Revolution and social dislocation under the communist regimes of China and the Soviet Union, followed by the upheavals of reform and modernisation, have been experienced by Tibetan, Mongolian and Siberian people, forcibly integrated into these nation states, as conflict, violence and social disruption. This volume, bringing together case studies from throughout the region, assesses the experiences and legacies of such events. Highlighting the agency of those who shape and manipulate conflict and social order and their historical, cultural and religious resources, the contributors discuss evidence of social continuity, as well as the recreation of social order. Engaging with anthropological debates on conflict and social order, this volume provides an original comparative perspective on both Tibet and Inner Asia.

This book convincingly reassesses the role of political institutions in the introduction of Buddhism under the Tibetan Empire (c. 620-842), showing how relationships formed in the Imperial period underlie many of the unique characteristics of traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Taking original sources as a point of departure, the author persuasively argues that later sources hitherto used for the history of early Tibetan Buddhism in fact project later ideas backward, thus distorting our view of its enculturation. Following the pattern of Buddhism s spread elsewhere in Asia, the early Tibetan imperial court realized how useful normative Buddhist concepts were. This work clearly shows that, while some beliefs and practices per se changed after the Tibetan Empire, the model of socio-political-religious leadership developed in that earlier period survived its demise and still constitutes a significant element in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist religious culture.

The present work, a grammar of Dhimal, fills an important void in the documentation of the vast and ramified Tibeto-Burman language family. Dhimal, a little known and endangered tongue spoken in the lowlands of southeastern Nepal by about 20,000 individuals, is detailed in this work. With data gathered in the village of hiy b r , the author crafts a readable description of the western dialect, using over 1000 examples to illustrate usage. Included in this reference work are seventeen texts, riddles, songs and a Dhimal-English glossary. Joining other recent ground-breaking linguistic descriptions by researchers from the Himalayan Languages Project at Leiden University, this grammar of Dhimal will have lasting scientific value and aid the Dhimal community in preserving their language.

Tibet is known for its broad range of marriage practices, particularly polyandry, where two or more brothers share one wife. With economic development and massive Chinese social and political reforms, including new marriage laws prohibiting plural marriages, polyandry was expected to disappear from Tibetan social lives. This book takes as its starting point the surprising increase in polyandry in Panam valley from the 1980s. It explores married lives in polyandrous houses and develops a theory of a flexible kinship of potentiality through the lens of a farming village in Tibet Autonomous Region.

Muslims in Amdo Tibetan Society: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches offers nine case studies from several academic disciplines. The chapters describe the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity within the Muslim communities of Amdo and illustrate complex social interactions with other Amdo communities. While relations between Han Chinese and Tibetans, and between Han Chinese and Muslims in Qinghai and Gansu, have already attracted scholarly attention, this volume has a special focus on Tibetan-Muslim interactions. These are rarely discussed and if so, then mostly in the contexts of trade relations and conflicts. This volume challenges some established stereotypes of Tibetan-Muslim relations and also highlights new facets of cross-cultural contacts and religious and linguistic influences.

Conflict in a Buddhist Society presents a new way of looking at Tibet under the rule of the Dalai Lamas (1642–1959). Although this era can be clearly delineated as a distinct period in the history of Tibet, many questions remain concerning the specific form of rule established. Author Peter Schwieger attempts to make transparent the complexity and dynamics of the Dalai Lamas’ domination using the work of sociologist Niklas Luhman (1927–1998) as his theoretical starting point. Luhman’s systems theory allows Schwieger to approach Tibetan history and culture as a remarkable effort to create—under times of great conflict and stress and using uncommon means—a stable social and political order. Such a methodology provides the distance needed to move beyond event-based narrative history and understand the structures that made social action possible in Tibet and the operations by which its society as a whole distinguished itself from its environment. Schwieger begins by asking the crucial question of how Tibet’s society dealt with conflict. The chapters that follow answer this question from various perspectives: history and memory; domination; hierarchy; center and periphery; semantics; morality and ethics; ritual; law; and war. Each reveals a different avenue for cross-cutting discourses in the historical and social sciences. Together, they provide a comprehensive picture of how conflicts were portrayed in Tibet society and how the manner in which they were handled stabilized the country for a considerable time but were ultimately unsuccessful in the face of radical upheavals in its environment. Situated at the intersection of systems theory, conflict theory, and Tibetan/Inner Asian history and society, Conflict in a Buddhist Society will be of considerable interest to students and scholars in these areas. Its theoretical rather than narrative-descriptive approach to the history of the three centuries of Dalai Lama rule will be welcomed as wide-ranging and insightful.

