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	<title>The Himalayas and beyond</title>
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	<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org</link>
	<description>The Centre for Himalayan Studies blog</description>
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		<title>SFEMT inaugural conference: Tibetan medicine in Mustang</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/1019</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/1019#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 May 2012 14:24:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[conference / workshop / seminar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mustang]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=1019</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The French Society of Studies of the Tibetan World (Société Française des Études du Monde Tibétain, SFEMT) would like to invite you to its inaugural conference, on Tuesday, 29 May 2012, from 2 to 4 PM: &#8220;Introduction to Tibetan medicine and the renewal of the tradition in Mustang (Nepal)&#8221; by Amchi Tenzin, Tibetan doctor from Mustang. The conference will be in Tibetan, with interpretation by Charles Ramble (EPHE). Venue: INALCO, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris (Métro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand) Salle 3.05 &#160; [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_1040" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 213px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/05/Tashi-Chösang.jpg"><img src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/05/Tashi-Chösang-203x300.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="300" class="size-medium wp-image-1040" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Tashi Chösang, late royal physician of Lo Monthang, 1995 (click to enlarge)</p></div>
<p style="text-align: center">The <strong>French Society of Studies of the Tibetan World</strong><br />
(Société Française des Études du Monde Tibétain, SFEMT)<br />
would like to invite you to its inaugural conference,<br />
on Tuesday, 29 May 2012, from 2 to 4 PM:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">&#8220;<strong>Introduction to Tibetan medicine and the renewal of the tradition in Mustang (Nepal)</strong>&#8221;<br />
by Amchi Tenzin, Tibetan doctor from Mustang.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">The conference will be in Tibetan,<br />
with interpretation by Charles Ramble (EPHE).</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Venue: INALCO, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris<br />
(Métro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand)<br />
Salle 3.05</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">For further information, please contact: sfemt.contact[at]gmail[dot]com</p>
<p>***</p>
<div id="attachment_1027" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 211px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/05/TN-sur-Nilgiri.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1027" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/05/TN-sur-Nilgiri-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">A Mustang amchi gathering medicinal herbs on the slopes of the Nilgiri, 1994</p></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">La <strong>Société Française des Études du Monde Tibétain</strong><br />
a le plaisir de vous inviter à sa conférence inaugurale,<br />
le mardi 29 mai 2012 de 14 à 16h :</p>
<p style="text-align: center">« <strong>Introduction à la médecine tibétaine et renouveau de cette tradition au Mustang (Népal)</strong> »<br />
par Amchi Tenzin, médecin du Mustang.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">La conférence sera en tibétain.<br />
Charles Ramble (EPHE) en assurera la traduction.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Lieu de la conférence : INALCO, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris<br />
(Métro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand)<br />
Salle 3.05</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Renseignements : sfemt.contact[at]gmail[point]com</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Conference on self-immolations in Tibet</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/993</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/993#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:50:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Amdo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conference / workshop / seminar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kham]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tibet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[protest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=993</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Please find below the programme of a two-days international conference on the recent extraordinary sequence (more than thirty occurrences in just over a year) of self-immolations in Tibet. This conference, titled &#8220;Tibet is burning. Self-Immolations in Tibet: Ritual or Political Protest?&#8220;, will be held at the Collège de France, in Paris, on 14-15 May 2012, with speakers from several European and North American universities and research institutions. The conference is organized jointly by the EPHE (École pratique des hautes études), the CNRS/EPHE research team [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/rang-lus-me-mchod.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-996" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/rang-lus-me-mchod.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="219" /></a>Please find below the programme of a two-days international conference on the recent extraordinary sequence (more than thirty occurrences in just over a year) of self-immolations in Tibet. This conference, titled &#8220;<strong>Tibet is burning. Self-Immolations in Tibet: Ritual or Political Protest?</strong>&#8220;, will be held at the <a href="http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/college/index.htm" target="_blank">Collège de France</a>, in <strong>Paris</strong>, on <strong>14-15 May 2012</strong>, with speakers from several European and North American universities and research institutions. The conference is organized jointly by the <a href="http://www.ephe.sorbonne.fr/" target="_blank">EPHE</a> (École pratique des hautes études), the CNRS/EPHE research team <a href="http://www.crcao.fr/" target="_blank">CRCAO</a> (Centre for research on the civilisations of East Asia), and <a href="http://www.inalco.fr/" target="_blank">INALCO</a> (National institute of oriental languages and civilisations).</p>
<p>The provisional programme can be <a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/conf-Tibet-burning_prog-provisoire_mai-2012.pdf" target="_blank">downloaded here</a>.</p>
<p>(See also <a href="http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/941">here</a> for related, recently published materials.)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>International Workshop: Religion and the Courts in India and South Asia</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/972</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/972#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:53:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gilles Tarabout</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[conference / workshop / seminar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[justice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nepal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hinduism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secularism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=972</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The ANR Programme &#8220;Just-India&#8221; (Justice and Governance in Contemporary India and South Asia &#8211; http://www.just-india.net), supported by the Centre for Himalayan Studies, organizes a two day international workshop in Paris on June 18-19, 2012, for debating about how Courts in South Asia deal with religion, in practice. In the case of India, the Constitution provides the framework for total secularism; however, it is not without some contradictions inherited from the nation’s history, and the state is directly involved in various ways in the direct [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_982" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 147px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/IMG_3835_rr2.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-982" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/IMG_3835_rr2.jpg" alt="Temple representatives with a lawyer" width="137" height="103" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Priest &amp; Village Head with Lawyer. Shimla, 2012, D.Berti</p></div>
