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Two National-level Social Science Monographs Published

 Campus

Recently, two monographs from the National Social Science Fund project: Methodological Research on Inheritors’ Oral History and Evolution and Inheritance: Research on Imperial Heavenly Queen Temple in Tianjin During Modern Society Transition Period were published. Not only are they regarded as masterpieces of domestic humanities and social science but also lay a solid foundation for theory construction of inheritors’ oral history and its academic development.

"Methodological research on inheritors’ oral history” is one of the sub-projects of the 2011 National Society and Science Fund major project “Data base construction of Chinese New Year wood-block pictures and methodological research of inheritors’ oral history”. It is also TJU’s first major project of the National Social Science Fund. “Inheritors’ oral history, proposed by Professor Feng Jicai is in the process of salvaging Chinese folk-culture legacy and is a new academic concept. After ten years of practice it has become a basic method for generally investigating and studying intangible cultural heritage. In order to construct a systematic theory and methodology, Dean Feng Jicai, as the project's chief, led his team to finish the first domestic theory monograph about inheritors’ oral history. The book analyzes inheritors’ character, the core and cultural mode of inheritors’ oral history in academic terms and summarizes the operation, practices and skills of inheritors’ oral history methodology to form a specific, concrete, realistic and methodical system. Its publication not only makes inheritors’ oral history stand out in the field of humanities and social science as a discipline but also provides a theoretical and methological reference for cultural heritage conservation at home and abroad.

The Imperial Heavenly Queen Temple in Tianjin is the geographical symbol of folk culture, and is facing a traditional evolution and inheritance crisis as the other folk cultural heritage has disappeared into the background during periods of social transition. Following approval as an artistic project by the 2011 National Social Science Fund, the “Research on Imperial Heavenly Queen Temple in Tianjin during Modern Society Transition Period” team salvaged historical cultural heritage items and rearranged books from ten organizations covering more than one hundred years of history. The project won the 12th Chinese Folk Art Folk Literature and Art Award, the Sange Award in 2015 and won first prize in the 14th Tianjin Social Science Awards for Outstanding Achievements in 2016. On the basis of field investigations, the research group completed the monograph Evolution and Inheritance: Research on Imperial Heavenly Queen Temple in Tianjin during Modern Society Transition Period, which is the culmination of the study of the Imperial Heavenly Queen Temple in Tianjin and provides new research ideas and forms the basis for the protection of intangible cultural heritage through collective inheritance.
By: Liu Lisha, Sun Xiaofang
Editors: Yin Shiyu and Ross Colquhoun