Author: Frank Rennie
Publisher: IAP
Published: 2008-12-01
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 160752824X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →There is a misty-eyed vision of Bhutan which has popularized it as ‘the last Shangri-la’, the hidden Himalayan jewel, the travel destination of celebrities and unique-experience-hunters. We are not entirely comfortable with this image. Bhutan has undoubtedly become the focus of considerable media attention in the last few years. Articles appear regularly on its substitution of happiness for money as the indicator of the country’s wealth. Television programs, books, visits by personalities – all have served to bring Bhutan to global awareness. This attention only serves to increase pressure on the culture to become like any other. How has Bhutan resisted the impact of globalisation which has had such a homogenizing affect on most other countries in the world? A practice, until recently, of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world, the Buddhist tradition, and the lack of any successful foreign invader have combined to produce a living culture that is as unique as it is fragile. This fragility suggested the need to document a context that seemed on the verge of change. Our second visit in 2008 confirmed our sense of immanent change, as we could see for ourselves the ways in which ‘international culture’ was beginning to appear: the first escalator in the country, widening the main road from single track to dual carriageway, the first democratic election, the availability of satellite television, and internet expansion... Nevertheless, we continue to feel that in Bhutan there is a different ‘way of knowing.’ We have worked with staff at the University to try to capture something of this in three different forms: • chapters written by Bhutanese individuals about the culture, landscape, education and folklore • extracts from interviews with university staff and associates to draw out particular characteristics of Bhutan which would be of interest to Western readers • photographs of Bhutan which provide a different ‘view’ of the country to complement the text. The subject matter has been chosen by Bhutanese staff at the Royal University of Bhutan as an expression of their understanding of their own land. There are conventional travel books about Bhutan available and we have not attempted to contribute to this literature. Bhutan: Ways of Knowing is a book which reflects Bhutanese understanding of their country. We hope that you will find these contributions as interesting and thought-provoking as we do, and that you, too, will find a different way of knowing about Bhutan.
Author: International Association for Tibetan Studies. Seminar
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9004176004
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Monasteries have been the locus classicus of the academic investigation of Tibetan religions. This volume seeks to balance this emphasis with an exploration of the diverse religious specialists who operate outside of the monastery in Tibet and along the Himalayan belt. The articles collected here depict Tantric professionals, visionaries, village lamas, spirit mediums, and female religious leaders whose loyalties reside in the noncelibate sphere but whose activities have had a significant impact on Tibetan religion. Using methodologies drawn from anthropological and textual scholarship, these seven essays bolster our understanding of religious practices and their performers beyond the monasteries of Central and Eastern Tibet, Bhutan, and India from historical times to the present day.
Author: Francis Allard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018-12-20
Total Pages: 311
ISBN-13: 1108586414
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Memory and Agency in Ancient China offers a novel perspective on China's material culture. The volume explores the complex 'life histories' of selected objects, whose trajectories as ginle objects ('biographies') and object types ('lineages') cut across both temporal and physical space. The essays, written by a team of international scholars, analyse the objects in an effort to understand how they were shaped by the constraints of their social, political and aesthetic contexts, just as they were also guided by individual preference and capricious memory. They also demonstrate how objects were capable of effecting change. Ranging chronologically from the Neolithic to the present, and spatially from northern to southern mainland China and Taiwan, this book highlights the varied approaches that archaeologists and art historians use when attempting to reconstruct object trajectories. It also showcases the challenges they face, particularly with the unearthing of objects from archaeological contexts that, paradoxically, come to represent the earliest known point of their 'post-recovery lives'.
Author: Jaġar Dorji
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 9789993617204
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Kim Stafford
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2014-01-10
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1595341862
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A prolific writer, famous pacifist, respected teacher, and literary mentor to many, William Stafford is one of the great American poets of the 20th century. His first major collection--Traveling through the Dark--won the National Book Award. William Stafford published more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose and was Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress--a position now know as the Poet Laureate. Before William Stafford's death in 1993, he gave his son Kim the greatest gift and challenge: to be his literary executor. In Early Morning, Kim creates an intimate portrait of a father and son who shared many passions: archery, photography, carpentry, and finally, writing itself. But Kim also confronts the great paradox at the center of William Stafford's life. The public man, the poet who was always communicating with warmth and feeling--even with strangers--was capable of profound, and often painful silence within the family. By piecing together a collage of his personal and family memories, and sifting through thousands of pages, of his father's daily writing and poems, Kim illuminates a fascinating and richly lived life.
Author: Tony Robinson-Smith
Publisher: University of Alberta
Published: 2017-09-19
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 1772123498
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Tony Robinson-Smith, his wife Nadya, and ten Bhutanese college students set out to run 578 kilometres (360 miles) across the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas. Joined by a stray dog, they slogged over five mountain passes, bathed in ice-clogged streams, ate over log fires, and stopped at every store, restaurant, guesthouse, and dzong to raise money for the Tarayana Foundation. The “Tara-thon” was the first endeavour of its kind and gave 350 village children the chance to go to school. En route, the Long Distance Dozen met a Buddhist lama, a royal prince, a Tibetan renegade, and a matriarch who told them the secret to long life. On arrival in Thimphu, they were decorated by Her Majesty the Queen. In this contemplative memoir, Tony describes Bhutan in rich detail at a transformative period in its history and reflects on tradition, belief, modernization, and happiness. See the book trailer at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-VsWAbTHAQ
Author: Erik E. Andvik
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 508
ISBN-13: 9004178279
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"A Grammar of Tshangla" is the first major linguistic description of Tshangla, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Bhutan, northeast India, and southwest China. Written from a functional-typological perspective, it contains a wealth of illustrative examples both from elicited data and from spontaneously generated texts. It is a truly comprehensive description, including sections on phonology, lexicon, morphophonemics, morphosyntactic structure, clause-concatenating constructions, as well as discourse-pragmatic features. The volume will be of interest to language students, and to linguists and ethnographic scholars seeking to understand the Bhutanese and South Asian linguistic situation. The large amount of raw language data presented here make this "Grammar of Tshangla" an indispensable tool for students of Tibeto-Burman comparative linguistics and morphosyntactic theory in general.
Author: Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 1261
ISBN-13: 9004177329
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A sustained argument for Tibetan independence, this volume also serves as an introduction to many aspects of Tibetan culture, society, and especially religion with a compendium of biographies of the most significant religious and political figures.