<p>The ANR Programme &#8220;Just-India&#8221; (Justice and Governance in Contemporary India and South Asia &#8211; <a href="http://www.just-india.net" target="_blank">http://www.just-india.net</a>), supported by the Centre for Himalayan Studies, organizes a two day international workshop in Paris on June 18-19, 2012, for debating about how Courts in South Asia deal with religion, in practice.</p>
<p>In the case of India, the Constitution provides the framework for total secularism; however, it is not without some contradictions inherited from the nation’s history, and the state is directly involved in various ways in the direct administration of different religious institutions. Moreover, the Constitution recognizes a plurality of personal codes, according to religious affiliation. By focusing on the courts’ action and decisions, on the arguments, on the vocabulary in which they are couched, on the legal strategies used by the parties concerned and by the Court, on pressure from society, on the social and political stakes involved in the decisions, or on the long-term consequences of rulings, the aim of this workshop is to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the judiciary in the effective implementation of the Constitution’s secular ideal.</p>
<p>For more information: <a href="http://www.just-india.net/?q=node/225" target="_blank">http://www.just-india.net/?q=node/225</a></p>
<p>Organizers:</p>
<p>Gilles Tarabout: gtarabout(at)free.fr</p>
<p>Raphaël Voix: raphael.voix(at)gmail.com</p>
<p>Daniela Berti: dberti(at)vjf.cnrs.fr</p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>“Kham Project” receives support from the European Research Council</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/964</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/964#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:25:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Stéphane Gros</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Areas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Disciplines / approaches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnicity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kham]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kinship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Major topics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Research posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tibet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=964</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Stéphane Gros has been awarded a Starting Independent Researcher Grant from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant)[1] for his project “Territories, Communities and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands (China),” hosted at the Centre for Himalayan Studies (CNRS). The focus of this research programme is the area of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands situated within the People’s Republic of China, and referred to as Khams by the Tibetans who make up most of the population there. Kham, however, has no administrative unity and is now [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Stéphane Gros has been awarded a <em>Starting Independent Researcher Grant</em> from the European Research Council (<a title="http://erc.europa.eu/" href="http://erc.europa.eu/" target="_blank">ERC</a><em> </em>Starting Grant)<a title="" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> for his project “Territories, Communities and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands (China),” hosted at the Centre for Himalayan Studies (CNRS).</p>
<p>The focus of this research programme is the area of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands situated within the People’s Republic of China, and referred to as <em>Khams</em> by the Tibetans who make up most of the population there. Kham, however, has no administrative unity and is now divided between the provinces of Sichuan to the east, Yunnan to the south and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west, Qinghai and Gansu to the north. How, then, does one define this entity called Kham, especially since in the course of history it has never strictly corresponded to any administrative unit or coherent whole? How does one ultimately consider this land of encounters, a place of <em>métissage</em> (cultural exchanges) where so many particularisms emerge?</p>
<div id="attachment_966" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 644px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/Carte_Kham1.jpg"><img class="wp-image-966 " src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/Carte_Kham1.jpg" alt="" width="634" height="402" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Map of Tibetan inhabited areas in RPC, showing the Kham region</p></div>
<p>Addressing a regional area largely overlooked by Western research in social science, this project brings together junior and more senior researchers to form a leading team, strengthen exchanges with Chinese partners, and produce a strong network of international collaboration. Rooted in a geographical area that is of interest to Sinologists, Tibetologists, anthropologists, historians, linguists and geographers, this research programme represents a rare opportunity to combine varied efforts to trigger, in a multidisciplinary manner, strong dynamics involving the collection of materials of investigation in the field, as well as the use of archives. The choice of the object of study will lead to working at the junction of cultural areas and determine a regional originality without necessarily disconnecting it from the larger units with which Kham is associated.</p>
<p>The research to be conducted within this programme will contribute fresh, first-hand material concerning the socio-cultural diversity of Kham, and will highlight a number of trade, family and religious networks that, throughout history, have forced us to consider this region as a space made up of a set of multiple centres linked by communication and exchange processes: a node of a reticulated space rather than a finished and clearly defined space. This commits us to considering this region through its successive fragmentations and aggregations in its relationship with the neighbouring centres of power, Central Tibet (Lhasa) to the west, and China to the east (Sichuan) and south (Yunnan). Thus, a particular focus of this project is to delve into the complexities of Tibetan society in China and document the internal diversity of the Kham region.</p>
<p>This research programme will more specifically provide new materials on four complementary cross-disciplinary themes: 1) trade and commerce, 2) ethnicity, religion and local identities, 3) political entities and social organization, and 4) representations and cultural politics, each of which in its own way will improve our understanding of the particular historical, social and political context of the Kham region. Following a multi-tiered and multi-scalar approach, with an emphasis on networks, the team will enhance work on historical mapping.</p>
<p>Each of these themes is but one aspect of the overall object of study, and each will shed light on specific processes and contribute to the understanding of the issue at the core of this project: analysing what may constitute Kham’s originality and combined unity and diversity both in the past and the present.</p>
<p>As the project unfolds, further description about the key issues that we seek to address will be posted with the hope to provide an opportunity for exchange of ideas with the larger community of interested scholars. A dedicated website will soon come into existence to present a fuller description of the project, and later on make research findings accessible to the wider community of researchers as well as the general public.</p>
