On the Evolution Logic and Reflection of Chinese Mainland Cultural Research during the 70 Years of the P.R.China

Looking back on the development of Chinese Mainland cultural research during the 70 years of the P.R.China, bounded by the mid-1990s, we can roughly divided it into two phases: Before English Cultural Studies has not come in Chinese Mainland, cultural research mainly focus on such issues as the study of traditional classical texts or the comparison of Chinese and Western cultural thinking and the cultural researchers hold an elite attitude toward culture. At a later phase, cultural research has turned to focus on popular culture and mass society and the cultural researchers regard culture as a daily lifestyle of ordinary people. This cultural turn actually implies academic paradigm shift and demonstrates that in order to cope with the rapid transformation of Chinese society. Chinese Mainland cultural researchers on the one hand sadly bid farewell to the old cognitive framework and discourse mode in the past and seek to touch and grasp the concrete realities of today’s China, on the other hand they are constantly “problematizing” the present situation and mapping a new cultural map of contemporary China, besides they launched a real “act” in the area of knowledge practice and thus opened up a variety of possibilities of imaging reality.