Who Owns Culture and Who Decides? Ethics, Film Methodology, and Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection

Western Folklore, Spring 2008 by Sherman, Sharon R

My first year in graduate school at UCLA was also Michael Owen Jones's first year teaching there as a professor. He showed a few films in the fieldwork class and my fate as a film and folklore person was sealed. Years later, Jones taught a class on photography and methods, and today we both teach Film and Folklore at our respective institutions. In many ways, our paths have taken similar turns. Thus it did not surprise me that recently we both went to China to participate in two separate folklore meetings. In February 2005, Michael Owen Jones visited China for a conference on festivals. He was interviewed at length and then had his remarks published in sequence in three articles in the Chinese journal, Forum on Folk Culture. He chose to speak about the makers and users of objects and his concerns dealt with the emphasis of the Chinese on intangible rather than material culture. In part, Jones points out, this emphasis is due to the training Chinese folklorists had received, primarily in oral tradition. Jones noted in a paper presented at the 2006 Western States Folklore Society meeting:

A great deal has been made of the fact that China has 56 ethnic minorities many of whose traditions, or "intangible cultural heritage," have not been documented and are likely to disappear. A much-acclaimed 20-year, 500 million-word project known as "The Chinese Cultural Great Wall" was initiated in 1979 directed by the Ethnic Folk Literature and Art Development Center under the Ministry of Culture to collect, archive, and publish folk songs, dances, tales, ballads, and proverbs from the provinces.

There is considerable emphasis in all quarters on verbal arts. In addition, a number of graduate students and young professionals clearly want to learn more about "theoretical directions" in contemporary American folkloristics, particularly in regard to the study of epic and other oral traditions, for half a dozen were in residence at Harvard, two were visiting scholars at Indiana, and yet others studied folklore at other universities. In the past decade, a number of Chinese scholars have fallen under the spell of the Parry-Lord hypothesis regarding oral formulaic composition in epic singing as well as Foley's "theory of oral composition." In about 2001 the so-called "theory of performance" came to the forefront, followed by Ethnopoetics. Quite a few researchers seem preoccupied with salvaging what can still be collected among ethnic minorities in rural areas. Some investigators continue to ponder who the "folk" are. . . . Articles about methods seem to be needed, and especially in regard to the study of folk art, which is only in its nascent stage. (2006)

My own experience with what is occurring in China is not dissimilar. Yet my impression is that a small group of scholars with Ph.D.s in Folklore from Beijing Normal University are not only active, but are interested in many theories. Folklorists are energetically working on many fronts and have important positions; the vice president of Central China Normal University, Dr. Huang Yonglin, is a folklorist. The emphasis on oral-formulaic theory that Jones observed is, indeed, strong, and is attributable to translations of publications on that topic and on performance theory. Basic works have also been translated. For example, Alan Dundes' The Study of Folklore (1965) was translated some time ago and Dundes also visited China. And tangible cultural heritage has been studied for close to two decades.

In July 2006,1 was one of fifty scholars invited to China to present a paper at the International Conference on Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection, and Jones urged me to attend. Once again, the highlight was on verbal arts and I placed my own emphasis on filmmaking as a methodology for gathering the data in a more holistic manner by documenting events rather than texts. Most of my examples from my own and student films addressed what Jones has defined as material behavior (1997)-which lends itself so easily to a visual medium-but many also examined narrating, ritual, and other intangible expressive behaviors.

The controversy swirling around attempts to define and protect both tangible and intangible cultural heritage is complex and filled with ethical questions. Although often applied, in the United States, to the repatriation of Native American artifacts, the arguments made for protection of ritual practices, stories, songs, and other traditional expressive behaviors often fall squarely within the realm of folklore, and those folklorists in the U.S. who deal less with indigenous tribes are not exempt from the fray. Indeed, the folklorist who conducts audio or video recording often faces ethical dilemmas that reach to the very core of the discipline's development. For example, Barre Toelken has been concerned with those he studies and how he treats their materials. In contrast, some decision makers often undervalue narrators. In China, Tan Zhenshan, the only person included on the 518 national Chinese intangible cultural heritage protection list, has been poorly treated by the media that has rushed in and out after documenting his tales.