<p>Please contact <a href="mailto:sgros@vjf.cnrs.fr">Stéphane Gros</a> for more information about the project.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div>
<p><a title="" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> The <a href="http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ideas/home_en.html">IDEAS programme</a>, run by the European Research Council (ERC), aims to fund scholarly projects across science, engineering, the humanities and social sciences.</p>
</div>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Self-immolation as protest in Tibet</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/941</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/941#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:05:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Amdo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kham]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[publications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tibet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[monasticism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ngawa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[protest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=941</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Special issue of the journal Cultural Anthropology on the self-immolations in Tibet, co-edited by Carole McGranahan and Ralph Litzinger, published on 9 April 2012, http://www.culanth.org/?q=node%2F526 Tibet has no history of self-immolation as sacrifice, religious offering, or political protest. Yet, in the last year alone, roughly thirty-five Tibetans have set themselves on fire. The overwhelming majority of self-immolators are inside Tibet, in the People’s Republic of China, and almost exclusively in northwestern Sichuan and southeastern Qinghai provinces (corresponding to the Tibetan regions of northern Kham [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_942" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 208px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/PaldenChoetso.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-942" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/04/PaldenChoetso-198x300.jpg" alt="" width="198" height="300" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Palden Choetso, self-immolated on 3 November 2011</p></div>
<p>Special issue of the journal <em>Cultural Anthropology</em> on the self-immolations in Tibet, co-edited by Carole McGranahan and Ralph Litzinger, published on 9 April 2012, <a href="http://www.culanth.org/?q=node%2F526" target="_blank">http://www.culanth.org/?q=node%2F526</a></p>
<blockquote><p>Tibet has no history of self-immolation as sacrifice, religious offering, or political protest. Yet, in the last year alone, roughly thirty-five Tibetans have set themselves on fire. The overwhelming majority of self-immolators are inside Tibet, in the People’s Republic of China, and almost exclusively in northwestern Sichuan and southeastern Qinghai provinces (corresponding to the Tibetan regions of northern Kham and southern Amdo). In this special issue of <em>Cultural Anthropology</em>, we collectively ask why. Why are so many Tibetans resorting to the singular act of setting the body on fire? What combination of cultural, historical, political, and/or religious reasons inspire these acts?</p></blockquote>
<p>Read more: <a href="http://www.culanth.org/?q=node%2F526" target="_blank">http://www.culanth.org/?q=node%2F526</a></p>
<p>[<em>30 April 2012</em>: see also here for a <a href="http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/993">related announcement</a>.]</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Les nomades du Ladakh – ouvrage et film</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/926</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/926#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:08:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>pascale dollfus</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Changthang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[films]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ladakh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[publications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social order/dynamics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kharnak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nomadism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pastoralism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sedentarization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=926</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Avant de lire Les Bergers du Fort Noir. Nomades du Ladakh (Himalaya occidental) par Pascale Dollfus publié par la Société d’ethnologie (Nanterre) et annoncé pour juin 2012 (voir ici), une première rencontre avec la communauté nomade de Kharnak qui vit à plus de 4200 mètres d’altitude aux confins du plateau tibétain et, chaque automne désormais,  voit plusieurs de ses membres quitter les hauts plateaux pour aller s’installer en ville. Rester à Kharnak, coupé de ses enfants,  ou vendre son troupeau et partir ? La nuit [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Couverture-livre.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-928" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Couverture-livre-212x300.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="300" /></a>Avant de lire <em>Les Bergers du Fort Noir. Nomades du Ladakh (Himalaya occidental)</em> par Pascale Dollfus publié par la Société d’ethnologie (Nanterre) et annoncé pour juin 2012 (<a href="http://www.lcdpu.fr/">voir ici</a>), une première rencontre avec la communauté nomade de Kharnak qui vit à plus de 4200 mètres d’altitude aux confins du plateau tibétain et, chaque automne désormais,  voit plusieurs de ses membres quitter les hauts plateaux pour aller s’installer en ville.</p>
<p>Rester à Kharnak, coupé de ses enfants,  ou vendre son troupeau et partir ?</p>
<p><em>La nuit nomade, </em>un film sensible et intime de Marianne Chaud qui suit, au plus près, deux familles dans leurs rêves et leurs hésitations ….  sans commentaire ni voix off (mais avec des sous-titres !)</p>
<p>Du 4 au 10 avril 2012 au Cinéma Reflet Médecis, 3 rue Champollion 75005 Paris.<br />
<a href="http://www.zed.fr/lanuitnomade/">Cliquer ici</a> pour le dossier de presse du film.</p>
<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/lanuitnomade_affiche.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-927" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/lanuitnomade_affiche-224x300.jpg" alt="" width="224" height="300" /></a></p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Repkong rituals of offering to worldly deities</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/838</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/838#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:23:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Amdo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[publications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Qinghai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mediumship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[place deity cult]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Repkong]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/?p=838</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Repkong county, in eastern Amdo (north-east Tibet / Qinghai province), is well known for its cults of place gods, known as luröl (Amdo: ləru [klu-rol][1]) — among other aspects (see for instance here, here and here). Indeed, for some scholars in Tibetan studies, the name of Repkong may have first been put on the map by studies focusing on these quite remarkable village rituals.[2] These rituals, although not devoid of continuities with other Tibetan cults of place gods (a term understood here to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_879" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 338px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/sakyi-lurol.jpg"><img class="size-large wp-image-879" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/sakyi-lurol-328x500.jpg" alt="" width="328" height="500" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Luröl, Sakyi village, 2003 (click to enlarge)</p></div>
