ABSTRACTS
2020-11-28
The Latest Advances of Ecological Aesthetics in China and its Relationship with Aesthetics of Creating Life⊙Zeng Fanren & Cheng Xiangzhan
Ecological aesthetics is the transformation of aesthetics as a discipline in the era of constructing ecological civilization. So, it has a very close connection with ecological civilization. Borrowed some ideas from the constructive post-modernism proposed by American scholar David Ray Griffin, we propose that ecological aesthetics is a reflective constructive post-modernism aesthetics with its aim of transcending modern industrial civilization. Li Zehous criticism of ecological aesthetics as “aesthetics without man” is based on his treatment of ecological aesthetics as natural aesthetics proposed by Cai Yi and neglected the transformation from epistemology to ecological existentialism. The aesthetics of creating life is the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional Chinese aesthetic spirit and can be viewed as the traditional ecological aesthetics in ancient China.
Ecological Aesthetics, Ecological Aesthetic Education and Shengsheng Aesthetics: Zeng Fanrens Three Fields of Ecological Aesthetics Research and Their Internal Evolution⊙Zhao Kuiying
Prof. Zeng Fanrens aesthetic research mainly covers five aspects, namely, the fundamentals of aesthetics, western aesthetics, literary aesthetics, aesthetic education, and ecological aesthetics. In his study of ecological aesthetics, Prof. Zeng has established “ecological ontological aesthetics” and applied it to the study of aesthetic education, thus forming a new concept of ecological ontological aesthetic education. Prof. Zeng keeps exploring in the study of ecological aesthetics in order to find an ecological aesthetics with Chinese style and characteristics, or the “Chinese pattern” of “ecological ontological aesthetics”, hence the emergence of “Shengsheng aesthetics”, a life-generated and life-oriented aesthetics. From epistemological aesthetics to ecological ontological aesthetics to ecological ontological aesthetic education, and then to Shengsheng aesthetics, Prof. Zeng in his each field of research has made important achievements with representative works and made outstanding contributions to the construction of ecological aesthetics system with Chinese characteristics. Through these achievements, we can not only see Prof. Zengs deep thinking and important exploration of some aesthetic theoretical issues, but also feel his keen awareness of problems and profound ultimate concern as an intellectual with a strong sense of mission in aesthetic research, his unremittingly exploring spirit and the courage of theoretical innovation, his virtue of unceasing academic pursuit as a great scholar, and his touching quality of writing with sincerity and honesty.
On the Four-level Construction of Zeng Fanrens Ecological Ontological Aesthetics
⊙Zhang Chao
Zeng Fanrens ecological ontological aesthetics is a paradigm of contemporary aesthetic innovation based on Chinese culture and the demands of the new epoch, representing an important endeavor of remaking and reconstructing the fundamentals of Chinese aesthetics. Taking aesthetic existence as the starting point, it has not only laid the ontological foundation of Chinese ecological aesthetics, but also surpassed and expanded the “practice noumenon” of Chinese practical aesthetics; taking ecoholism as the theoretical principle, it has not only reconciled the subjectivity-focused anthropocentrism and the radical ecocentrism, but also realized the unity of humanities, ecology and aesthetics on the basis of ecological ontology; taking eco-phenomenology as the research method, it has not only broken through the two opposite aesthetic models of traditional epistemology aesthetics, but also realized the integration of ancient and modern, domestic and foreign resources that are deeply rooted in local culture in the process of aesthetic construction; taking cultivation of ecological ontological aesthetics as the basic foothold, it has not only emphasized the important role of the ecological aesthetics attitude in the implementation of eco-civilization concept, but also reiterated the central position of ecological aesthetic education in the realization of ecological aesthetics and the reconstruction of humanistic spirit. The ecological ontological aesthetics has not only promoted the four-level construction of Chinese ecological aesthetics on theoretical basis, spiritual dimension, mode of thinking and practical approaches, but also provided an aesthetic scheme and Chinese experience for the sustainable development of mankind and the formation of a community of shared destiny in the new era.
