Modern Construction of Traditional Ethnic Festival: Taking “March 3rd” of the She People in Jingning as an Example

Abstract

Based on the new classical “Structure-Function Theory” this article, by putting a traditional ethnic festival under the background of a modern society investigate how a traditional ethnic festival, as a kind of “structural heritage”, can come to an adjustment with the modern society in the process of integration and development of tourism, and how it becomes an important embodiment of development of tourism and, at the same time, optimize its tourist economic structure. The research shows that, the modern structure of the traditional ethnic festival proves that, though an ethnic festival might be a most stable content in the ethnic culture, it can also be adjusted and changed in order to adapt itself to the new trend of society and economy, and thus it can produce a structure and function in line with that modern society. As for the modern construction of the traditional ethnic festival itself, it is, on the one hand, built on a gain of some modern characteristics during the developing process of the time and society on the basis of the internal changes (including a transforming of function and expanding of structure);on the other hand, the successful realization of a modern construction of the traditional ethnic festival cannot be fostered without the support and promotion of external forces including “umbrella” power with the government as the main body and “honeycomb power” with enterprise and people as a major body too.