<p>The Repkong county, in eastern Amdo (north-east Tibet / Qinghai province), is well known for its cults of place gods, known as <em>luröl</em> (Amdo: <em>ləru</em> [klu-rol][1]) — among other aspects (see for instance <a href="http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/121" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/85" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/630" target="_blank">here</a>). Indeed, for some scholars in Tibetan studies, the name of Repkong may have first been put on the map by studies focusing on these quite remarkable village rituals.[2] These rituals, although not devoid of continuities with other Tibetan cults of place gods (a term understood here to range from mountain gods of regional stature to more local earth or water spirits), are nevertheless strikingly different in several ways: they include processions of representations of the gods carried in palanquins from house to house; the rituals&#8217; &#8220;masters of ceremonies&#8221;, so the speak, are spirit-mediums, who go in and out of possession for several days at length; the place gods are pleased by the offering, in particular, of collective dance performances called here &#8220;games&#8221; (<em>tsemo</em> [rtsed-mo]); and male villagers participating in the ritual (or the mediums themselves) may slash their foreheads or for instance pierce their cheeks with skewers as blood offerings to some of these deities.</p>
<p>The exoticness of the phenomenon, as probably perceived initially by many a Tibetologist, is to be understood in the context of the particular location of Repkong, which is situated on the complex multi-ethnic northeastern border of the Tibetan cultural world. Thus the Monguor (or Mangghuer) living in the Minhe area to the northeast of Repkong practice communal rituals called Nadun, that show substantial commonalities (palanquin processions, presence of a medium embodying the deity, and piercing his cheeks with skewers, collective dance offerings, with <em>nadu</em> meaning &#8220;play&#8221; or &#8220;dance&#8221;[3]) but also important distinctions with the Repkong <em>luröl</em>. More generally, carrying gods&#8217; palanquins in processions in village communal rituals, while conspicuously absent — as far as I can tell — from the Tibetan ethnographic record (beyond the Repkong / northeast Amdo case), is a common feature of Chinese popular religion. Some of the gods worshipped in the <em>luröl</em> rituals are unmistakeably of Chinese origin.[4] All of this however is inscribed in a ritual, cosmological and social setting that in many ways remains distinctively Tibetan: the overarching ritual theme is the cult of the mountain gods; these gods&#8217; primary identifications, in local perceptions, are the common Tibetan ones, namely <em>yül-lha</em> [yul-lha] (god of the village or local territory) or <em>shipdak</em> [gzhi-bdag] (owner of the ground / master of the locality), etc.</p>
<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Khartsegyal_JiktenChötö_couverture.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-880" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Khartsegyal_JiktenChötö_couverture-205x300.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="300" /></a>A recent, very substantial and most welcome addition to the scholarship on the Repkong <em>luröl</em> is the 2009 book-length study by Khartsegyal, <em>&#8216;Jig-rten mchod-bstod: mDo-smad Reb-gong-gyi drug-pa&#8217;i lha-zla chen-mo&#8217;i mchod-pa dang &#8216;brel-ba&#8217;i dmangs-srol rig-gnas lo-rgyus skor-gyi zhib-&#8217;jug</em> (&#8220;Offerings and praises to the worldly [gods and spirits]: Research into the offering rituals of the great divine sixth month of Amdo Repkong and related popular traditions, culture and history&#8221;).[5] Khartsegyal, a local official and an erudite specialist of the question, is a native of Sakyi village, the site of one of the major <em>luröl</em> of Repkong. He brings to this study his intimate knowledge of the phenomenon, strong sympathetic curiosity for the domain commonly designated as the &#8220;popular traditions&#8221; (<em>mangsöl</em> [dmangs-srol]), and the fruits of a decade of passionate research (carried out alongside his official duties). The book brings a particular wealth of detail in the account of the pantheon and the relevant mythology; it also provides an overview of each of the different <em>luröl</em> rituals within Repkong, as well as (tantalizingly brief) glimpses for instance into the complex dynamics surrounding the emergence of new mediums and the development of their ability to give voice to the &#8220;god&#8217;s speech&#8221; (<em>lhake</em> [lha-skad]). This work has received distinctions in China, and Khartsegyal&#8217;s talks on this topic on the Qinghai public television have received an enthusiastic reception. I am attaching (<a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/khartsegyal.jikten-chötö_TOC.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>) a copy of the table of contents.</p>
Notes:<ol class="footnotes"><li id="footnote_0_838" class="footnote">Some authors, e.g. Buffetrille, prefer the spelling [glu-rol].</li><li id="footnote_1_838" class="footnote">Important works regarding major religious figures or intellectuals from Repkong predated however the burgeoning in the 1990s of Western academic interest in the <em>luröl</em>; see for instance Heather Stoddard&#8217;s noted biography of Gedün Chöpel: Stoddard, H., 1985, <em>Le mendiant de l&#8217;Amdo</em>, Société d&#8217;ethnographie, Paris.</li><li id="footnote_2_838" class="footnote">Roche G., 2011, <em>Nadun: Ritual and the Dynamics of Cultural Diversity in Northwest China&#8217;s Hehuang Region</em>. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of International Business and Asian Studies, Griffith University.</li><li id="footnote_3_838" class="footnote">See for instance Buffetrille, K. 2002, Qui est Khri ka&#8217;i yul lha ? Dieu tibétain du terroir, dieu chinois de la littérature ou de la guerre ? Un problème d&#8217;identité divine en A mdo, in <em>Territory and Identity in Tibet and the Himalayas</em>, K. Buffetrille &amp; H. Diemberger (eds.), Brill, Leiden, pp. 135-58.</li><li id="footnote_4_838" class="footnote">Reb-gong-pa mKhar-rtse-rgyal, 2009, <em>&#8216;Jig-rten mchod-bstod: mDo-smad Reb-gong-gyi drug-pa&#8217;i lha-zla chen-mo&#8217;i mchod-pa dang &#8216;brel-ba&#8217;i dmangs-srol rig-gnas lo-rgyus skor-gyi zhib-&#8217;jug</em>, Krung-go&#8217;i bod-rig-pa dpe-skrun-khang, Pe-cing.</li></ol>&nbsp;
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		<title>Critical Han Studies</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/833</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/833#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:22:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Stéphane Gros</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnicity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[publications]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[It is a pleasure to announce the arrival of &#8220;Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation and Identity of China&#8217;s Majority,&#8221; now out on University of California Press (on the GAIA series). The volume was edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, James Leibold, Stéphane Gros, and Eric Vanden Bussche. This volume offers eleven essays that interrogate what it means to be &#8220;Han&#8221; in China, both historically and today. Constituting over ninety percent of China&#8217;s population, Han is not only the largest ethnonational group in that country [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Critical-Han_Cover1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-835" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Critical-Han_Cover1-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" /></a>It is a pleasure to announce the arrival of &#8220;Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation and Identity of China&#8217;s Majority,&#8221; now out on University of California Press (on the GAIA series). The volume was edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, James Leibold, Stéphane Gros, and Eric Vanden Bussche.</p>
