences of the ethnic group reflected in the phenomena.It is mainly recorded in the way of ethnography,which is the starting point of the study of "contextualism".The context view includes two dimensions: social production context and sociocultural value ideal context.It emphasizes that context creates meaning and boundary for aesthetic phenomena,and aesthetic phenomenon obtains identity positioning in context.Van Damme's aesthetic view of "contextualism" emphasizes the universality and particularity of daily aesthetics in different cultures.In universality,Van Damme's first refute some "non-western culture have no aesthetic activities" mistakes,and confirms in different cultures there are different from the eastern and western mainstream aesthetic concepts,relatively unique aesthetic phenomena,and there are a series of widely shared form of visual aesthetic characteristics,such as smooth,balance,etc.In daily aesthetic particularity,Van Damme pointed out the existence of each ethnic group with a unique sensory aesthetic phenomenon,might be the sense of smell,vision,hearing,touch,or performance,and the aesthetic study of different cultures in the attention should be paid to the local aesthetic object function value,nature and the local sociocultural values,will be the local aesthetic phenomena in the context of the specific study,aesthetic characteristics and preferences of different groups could be detected.Thirdly,the method of anthropology of aesthetics proposed by Van Damme is a interactive cycle.Only under the combined action of the three methods,can the closed loop of anthropology of aesthetics on the study of different cultures be completed,with intermethodological nature.Among them,empirical experience as the research basis,through the ethnography of aesthetic activities to record.Van Damme regards aesthetic ideas expressed orally as first-order empirical data.With objective on the basis of empirical experience,using the perspective of cross-cultural comparison carries on aesthetic characteristics analysis,the entire research process should be based on context emphasizes,combining with the characteristics of the local social and cultural ideal,the ethnographic data collected by the expression level rise to explain level,and pass the assurance of pair of context in cross-cultural research to try to eliminate the need for the theme and the seat,the differences between different cultural characteristics as in a particular culture and its unique system between the changing social and cultural context,effective,and formed in the cross-cultural contact,this context research method will have a kind of explanatory value.Among them,empirical experience is the basis and starting point of research,contextualism emphasizes that it provides research boundaries and theoretical terminals for research,and cross-cultural perspective provides an open platform for comparison.Van Damme puts forward three steps in the study of “contextualism”.The first step is to grasp the universal view of different cultures and explore their basic living environment and humanistic background.The second step is to grasp the local aesthetic preference phenomena from the ethnographic records,find the local people's choice of aesthetic objects in the daily life situation,and understand the reasons and evaluation of their aesthetic judgment.The thirdly step,on the basis of the first two steps,aesthetic anthropologists make a comprehensive arrangement and reflection on the collected data,and summarize the characteristics of aesthetic preferences reflected in local aesthetic phenomena and the relationship between aesthetic activities and context,further abstract the aesthetic views representing local aesthetic characteristics.Through the investigation of fang's social contextualism,Van Damme believes that art is an intermediary between the level of social reality and the level of cultural ideal,and that art reflects the local ideal of social and cultural values rather than the social reality itself.At present,Chinese aesthetics is facing with some problems: the multiple exchanges between Chinese and western contexts and urban and rural contexts have resulted in the overlapping situation of multiple contexts,and the complex contexts make traditional aesthetics or western aesthetics unable to properly answer the aesthetic problems in real life.Chinese scholars have also had a lot of discussions on how to construct the modern Chinese aesthetics.Van Damme's theory of "contextualism" emphasizes empirical data and social context,which provides a new perspective for the study of Chinese aesthetics and facilitates the return of "Chinese experience" in the construction of Chinese aesthetics.The construction of anthropology of aesthetics with the characteristics of Chinese experience needs to change the previous one-way attention to the marginal culture into a two-way study of urban culture and marginal culture.Under the grasp of the aesthetic core of each kind of culture,it is placed in the relationship network of various Chinese contexts,and the modernity characteristics of Chinese aesthetics are grasped in the relationship,so as to construct the discourse of Chinese aesthetic narrative.Van Damme's study on anthropology of aesthetics “contextualism” takes the empirical materials of ethnography as the starting point,explores the connection between sociocultural ideals context and local aesthetic preferences,and further compares the cross-cultural aesthetic phenomena,so as to reveal the mystery of aesthetic universality,that is,the consistency behind the cultural diversity of aesthetic preference.The research method put forward by Van Damme breaks through the metaphysical thinking method of traditional aesthetic philosophy,and tries to construct a research path from bottom to top,which has great enlightenment to the study of Chinese anthropology of aesthetics. |
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