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The state of Tibetan culture within contemporary China is a highly politicized topic on which reliable information is rare. But what is Tibetan culture and how should it be developed or preserved? The Chinese authorities and the Tibetans in exile present conflicting views on almost every aspect of Tibetan cultural life. Ashild Kolas and Monika Thowsen have gathered an astounding array of data to quantify Tibetan cultural activities--involving Tibetan language, literature, visual arts, museums, performing arts, festivals, and religion. Their study is based on fieldwork and interviews conducted in the ethnic Tibetan areas surrounding the Tibetan Autonomous Region--parts of the Chinese province...
Based on long-term fieldwork in a rural Tibetan region in China's northwest (2002-13), 'The Battle for Fortune' is an ethnography of state-local relations among Tibetans marginalized underChina's Great Develop the West campaign and during the 2008 military crackdown on Tibetan unrest. The study brings anthropological approaches to states and development into dialogue with recent interdisciplinary debates about the very nature of human subjectivity and relations with nonhuman others (including deities).
Happiness is on China’s agenda. From Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” to online chat forums, the conspicuous references to happiness are hard to miss. This groundbreaking volume analyzes how different social groups make use of the concept and shows how closely official discourses on happiness are intertwined with popular sentiments. The Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to define happiness and well-being around family-focused Han Chinese cultural traditions clearly strike a chord with the wider population. The collection highlights the links connecting the ideologies promoted by the government and the way they inform, and are in turn informed by, various deliberations and feelings cir...
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’ ...
Longlisted for the 2009 ICAS Book Award Mountainous Liangshan Prefecture, on the southern border of Sichuan Province, is one of China's most remote regions. Although Liangshan's majority ethnic group, the Nuosu (now classified by the Chinese government as part of the Yi ethnic group) practiced a subsistence economy and were, by Chinese standards, extremely poor. Their traditional society was stratified into endogamous castes, the most powerful of which owned slaves. With the incorporation of Liangshan into China's new socialist society in the mid-twentieth century, the Nuosu were required to abolish slavery and what the Chinese government considered to be superstitious religious practices. W...
This book transforms phenomenology, music, technology, and the cultural arts from within. Gathering contributions by performing artists, media technology designers, nomadic composers, and distinguished musicological scholars, it explores a rich array of concepts such as embodiment, art and technology, mindfulness meditation, time and space in music, self and emptiness, as well as cultural heritage preservation. It does so via close studies on music phenomenology theory, works involving experimental music and technology, and related cultural and historical issues. This book will be of considerable interest to readers from the fields of sound studies, science and technology studies, phenomenology, cultural studies, media studies, and sound art theory. This book is equally relevant and insightful for musicians, composers, media artists, sound artists, technology designers, and curators and arts administrators from the performing and visual arts.
The localisation of a region, group, or culture was a common social phenomenon in pre-modern Asia, but global colonialism began to affect the lifestyle of local people. What was the political condition of the relationship between insiders and outsiders? The impact of colonial authorities over religious communities has not received significant attention, even though the Asian continent is the home of many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Shintoism, and Shamanism. Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History presents multi-angled perspectives of socio-religious transition. It uses the cultural religiosity of the Asian people as a lens through which readers can re-examine the concepts of imperialism, religious syncretism and modernisation. The contributors interpret the growth of new religions as another facet of counter-colonialism. This new approach offers significant insight into comprehending the practical agony and sorrow of regional people throughout Asian history.
Conflicting Memories is a study of how the Tibetan encounter with the Chinese state during the Maoist era has been recalled and reimagined by Chinese and Tibetan authors and artists since the late 1970s. Written by a team of historians, anthropologists, and scholars of religion, literature and culture, it examines official histories, biographies, memoirs, and films as well as oral testimonies, fiction, and writings by Buddhist adepts. The book includes translated extracts from key interviews, speeches, literature, and filmscripts. Conflicting Memories explores what these revised versions of the past chose as their focus, which types of people produced them, and what aims they pursued in the ...
Comprises a literature review of research and policy publications related to basic and primary schooling and quality education in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). These have been collected from selected official Chinese sources, Tibetan NGOs outside Tibet, international news agencies and Chinese, Tibetan, and international scholars with knowledge of social and educational issues in China and Tibet. The study is in two parts: Part I: a review of research and policy publications related to basic and primary education in Tibet/China, and Part II: an annex with a list of literature, websites and journals, and other statistical information.
The Beggar Lama is the story of the Gyalrong Kuzhap, a Tibetan Buddhist polymath and reincarnated lama who has led a remarkable life through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century. Born in 1930 in Tsanlha, Gyalrong, on the easternmost fringes of the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau, he would go on to become a monk, a Communist official, a professor of Tibetan studies, and a leader in the Tibetan cultural survival movement in China. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth and open-ended conversations over more than a decade, Tenzin Jinba presents the Gyalrong Kuzhap’s life story. The Beggar Lama chronicles his journeys—from Gyalrong to Lhasa, from steadfast Communist to critic of the Chinese...