<p>This volume offers eleven essays that interrogate what it means to be &#8220;Han&#8221; in China, both historically and today. Constituting over ninety percent of China&#8217;s population, Han is not only the largest ethnonational group in that country but also one of the largest categories of human identity in world history. In this pathbreaking volume, a multidisciplinary group of scholars examine this ambiguous identity, one that shares features with, but cannot be subsumed under, existing notions of ethnicity, culture, race, nationality, and civilization.</p>
<p>In an effort to initiate a conversation about this largely unexamined category of identity, the &#8220;Critical Han Studies Conference and Workshop&#8221; was organized by Thomas S. Mullaney, James Leibold, Stéphane Gros, and Eric Vanden Bussche. Hosted at Stanford University in April 2008, the conference brought together more than fifty scholars from eight countries. It is out of this academic collaboration that the present volume of essays has been produced, not so much as a microcosm of the conference, but rather as an initial wave of new scholarship on the Han category designed to define certain key issues and to help inspire further research, and represent the first step towards the creation of a new area of analysis, one provisionally titled &#8220;Critical Han Studies.&#8221;</p>
<p>The UC Press GAIA series offers the advantage of an <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/07s1h1rf%20" target="_blank">open-access online edition</a>.  (For the print edition, please see the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780984590988" target="_blank">publisher’s website</a>.  If you would like to circulate the information, you can <a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Mullaney-Flyer1.pdf">download a flyer</a>.)</p>
<p>Table of Contents</p>
<p>Critical Han Studies: Introduction and Prolegomenon, by Thomas S. Mullaney<br />
01. Recentering China: The Cantonese In and Beyond the Han, by Kevin Carrico<br />
02. On Not Looking Chinese: Does “Mixed-Race” Decenter the Han from Chineseness? By Emma J. Teng<br />
03. “Climate’s Moral Economy”: Geography, Race and the Han in Early Republican China, by Zhihong Chen<br />
04. Good Han, Bad Han: The Moral Parameters of Ethnopolitics in China, by Uradyn E. Bulag<br />
05. Understanding the Snowball Theory of the Han Nationality, by Xu Jieshun<br />
06. Antiquarian as Ethnographer: Han Ethnicity in Early China Studies, by Tamara Chin<br />
07. The Han Joker in the Pack: Some Issues of Culture and Identity from the Minzu Literature, by Nicholas Tapp<br />
08. Hushuo: The Northern Other and the Naming of the Han Chinese, by Mark Elliott<br />
09. From Subjects to Han: The Rise of Han as Identity in Nineteenth-Century Southwest China, by C. Patterson Giersch<br />
10. Searching for Han: Early Twentieth-Century Narratives of Chinese Origins and Development, by James Leibold<br />
11. Han at Minzu’s Edges: What Critical Han Studies Can Learn from China’s “Little Tibet,” by Chris Vasantkumar</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Digital Himalaya &#8211; An Online Archive</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/700</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/700#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:07:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[art history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arunachal Pradesh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bhutan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bumthang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dolakha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnicity]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Himalayas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kaski]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mustang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nagaland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nepal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oral literature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Tibet]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[digital]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gyantse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lhasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sera]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Digital Himalaya Project is a collection, storage and dissemination portal for scholarly content and research findings about the Himalayan region. The project was established in December 2000 in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge with three objectives: 1. to preserve in a digital medium anthropological materials from the Himalayan region that were fast degenerating in their current form, including film, photographs, audio recordings, field notes, maps and rare publications; 2. to make these resources available over the web so [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/DH_logo.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-821" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/DH_logo-300x187.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="187" /></a>The <a href="http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/" target="_blank">Digital Himalaya Project</a> is a collection, storage and dissemination portal for scholarly content and research findings about the Himalayan region. The project was established in December 2000 in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge with three objectives:</p>
<p>1. to preserve in a digital medium anthropological materials from the Himalayan region that were fast degenerating in their current form, including film, photographs, audio recordings, field notes, maps and rare publications;</p>
<p>2. to make these resources available over the web so that researchers and students might use them;</p>
<p>3. to make these resources available on DVD to the descendants of the people from whom the materials were collected.</p>
<p>Thanks to financial support secured in the United Kingdom and later in the United States, and through lasting partnerships with established digital library initiatives at the universities of Virginia and Cornell, we soon reached and then exceeded our initial goals. The Digital Himalaya website now connects a worldwide user community to a vast corpus of digital resources from or about India, Nepal, Bhutan and the Tibetan plateau for free and easy download—without payment, subscription or password.</p>
<p>From August 2011, the Digital Himalaya Project is co-located at Yale and Cambridge universities.</p>
<p><strong>Successes: From Offset to Online</strong></p>
<p>While Digital Himalaya began as a strategy for collecting and protecting the products of colonial-era ethnographic collections on the Himalayas—for posterity and for access by heritage communities—the project has now become a collaborative digital publishing environment, bringing a new collection online every month, with close to half a million web visitors since its establishment in 2000.</p>
<p>The website has grown from being a static homepage with occasional updates to a dynamic content delivery platform for over 40GB of archival census data, maps, films, audio recordings, photographs, journals and scanned books. We have also witnessed dramatic changes in the profile of visitors to our site: from (overwhelmingly) members of European and American universities in the early years, to a well networked, global and digitally literate user community, in particular from South and Inner Asia.</p>
<p>Almost all of our digitisation and scanning is now conducted in Nepal, dramatically reducing operating costs and increasingly productivity. At present, our funding no longer comes from national funding councils in the UK and USA, but through Web referrals and from individual or institutional donations around the world. We are now supported by people and organisations who recognise our work and want to contribute to it.</p>
<p><strong>Improved Digital Access to Rare Collections: Overcoming the Digital Divide</strong></p>
<p>There appear to be two reasons for the high number of web visitors that we have from South Asia:</p>
<p>(1) Many users in South Asia have leapfrogged in terms of their access to and the affordability of new technology, moving from dialup to broadband services in a just a few years. A generation of ‘born digital’ young Indians, Nepalis, Bhutanese and Tibetans are now downloading and using our content.</p>
