Cultural Feedback and Intergenerational Transmission in Artifact Civilization

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.