The Flow and Persistence of Local Opera in the Global Context: Baling Opera from the Perspectives of China and Beyond

Within the highly fluid cultural configuration of globalization, traditional local operatic forms generally confront multiple pressures, including the contraction of spaces for dissemination, aesthetic marginalization, and intergenerational rupture. Taking Baling Opera of Yueyang, Hunan, China, as an example, its cultural condition is particularly emblematic. As a local operatic genre deeply rooted in the regional social structure and folk ritual system of the Dongting Lake area, it has neither entered the system of digital dissemination, nor garnered extensive attention within the national structure of cultural consumption, nor been incorporated into any cross-cultural chain. This condition of “not having entered the modern communication system” enables Baling Opera to exhibit a distinctive cultural resilience. Relying on local dialect, embodied techniques, and communal memory, it has formed a low-frequency yet continuous cultural cycle within the regional field, and its vitality is derived primarily from the support of traditional festivals, master-disciple transmission, and local emotional attachment. This study takes Bourdieu’s field theory as its analytical framework and, in conjunction with theories of cultural reproduction and locality, explores the multiple positions of Baling Opera within the local field, regional networks, and the framework of national culture.

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