<p>(2) A consequence of the poor state of university and public libraries in parts of Asia is that students and teachers often have limited access to print collections and catalogues—even of material that was published in their own country. Weather conditions detrimental to collections and under-resourced libraries combine to make free, online access particularly attractive to scholars based in South Asia.</p>
<p>These factors have helped Digital Himalaya become a core resource for researchers <em>in</em>, <em>from </em>or<em> studying</em> the Himalayan region.</p>
<p><strong>‘JSTOR for the Himalayas’ and other Online Collections</strong></p>
<p>Digital Himalaya is the online host (or co-host) for 40 journals, magazines and publications of Himalayan studies. Some publications are regular and peer-reviewed, others are occasional and poorly distributed, while a number are defunct or orphaned publications with a large number of back issues.</p>
<p>Along with over 300,000 pages of scanned and indexed print matter in PDF format, we host a searchable database of the Census of Nepal (2001); over 2,500 historical and contemporary maps of the region; hundreds of hours of film and video of Bhutan, Nepal, India and Tibet from the 1930s to the present; and a growing collection of contemporary audio recordings of Himalayan musical traditions. Many of these collections have come to the project because depositors, editors, publishers and members of indigenous communities have sought us out as their online home of choice. In April 2011, two new collections were offered to Digital Himalaya: <em>Postal Himal</em> (the Quarterly of the Nepal and Tibet Study Circle) and a unique archive of unpublished bird reports collected by Carol and Tim Inskipp, the foremost ornithologists working in Nepal. The project will require increased staff capacity and must augment its resources to accession such donations in an effective and timely manner.</p>
<p><strong>Digital Himalaya at Yale</strong></p>
<p>What began as an academic research project in 2000 has become a vast online portal for hosting and disseminating knowledge about the Himalayas to a demanding and fast-growing user base. At Yale, Digital Himalaya is extending and deepening its scanning of journals and publications; embeding the project in the structure of the university library by migrating all datasets to a digital repository for long-term sustainability; and working with IT professionals and designers to restructure the website to enhance the user experience and ensure that these unique resources continue to serve our diverse, global user community.</p>
<p>Please contact <a href="http://markturin.commons.yale.edu/" target="_blank">Mark Turin</a> for more information about the project.</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: medium"><a href="http://www.digitalhimalaya.com">www.digitalhimalaya.org</a></span></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Les minorités de Chine à l&#8217;exposition universelle de Shanghai</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/788</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/788#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:56:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Aurélie Névot</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnicity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Research posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yunnan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[city]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minorities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shanghai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Expo]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Par le biais de l’exposition universelle organisée à Shanghai en 2010 sur le thème : « Better city, better life » (chengshi rang shenghuo geng mei hao 城市让生活更美好), la Chine a montré comment elle conçoit l&#8217; « universel » en appliquant aux pays étrangers des concepts ancestraux propres à sa culture. Elle appréhende et assimile l’international à travers le prisme de la ville écologique. C&#8217;est donc à la fois la perception de l&#8217;universel par la Chine et de la Chine telle qu&#8217;elle se donne [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: justify"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/P1010339.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-789" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/P1010339-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>Par le biais de l’exposition universelle organisée à Shanghai en 2010 sur le thème : « Better city, better life » (<em>chengshi rang shenghuo geng mei hao</em> 城市让生活更美好), la Chine a montré comment elle conçoit l&#8217; « universel » en appliquant aux pays étrangers des concepts ancestraux propres à sa culture. Elle appréhende et assimile l’international à travers le prisme de la ville écologique. C&#8217;est donc à la fois la perception de l&#8217;universel par la Chine et de la Chine telle qu&#8217;elle se donne à voir au monde qui était observable en visitant le Pavillon « vie de la ville » (<em>chengshi shengming guan</em> 城市生命馆), le Pavillon des Urbains (<em>chengshi ren guan</em> 城市人馆), ou encore le Pavillon de la ville et de la planète (<em>chengshi diqiu guan</em> 城市地球馆).<br />
La Chine s&#8217;inscrit officiellement et symboliquement dans l&#8217;universel en reprenant le vocabulaire unificateur et nationaliste qu&#8217;elle appliquait jusqu’ici pour parler de ses propres populations (et ce, depuis deux millénaires) pour désormais étendre son emploi aux nations étrangères : la ville sert ainsi de prétexte, d&#8217;objet/thème utopique, virtuel et imaginaire pour parvenir à l’harmonie universelle et se projeter dans l&#8217;avenir, lequel apparaît explicitement basé sur l&#8217;« Harmonie » et l’« unité » associées à l’idée de « différence » (la maxime confucéenne : « dans l’Harmonie bien que différent » <em>he er bu tong</em> 和而不同, et son précepte corrélatif (et homophone) : « unis bien que différent », <em>he er bu tong</em> 合而不同 étant les maîtres-mots de l’exposition universelle).<br />
Dans ce cadre, les populations minoritaires de Chine étaient logiquement absentes. Rien ne s’y référait puisque la problématique était focalisée sur la perception de l’Autre externe (universel/international) plutôt que sur l’Autre interne, associé au local et au <em>neiguo</em> 内国 (pays intérieur). Mais les minorités s’avèrent tout aussi invisibles à l’intérieur du Pavillon national de la Chine (<em>Zhongguo guojia guan</em>中国国家馆). Et cette absence-là est très étonnante et <em>quasi</em> non familière pour qui travaille sur les « questions minoritaires » en Chine, et ce d’autant plus que l’architecture du pavillon évoque cette multiplicité, les 56 encorbellements (dougong斗拱), sur lesquels repose la structure du bâtiment, symbolisant les 56 « nationalités » du pays officiellement répertoriées.<br />
D’ordinaire, en effet, la diversité des populations chinoises est mise en avant à l’intérieur de toute construction officielle, car cette hétérogénéité constitue la quintessence même de l’État dont la première ligne de la constitution proclame que la Chine est un pays unifié et multinational (<em>tongyi duominzu guojia</em> 统一多民族国家). Au cours de l’Exposition universelle, une nouvelle « place » a donc été prêtée aux minorités : sur elles « repose » la Chine toute entière et son avenir utopique. L’observation de leur mise en exposition au sein du Pavillon des provinces chinoises unies (<em>Zhongguo shengqu lianhe guan</em> 中国省区联合馆), situé au-dessous du pavillon de la Chine et constituant le socle même de cet édifice, laisse en effet apparaître que c’est un nouveau statut qui leur est octroyé en ce qu&#8217;elles réalisent l’utopie universelle <em>via</em> l’écolo-urbanisme, c’est-à-dire, dans le vocabulaire chinois, l’« urbanisation harmonieuse » <em>hexie chengshi</em> 和谐城市.<br />
