Tibetan Transitions

Tibetan Transitions PDF

Author: Geoff Childs

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2008-07-31

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 9047443500

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Tibetan Transitions uses the dual lenses of anthropology and demography to analyze population regulating mechanisms in traditional Tibetan societies, and to link recent fertility transitions with family systems, economic strategies, gender equity, and family planning ideologies.

Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition

Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition PDF

Author: Ashild Kolas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-09-12

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1134078366

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This book explores the relationship between tourism, culture and ethnic identity in Tibet in , focusing in particular on Shangrila, a Tibetan region in Southwest China, to show how local ‘Tibetan culture’ is reconstructed as a marketable commodity for tourists. It analyses the socio-economic effects of Shangrila tourism in Tibet, investigating who benefits economically, whilest also considering its political implications and the ways in which tourism might be linked to the negotiation and reassertion of ethnic identity. It goes on to examine the spatial re-imagining provoked by the development of tourism, and asks whether a tourist destination inevitably becomes a ‘pseudo-community’ for the visited. Can a fictitious name, invented for the sake of tourists, still provide the ‘natives’ of a place with a sense of identity? This book argues that conceptions of place are closely linked to notions of social identity, and in the case of Shangrila particularly to ethnic identity. Viewing the spatial as socially constructed, and place-making as vital to social organisation, this is a study of how place is constructed and contested. It describes how local villagers and monastic elites have negotiated the area’s religious geography, how agents of the Communist state have redefined it as a minority area, and how tourism developers are now marketing the region as Shangrila for tourist consumption. It outlines the different ‘place-making’ strategies utilised by the various social actors, including local villagers to create the communities in which they live, monastic elites to invent a Buddhist Tibetan realm of ‘religious geography’, agents of the People’s Republic of China to define the area as part of the communist state, and tourism developers to market the region as ‘Shangrila’ for tourist consumption. Overall, this book is an insightful account of the complex links between tourism, culture and Tibetanethnic identity in Tibet, and will be of interest to a wide range of disciplines including social anthropology, sociology, human geography, tourism and development studies.

Amdo Tibetans in Transition

Amdo Tibetans in Transition PDF

Author: International Association for Tibetan Studies. Seminar

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9789004125964

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This book investigates Tibetan recovery from the devastation of High Socialism and a new engagement with attempts to modernize the region in the era of 'reform and opening' in post-Mao China. A unique introduction to contemporary life and attitudes in north-eastern Tibet, invaluable for understanding modern Tibetan life in China today, how it developed, and what it is rapidly becoming.

Tawang, Monpas and Tibetan Buddhism in Transition

Tawang, Monpas and Tibetan Buddhism in Transition PDF

Author: M. Mayilvaganan

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9811543461

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This book presents various facets of border life in the strategic eastern sector of the India-China frontier, i.e. the Monpas of Tawang. It addresses the history of the Monpas’ transnational cultural and religious interaction. The respective chapters cover diverse topics such as culture, religion, the environment, border management, and social activism. The book offers a compelling analysis of Mon identity, their lifestyles in transition, and the reach of development politics in the Tawang borderland. It maximizes the reader's insights into development works in borderlands. This book is an essential guide for students, scholars, activists, policy makers, and anyone interested in learning about this unique geographical borderland of Monpa.

The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China

The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China PDF

Author: Andrew Martin Fischer

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2013-12-20

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0739134396

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Series: Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture, Lexington Books Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Since the central government of China started major campaigns for western development in the mid-1990s, the economies of the Tibetan areas in Western China have grown rapidly and living standards have improved. However, grievances and protests have also intensified, as dramatically evidenced by the protests that spread across most Tibetan areas in spring 2008 and by the more recent wave of self-immolation protests that started in 2011. This book offers a detailed and careful exploration of this synergy between development and conflict in Tibet from the mid-1990s onwards, when rapid economic growth has occurred in tandem with a particularly assimilationist approach of integrating Tibet into China. Fischer argues that the intensified economic integration of Tibet into regional and national development strategies on these assimilationist terms, within a context of continued political disempowerment, and through the massive channeling of subsidies through Han Chinese dominated entities based outside the Tibetan areas, has accentuated various dynamics of subordination and marginalization faced by Tibetans of all social strata. Whether or not these dynamics are intended to be discriminatory, they effectively accentuate the discriminatory, assimilationist and disempowering characteristics of development, even while producing considerable improvements in the material consumption of local Tibetans. In particular, strong cultural, linguistic and political biases intensify ethnically-exclusionary dynamics among middle and upper strata of the Tibetan labor force, which is problematic considering the rapid shift of Tibetans out of agriculture and towards the highly subsidy-dependent sectors of the economy, especially in urban areas. The combination of these disempowering dynamics with the sheer speed of dislocating and disembedding social change provides important insights into recent tensions given that it has accentuated insecurity while restricting the ability of Tibetan communities to adapt in autonomous and self-determined ways. The study represents one of the only macro-level and systemic analyses of its kind in the scholarship on Tibet, based on accessible economic analysis and extensive interdisciplinary fieldwork. It also carries much interest for those interested in China and in the interactions between development, inequality, exclusion and conflict more generally.

Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage

Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage PDF

Author: Shelly Bhoil

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-11-08

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1498552390

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Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage: Negotiating Dispossession explores the many ways Tibetans are reimagining their cultural identity since the communist takeover of Tibet in the 1950s. Focusing on developments taking place in Tibet and the diaspora, this collection of essays addresses a wide range of issues at the heart of Tibetan modernity. From the political dynamics of the exiled community in India to the production of contemporary Tibetan literature in the PRC, the collection delves into various aspects of current significance for the Tibetan community worldwide such as the construction of Bon identity in exile, the strategic use of the discourse of development or the issue of cultural and linguistic purity in an increasingly hybrid and globalized world. Moving away from the preservationist paradigm that regards Tibetan culture as an endangered and precious object, the essays in this book portray Tibetan identities in motion, as lived subjectivities that travel, change and creatively reimagine themselves on various global stages. Even if recent Tibetan history is marked by imposed transitions and a sense of dispossession, this collection highlights the ways Tibetans have not only managed traumatic historical events but also become agents of change and reinventors of their own traditions.

Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet

Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet PDF

Author: Jane E. Caple

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2019-03-31

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0824878051

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The speed and extent of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic revival make it one of the most extraordinary stories of religious resurgence in post-Mao China. At the end of the 1970s, there were no working monasteries; within a decade, thousands had been reconstructed and repopulated. Most studies have focused on the political challenges facing Tibetan monasteries, emphasizing their relationship to the Chinese state. Yet, in their efforts to revive and develop their institutions, monks have also had to negotiate a rapidly changing society, playing a delicate balancing act fraught with moral dilemma as well as political danger. Drawing on the recent “moral turn” in anthropology, this volume, the first full-length ethnographic study of the subject, explores the social and moral dimensions of monastic revival and reform across a range of Geluk monasteries in northeast Tibet (Amdo/Qinghai Province) from the 1980s on. Author Jane Caple’s analysis shows that ideas and debates about how best to maintain the mundane bases of monastic Buddhism—economy and population—are intermeshed with those concerning the proper role and conduct of monks and the ethics of monastic-lay relations. Facing a shrinking monastic population, monks are grappling with the impacts of secular education, demographic transition, rising living standards, urbanization, and marketization, all of which have driven debates within Buddhism elsewhere and fueled perceptions of monastic decline. Some Tibetans—including monks—are even questioning the “good” of the mass form of monasticism that has been a distinctive feature of Tibetan society for hundreds of years. Given monastic Buddhism’s integral position in Tibetan community life and association with Tibetan identity, Caple argues that its precarity in relation to Tibetan society raises questions about its future that go well beyond the issue of religious freedom.

Tawang, Monpas and Tibetan Buddhism in Transition

Tawang, Monpas and Tibetan Buddhism in Transition PDF

Author: M. Mayilvaganan

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2020-09-03

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 9789811543456

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This book presents various facets of border life in the strategic eastern sector of the India-China frontier, i.e. the Monpas of Tawang. It addresses the history of the Monpas’ transnational cultural and religious interaction. The respective chapters cover diverse topics such as culture, religion, the environment, border management, and social activism. The book offers a compelling analysis of Mon identity, their lifestyles in transition, and the reach of development politics in the Tawang borderland. It maximizes the reader's insights into development works in borderlands. This book is an essential guide for students, scholars, activists, policy makers, and anyone interested in learning about this unique geographical borderland of Monpa.

The Agendas of Tibetan Refugees

The Agendas of Tibetan Refugees PDF

Author: Thomas Kauffmann

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1782382836

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Since the arrival of the first Tibetans in exile in 1959, a vast and continuous wave of international – especially Western – support has permitted these refugees to survive and even to flourish in their temporary places of residence. Today, these Tibetan refugees continue to attract assistance from Western governments, organizations and individuals, while other refugee populations are largely forgotten in the international agenda. This book shows and discusses how Tibetan refugees continue to attract resources, due, notably, to the dissemination of their political and religious agendas, as well as how a movement of Western supporters, born in very different conditions, guaranteed a unique relationship with these refugees.

Tibetan Folktales

Tibetan Folktales PDF

Author: Haiwang Yuan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-11-25

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1610694716

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This collection of folktales provides readers with an extensive overview of the breadth of Tibetan culture, revealing the character of the region and its people as well as their traditional customs and values. Most Westerners are unlikely to travel to the mountainous region of East Asia and experience the Tibetan people and their culture directly. This book provides a way to experience and learn about this remote nation through carefully selected Tibetan folktales that provide readers with a unique glimpse into Tibet's culture, its people, and the land itself through the window of folklore. Providing a unique resource that can serve both as a storytime aid for educators who work with primary school students and a valuable reference for Eastern folklorists, Tibetan Folktales contains more than 30 traditional Tibetan stories that give readers a taste of the land, people, culture, history, religion, and psyche of this remote country. The tales are gathered from contemporary Tibetan storytellers and translated from written sources to represent the rich oral and written literary tradition of Tibet's culture. In addition, the book supplies tutorials for Tibetan crafts and games, a sample of recipes, and photographs and illustrations that create a multidimensional experience of Tibetan culture.