On the Joint Development of Ecological Recycling Agriculture and Poverty Alleviation in Mountainous Areas: A Case Study of Ningde Model of Development and Poverty Alleviation
⊙Liu Penghu, Chen Hua & Liu Tao
The development of ecological recycling agriculture will not only help the transformation and upgrading of rural industries, but also help improve the quality and efficiency of poverty alleviation in rural industries. The practical results of the rural poverty alleviation development model in Ningde, Fujian Province have proved that the implementation of the joint development of scientific and technological poverty alleviation and ecological recycling agriculture is conducive to scientific and technological entrepreneurship in mountainous rural areas and effective in increasing farmers income. Meanwhile, the implementation of ecological economy and green revitalizing technology of rural industries helps promote integrated development of industrial ecologicalization and ecological industrialization in rural areas. The new era puts forward higher requirements for the consolidation of targeted poverty alleviation achievements and high-quality agricultural development. Its necessary to deepen the integrated development of industrial ecologicalization and ecological industrialization by taking the actual conditions of mountainous villages into consideration. The concrete measures include building a modern ecological recycling agricultural production system according to local conditions and consolidating targeted poverty alleviation results, optimizing the rural ecological economic industrialization development system according to the situation to help farmers increase their income, using their advantages to create a resource-saving and environmentally friendly management system to promote agricultural transformation and upgrading, making innovations to lead the entrepreneurship and optimize the construction of rural science and technology agriculture system to improve agricultural production efficiency, and strengthening rural infrastructure to improve the diversified investment system and continue to build beautiful villages.
Agriculture and Asian American Literature⊙Sarah D. Wald, trans., Li Jialuan
Agriculture is a significant yet understudied theme in Asian American literature. Representations of farming in Asian American literature often respond to and engage with agricultures important role in Asian American history. As farmers and as farm laborers, Asian Americans have been pivotal to US agriculture, and this agricultural experience was foundational to the formation of Asian American communities in the period prior to World War II. Additionally, literary representations of agriculture in Asian American literature navigate racialized traditions of American pastoral and Jeffersonian agrarianism. They have often done so in ways that highlight the systems of racial and economic exploitation at work in US society and position US agribusiness in relationship to US colonialism and neo-colonialism. Consequently, Asian American literatures representations of farming can expose the assumptions around race, property, and citizenship at work in the agrarianism of the 21st-century US alternative food movement. The writings of Carlos Bulosan, Hisaye Yamamoto, and David Mas Masumoto provide case studies of these trends.
Chinatown and Beyond: Ava Chin, Urban Foraging, and a New American Cityscape
⊙Shiuhhuah Chou, trans., Wang Junwei
Urban foraging reemerged at the turn of the twenty-first century as a mode of urban food production, and urban foraging literature has also increased quickly in quantity and influence. Ava Chin is a native New Yorker and a Chinese American writer, her Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal, defines urban foraging as the most viable means of securing a healthy, organic diet, and redefining cities from food deserts of hunger and poverty to cornucopias of cultural and agricultural productivity. Embedded within Chins urban foraging narrative is a situated process of knowledge production tied to local culture and grounded in empirical understandings of nonhuman nature. Chins questions about the cultural politics of ethical eating imbued with redemptive political and ethnical imaginings, and are embedded within an ethnic ecological conception of the city. Foraging in the city, Chin re-enchants and re-inhabits the city by recovering her ethnic traditions and integrating ethnic and Western ecological knowledge. She also responds movingly to alternative food movements concerns over food production, and reconnects estranged bodies of modern consumers to the materiality of the nonhuman world.
On Wei Ans Local Nature Writing⊙Deng Xiaoyan
Wei An was Thoreaus firmest believer in China. Confronted with the rapid disappearance of natural and rural landscapes and increasingly severe ecological problems, Wei An inherited the spirit of criticizing civilization in Thoreaus nature writing. But unlike American nature writing which uses wilderness as a weapon of criticism against civilization, Wei An paid special attention to the meaning of the countryside. His writing confirms the literary value of the natural part in rural China, which makes it different from the local literary tradition aimed at modernization, and different from the current elegiac tone of indulging in the disorder of rural governance and economic collapse. The combination of nature and rural areas has activated the potential of local nature literature in its power of criticizing modernization.