Le Yunnan rassemblant le plus grand nombre de minorités chinoises (on y en compte 26), ces dernières étaient logiquement évoquées dans le pavillon consacré à cette province. Toutefois, elles n’avaient pas le premier rôle puisqu’il devait avant tout être question de la ville. Les villes furent donc une nouvelle fois placées au premier plan, mais dans un cadre très différent de celui des mégalopoles chinoises de la côte est (comme dans les Pavillons de Hong-Kong, de Macao, de Pékin). En effet, la symbiose entre ville et nature était ici soulignée, il ne s’agissait pas d’une utopie dans ce cas (exposée par le biais de films futuristes dans les pavillons susmentionnés), mais d’une « réalité ». Les villes du Yunnan étaient ainsi présentées par le biais de photographies, diffusées sous la forme de diaporamas, au sein d’écrins de verdure et de réserves naturelles nationales. Les minorités faisant partie du paysage, le mot de « nature », <em>ziran </em>自然, était mis à l’honneur les concernant. Par ailleurs, « héritage culturel mondial », « patrimoine culturel immatériel » et « sites éco-touristiques » étaient des expressions récurrentes. Les minorités étaient en outre présentées célébrant leurs fêtes rituelles en milieu urbain. Dans le même temps, un diaporama était consacré à leurs villages « ancestraux » afin d’illustrer le rapport étroit et « charmant » des hommes avec la nature. À la fois associées à l’urbanité contemporaine et ancienne, les populations minoritaires sont – si l’on suit cette idée – logiquement dissociées de « l&#8217;avenir urbain » puisqu’elles illustrent, dans le temps présent, l’utopie universelle projetée dans les autres pavillons.<br />
Les populations transformées par l&#8217;urbanisation suite aux séismes de 2008 et de 2010, au Sichuan et au Gansu – mis en scène dans des films (projetés dans le Pavillon de la Chine et dans le Pavillon des Urbains) et sur de nombreuses photographies (notamment dans le Pavillon du Gansu) –, ont par ailleurs été largement évoquées dans le Pavillon des provinces unies. Ces cataclysmes, qui engendrèrent de vraies tragédies, étaient toutefois traités non pas tant sous leur aspect dramatique que sous leur aspect « moteur » : ils ont donné accès à la modernité, à l’urbanité. C’est qu’un tel désordre cosmologique est assimilable en Chine à un dérèglement de l&#8217;univers et qu’il peut par là-même être associé à une mauvaise maîtrise du pouvoir ; autrement dit, l’ « harmonie » universelle – au sens proprement chinois – est mise à mal, et les gouvernants, qui en sont les garants, devraient être déchus afin de réordonnancer l’univers. Mais alors comment panser les plaies du cosmos et des humains ? Reconstruire une ville modèle, loger les sans-abris : au Sichuan et au Gansu, des villes nouvelles ont été créées pour les victimes du séisme (en majorité ressortissant à des minorités). Selon cette idée, un nouvel ordre est alors établi et l’Harmonie restituée, et ces minorités, urbanisées, ont un rôle emblématique puisqu’elles participent désormais à l&#8217;utopie nationale et universelle : elles sont assimilées à la mouvance internationale.<br />
Finalement, on assiste à un profond bouleversement des perspectives chinoises : avec sa façon si particulière d&#8217;appréhender l&#8217;Autre et de l&#8217;assimiler à elle, la Chine est en train de perpétuer son inaliénable mouvement unitaire et différentiel, tout à la fois, mais désormais à l&#8217;échelle de la planète. Tourné vers l&#8217;international, le pays opère une sorte de translation intellectuelle, la ville étant la pierre angulaire où tout se joue. Et si, selon ces conceptions, la cité écologique est l&#8217;avenir, les ethnies renvoient à cette utopie. Elles sont en cela indispensables, car représentatives d&#8217;un « temps écologique ». Elles sont exemplaires de ce qui est à l’état le plus proche de la nature. Dès lors, l’idée de développement, si chère à la pensée marxiste, n’a plus lieu d’être, et les célèbres stades : communisme primitif, esclavage, féodalité, capitalisme, socialisme, ne sont plus d’actualité. Les nationalités, « anhistoriques » sont représentatives d’un idéal, précisément celui de : « Better city, better life ». Les minorités chinoises ne sont donc pas « hors-sujet » ; leur singulière et discrète saillance se révèle être riche de sens, et leur mise en exposition s’avère bien au cœur de la problématique nationale et internationale.</p>
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		<title>A Grammar of the Thangmi Language</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/728</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/728#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:42:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Dolakha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linguistics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sikkim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sindhupalcok]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darjeeling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Khasa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nyalam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thangmi]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A noteworthy publication: linguist and anthropologist Mark Turin&#8217;s impressive 996-page study of the Thangmi language (in 2 volumes) is now out, in Brill&#8217;s &#8220;Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region&#8221; series: Turin, M., 2012, A grammar of the Thangmi language : With an ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers and their culture, Brill, Leiden; Boston This monograph is a grammar of Thangmi, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalcok in central-eastern Nepal. The language is spoken by upwards of 30,000 people [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Thangmi_Grammar-213x300.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-733" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Thangmi_Grammar-213x300.jpg" alt="" width="213" height="300" /></a>A noteworthy publication: linguist and anthropologist Mark Turin&#8217;s impressive 996-page study of the Thangmi language (in 2 volumes) is now out, in Brill&#8217;s &#8220;Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region&#8221; series:</p>
<p>Turin, M., 2012, <em>A grammar of the Thangmi language : With an ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers and their culture, </em>Brill, Leiden; Boston</p>
<blockquote><p>This monograph is a grammar of Thangmi, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the districts of Dolakha and Sindhupalcok in central-eastern Nepal. The language is spoken by upwards of 30,000 people belonging to an ethnic group of the same name. The Thangmi are one of Nepal’s least documented communities.[1] <a href="http://www.brill.nl/languages-greater-himalayan-region-volume-6-grammar-thangmi-language-2-vols" target="_blank">(Read on&#8230;)</a></p></blockquote>
<p>This publication is the latest (and most extensive to date) of <a href="http://markturin.commons.yale.edu/books/" target="_blank">Mark Turin&#8217;s works</a>.</p>
Notes:<ol class="footnotes"><li id="footnote_0_728" class="footnote">From Brill&#8217;s website, <a href="http://www.brill.nl/languages-greater-himalayan-region-volume-6-grammar-thangmi-language-2-vols" target="_blank">http://www.brill.nl/languages-greater-himalayan-region-volume-6-grammar-thangmi-language-2-vols</a>.</li></ol>&nbsp;
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		<title>Les territoires de l&#8217;eau en Himalaya</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/707</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/707#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:51:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[conference / workshop / seminar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[geography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Himalayas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[borders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[territories]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Dans le cadre de la conférence &#8220;L&#8217;eau et ses territoires en Himalaya&#8221; (Cycle de conférences &#8220;La fin des frontières ?&#8221;) Auditorium de la BULAC (INALCO, Paris) le 20 mars 2012, 18h30-20h30 Intervention de O. Aubriot (CNRS, CEH) L&#8217;eau ne connaît pas les frontières administratives, elle a son propre espace de circulation, s&#8217;écoulant le long des pentes, d&#8217;amont en aval, dans les rivières et pouvant dévaster des espaces entiers. Mais ressource indispensable à tous, l&#8217;eau est appropriée par l&#8217;homme et souvent déviée : l&#8217;écoulement naturel [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center">Dans le cadre de la conférence &#8220;L&#8217;eau et ses territoires en Himalaya&#8221;<br />
(Cycle de conférences &#8220;La fin des frontières ?&#8221;)<br />
Auditorium de la BULAC (INALCO, Paris)<br />
