Cultural Feedback and Intergenerational Transmission in Artifact Civilization

Abstract

“文化反哺”是理解处在急速变迁时代中国社会代际关系的一个本土性概念, 它 在由全球化和社会转型所共同引发的变迁维度上理解中国社会代际关系的颠覆或倒置 现象, 将急速变迁时代所发生的年长一代向年轻一代进行广泛的文化吸收现象视为新 的文化传承模式。在新兴食品、移动电话和电子计算机三类现代器物的传播与选择过 程中, 突出表现出代际倾斜、去中心化和数字鸿沟趋势, 而在器物文明传承过程中 出现的这种代际颠覆现象, 是30年改革开放或社会变迁带给中国人的心理体验的一部 分, 它在精神层面上赋予中国经验以完整的价值和意义。 关键词: 文化反哺 器物文明 代际传承 中国体验 “Cultural feedback” (wenhua fanbu, literally “cultural reverse feeding”), an indigenous concept coined to facilitate the understanding of intergenerational relations in China’s drastically changing society, focuses on the subversion or reversal of conventional intergenerational relations in the light of changes triggered jointly by globalization and social transformation and views the extensive absorption of emerging cultural elements by the older generation from the young generation as a new mode of transmission. The process of the dissemination and selection of three kinds of modern artifacts—new foods, cell phones and computers—highlights the intergenerational tilt, the phenomenon of decentralization and the trend towards a digital divide. The subversion of conventional intergenerational relations in the process of the transmission of artifact civilization, as a significant part of Chinese psychological reactions to over three decades of reform and opening up, is indispensable to the psychological integrity of Chinese experience.