On the Reality and Imagination in Wei Ans Nature Writing: A Fieldwork on Beixiaoying Village⊙Zhang Zongshuai
Wei An was a writer among those who turned an early look at the relationship between human and nature in China. To a large extent, his nature writing was attached to his birthplace—Beixiaoying Village in Changping County near Beijing. Beixiaoying Village has undergone radical changes in the past few decades. Wei An felt in advance that a wave of urbanization was coming, and his nature writing happened to be on the eve of the drastic changes, which echoes a great era of great changes in rural China. Aware of his lack of knowledge about the land, Wei An tried to fill the gap in his own way by attempting to establish a warehouse of knowledge about countryside and nature. Meanwhile, Wei An vaguely touched the tense relationship between the rural and natural aspect of the land, so he intended to deal with these problems by drawing on a variety of knowledge resources. But his life was so short that these valuable explorations remain only unfinished.
Return to the Literary Scene: A Discussion of Wei An in Beixiaoying Village
⊙Shen Jianyang, Zhang Zongshuai & Deng Xiaoyan
On May 19th, 2019, the 20th anniversary of Wei Ans death, Shen Jianyang, Zhang Zongshuai, and Deng Xiaoyan, young scholars engaged in the study of rural culture and ecological literature came to Beixiaoying Village where Wei An grew up. They made a comprehensive exchange of their understanding of Wei Ans attachment to Beixiaoying, his concerns in writing, his relationship with Thoreau, and his unique writing style to commemorate the pioneer of Chinese nature writing who died young. The seminar was hosted by Associate Professor Shen Jianyang of Jimei University. He believes that when we discuss the countryside and nature today, it is necessary to rethink the modernization crisis that Wei An felt strongly in the 1980s, as well as the rural and natural problems. Zhang Zongshuai is interested in the relationship between the writer and the village that inspired him. He holds that the Beixiaoying Village in real life is different from the one constructed in Wei Ans creation. By rebuilding the relationship between Wei An and the village, we can reactivate the seriousness and sublimity in nature writing and respond to the specific social and historical environment. Deng Xiaoyan deems that Wei Ans writing is groundbreaking in contemporary Chinese nature writing in that he opened up a natural dimension of local literature with Chinese characteristics. Although Wei Ans scope was limited due to his own experience and his time, the difficulties he encountered in his writing and the natural orientation of his rural writing constitute a starting point for the current cultural practice in China.
Food Experience Seen through Deweys Ecological Aesthetics:A Case Study of the Documentary Chaoshan, The Origin of Flavor⊙Wei Xiao
The word “organism” that often appears in Deweys ecological aesthetics contains the dimension of body when it comes to humanity. The extensibility and creativity of the body deepen the meaning of “nature”, which is the sum of existence and refers to the life and world in which human beings live. Deweys ecological aesthetics takes body as the center, links nature and life. These aesthetic ideas find their echoes in the food documentary Chaoshan, The Origin of Flavor. On the screen, people in Chaoshan are experiencing the beauty of food from selecting materials to producing dishes. The process witnesses the internal exchange of “do” and “undergo” between the body and nature. Off the screen, the audience only needs to see the images to appreciate the delicacies and enjoy the beauty of life while satisfying the appetite, which embodies the bodys keen feeling of life. This documentary connects nature, body and life while elucidating the essence of Deweys ecological aesthetics on and off the screen, across time and space.
A Review of Researches on Organic Agriculture and Organic Food in China in the Past 30 Years(1990-2020)(Continued)⊙Lu Chengren
Since the first organic certification in 1990, organic agriculture has been developing in China for 30 years. In the past 30 years, Chinas organic agriculture research has achieved many results, aroused some controversial but useful debates, and also nurtured peoples awareness on some important issues. Focusing on the review of organic agriculture and organic food research in the past 30 years, this paper puts the development of organic agriculture in China into the global context to explore its local origin and characteristics. In the distinction between bioagriculture and social agriculture, it focuses on food selection and production types and moral hazards, organic food trust construction, organic certification experience research and other nine aspects, analyzing and summarizing the research achievements and gains in the past 30 years. On the basis of reflection on past research, from the perspective of the intersection of Chinese consciousness and global background, it puts forward the further direction of organic agriculture research in the aspects of combining biological agriculture and social agriculture, forming the impact on the existing knowledge system, and coordinately upgrading research methods and knowledge quality, etc.
責任编辑:王俊暐