· A Space for the Possible: Globalization and English Language Learning for Tibetan Students in China (007-032) by Clothey, Rebecca, and Elena McKinlay · An A mdo Tibetan Pastoralist Family's Lo sar in Stong skor Village by Thurston, Timothy, and Tsering Samdrup · Hail Prevention Rituals and Ritual Practitioners in Northeast Amdo (071-111) by Rdo rje don grub · Pyramid Schemes on the Tibetan Plateau (113-140) by Gonier, Devin, and Rgyal yum sgrol ma · Tibetans and Muslims in Northwest China: Economic and Political Aspects of a Complex Historical Relationship (141-186) by Horlemann, Bianca · Sacred Dairies, Dairymen, and Buffaloes of the Nilgiri Mountains in South India (187-256) by Walker, Anthony · An A mdo Family's Income and Expenditure in 2011 (257-283) by Rdo rje bkra shis, Rta mgrin bkra shis, and Charles Kevin Stuart · Architecture in The bo, 'Brug chu, and Co ne Counties, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu (285-333) by Chos dbying rdo rje · Change, Reputation, and Hair: A Female Rite of Passage in Mtha' ba Village (335-364) by Blo bzang tshe ring, Don 'grub sgrol ma, Gerald Roche, and Charles Kevin Stuart · A College Student (367-386) by 'Phrin las nyi ma · Set Free by Tragedy (387-395) by G.yang mtsho skyid · Who is to Blame? (397-408) by Klu rgyal 'bum · Young Love (409-419) by Bkra shis rab rten · Silent as a Winter Cuckoo (421-426) by Pad+ma dbang chen · QQ Destiny (427-434) by Pad+ma dbang chen · Review - China's Last Imperial Frontier and The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet (437-442) by Entenmann, Robert · Review - Harnessing Fortune (443-448) by Fischler, Lisa C. · Review - Inter-Ethnic Dynamics in Asia (449-453) by Ramirez, Philippe · Review - Spirits of the Place (455-459) by Noseworthy, William B. · Review - Moving Mountains (461-469) by Noseworthy, William B. · Review - The Complete Works of Zhuang Xueben (471-476) by Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, Amy · Review - Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands (477-480) by Wang, Bo · Review - The Sun Rises (481-485 ) by Bender, Mark · Review - Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (Chinese Edition) (487-495) by Yu, Dan Smyer, and Zomkyid Drolma · Review - Labrang Monastery (497-500) by Robinson, Christina Kilby · Asian Highlands Perspectives 21 - All Papers (001-500) by Various

Providing a fresh look at some of the pressing issues of our world today, this collection focuses on experiential and ritualized coping practices in response to a multitude of environmental challenges—cyclones, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, warfare and displacements of peoples and environmental resource exploitation. Eco-cosmological practices conducted by skilled healing practitioners utilize knowledge embedded in the cosmological grounding of place and experiences of place and the landscapes in which such experience is encapsulated. A range of geographic case studies are presented in this volume, exploring Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and South America. With special reference throughout to ritual as a mode of seeking the stabilization, renewal, and continuity of life processes, this volume will be of particular interest to readers working in shamanic and healing practices, environmental concerns surrounding sustainability and conservation, ethnomedical systems, and religious and ritual studies.

Four hundred years ago, indigenous peoples occupied the vast region that today encompasses Korea, Manchuria, the Mongolian Plateau, and Eastern Siberia. Over time, these populations struggled to maintain autonomy as Russia, China, and Japan sought hegemony over the region. Especially from the turn of the twentieth century onward, indigenous peoples pursued self-determination in a number of ways, and new states, many of them now largely forgotten, rose and fell as great power imperialism, indigenous nationalism, and modern ideologies competed for dominance. This atlas tracks the political configuration of Northeast Asia in ten-year segments from 1590 to 1890, in five-year segments from 1890 to 1960, and in ten-year segments from 1960 to 2010, delineating the distinct history and importance of the region. The text follows the rise and fall of the Qing dynasty in China, founded by the semi-nomadic Manchus; the Russian colonization of Siberia; the growth of Japanese influence; the movements of peoples, armies, and borders; and political, social, and economic developmentsÑreflecting the turbulence of the land that was once the worldÕs Òcradle of conflict.Ó Compiled from detailed research in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Mongolian, and Russian sources, the Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia incorporates information made public with the fall of the Soviet Union and includes fifty-five specially drawn maps, as well as twenty historical maps contrasting local and outsider perpectives. Four introductory maps survey the regionÕs diverse topography, climate, vegetation, and ethnicity.

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.