le 20 mars 2012, 18h30-20h30</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><strong>Intervention de O. Aubriot (CNRS, CEH)</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/conference-eau-et-territoires_reduit.jpg"><img class="alignright size-large wp-image-719" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/conference-eau-et-territoires_reduit-353x500.jpg" alt="" width="353" height="500" /></a>L&#8217;eau ne connaît pas les frontières administratives, elle a son propre espace de circulation, s&#8217;écoulant le long des pentes, d&#8217;amont en aval, dans les rivières et pouvant dévaster des espaces entiers. Mais ressource indispensable à tous, l&#8217;eau est appropriée par l&#8217;homme et souvent déviée : l&#8217;écoulement naturel de l&#8217;eau est alors perturbé, à la fois dans l&#8217;espace (en cas de dérivation de l&#8217;eau) ou dans le temps (s&#8217;il y a stockage de la ressource). Par cette appropriation, communautés et Etats définissent de nouveaux territoires de l&#8217;eau. Les enjeux économiques et géopolitiques dominent la scène. Dans ce type de situations, les pays situés en amont sont dans une position privilégiée pour s&#8217;approprier la ressource. Tel est le cas de la Chine qui est en amont de la majorité des fleuves prenant leur source en Himalaya et sur le plateau tibétain, mais point du Népal. Bien que disposant sur son territoire de la majorité des affluents du Gange, ce pays n&#8217;est pas dans une situation privilégiée, notamment face à l&#8217;Inde,  pour tirer profit de sa richesse hydraulique.</p>
<p>L&#8217;objectif de cette présentation est de  décrire les principaux enjeux qui se dessinent autour de l’appropriation de l’eau en Himalaya. Dans une première partie, nous nuancerons le concept de &#8220;l&#8217;Himalaya, château d&#8217;eau de l&#8217;Asie&#8221; en rappelant l&#8217;hétérogénéité du fonctionnement hydrologique des rivières prenant leur source dans cette chaîne. Puis la deuxième partie sera consacrée aux règles coutumières, lois et accords que l&#8217;utilisation de l&#8217;eau a engendrés. Les trois principales rivières, Indus, Gange et Brahmapoutre présentent à cet égard des situations très différentes. Enfin, la troisième partie présentera les controverses que la grande hydraulique (barrages et endiguement des rivières) provoque en Himalaya. On prendra plus particulièrement l&#8217;exemple des aménagements sur la Koshi, affluent du Gange, pour présenter les répercussions de ces infrastructures sur la vie des populations au Népal et en Inde.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Téléchargez ici <a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/2012-03-20-himalaya.pdf">l&#8217;affiche de la conférence</a>.</p>
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		<title>Money and butter: On participation in optional rituals</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/630</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/630#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:00:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Amdo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Research posts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bön]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[collective ritual]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gift]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nyingma]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Repkong]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tantric specialists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[transmission]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vegetarianism]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[In his study of the rituals of Newar Buddhism, although he privileges others categories for his analysis, David Gellner points out that “[t]he first and most important distinction for Newar Buddhists is that between obligatory and optional practices”.[1] It has always struck me that this distinction seems much less prominent in Tibetan discourses; however, it is in no way absent. But what about the analytical purchase of this distinction? Is, say, the optional character of certain rituals something “good to think with”? In what [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In his study of the rituals of Newar Buddhism, although he privileges others categories for his analysis, David Gellner points out that “[t]he first and most important distinction for Newar Buddhists is that between obligatory and optional practices”.[1] It has always struck me that this distinction seems much less prominent in Tibetan discourses; however, it is in no way absent. But what about the analytical purchase of this distinction? Is, say, the optional character of certain rituals something “good to think with”?</p>
<p>In what follows I would like to examine a major type of (typically annual) collective ritual carried out in many parts of Amdo [A-mdo][2] (northeast Tibet). Although one could point to a few somewhat similar gatherings in Tibetan monastic contexts,[3] the specialists considered here are tantrists (Buddhist or Bönpo non-monastic, householder religious specialists, most commonly called <em>ngakpa</em> [sngags-pa] in Tibetan, and most often <em>xön</em> [dpon] in Amdo). These rituals are supra-local (i.e., not small-scale, village community-based) gatherings of religious specialists, who assemble for several days of tantric ritual practice. Significantly, apart from a small number of holders of ritual functions (the vajra-master, the chant master, one or several disciplinarians…), participation in these events is optional.</p>
<p>I would like to look here at an issue that seems to be only very rarely addressed: participation in these rituals being optional, according to what concerns do the religious specialists choose to participate or not? And what do these elements tell us about these specialists and for instance the possible constraints and tensions within which they operate?</p>
<p>The type of response I will be giving is, as current academic trends go, rather uncommon too – maybe because, far (or so one might think) from the existential profundity or symbolic sophistication of things “religious” and “spiritual”, or from the seemingly inherent “relevance” of (gender, postcolonial or other) political or power-centered analyses of religion, it may appear desperately unattractive. Or maybe because it may just seem so “obvious”, and thus not warranting deeper inquiry. I will argue that, quite often, a major factor in the participation, for these religious specialists, is the prospect of receiving a share at the distributions of food and gifts/offerings (<em>gye</em> [’gyed]) that occur at most of these rituals – in other words, yes, a material, economic motivation. I recently told a young Amdo intellectual the theme of the present work I was engaged in, and (I admit this with relief) his immediate reaction was an acknowledgement of relevance: “I see. Not religion according to its theological principles (<em>chö tsennyipa</em> [chos mtshan-nyid-pa]), but what goes on under the name of religion (<em>chö takpawa</em> [chos btag-pa-ba]). [<em>This is probably as close as it gets, in Tibetan, to Leach’s distinction between “philosophical religion” and “practical religion”</em>…[4]] For us [Tibetans], he continued, one cannot write about this, but it’s quite true, this going to rituals in order to get a share (<em>ka len</em> [skal len]).” So let us examine the place of this <em>getting a share</em>.</p>
<p>The (approximately maybe two thousand) tantrists of the Repkong [Reb-kong, Reb-gong] county in Amdo belong primarily, and in roughly comparable numbers, to one or the other of three ritual traditions: two Buddhist, more precisely Nyingma [rNying-ma] ones, and one Bönpo [Bon-po]. The Bönpo tantrists are located in villages scattered throughout various parts of Repkong; as for the two Nyingma traditions, they are present mainly each on one side of the main valley: communities practicing mostly the Minling [sMin-gling] tradition on the (roughly eastern) “shady side” (<em>sip</em> [srib]), and communities associated with the Nyingtik [sNying-thig] tradition on the opposite, western, “sunny side” (<em>nyin</em> [nyin]). Tantrists participate almost exclusively in rituals of their own traditions of training and initiation; thus practice is largely segregated.</p>
<div id="attachment_672" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 510px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Khyunggon-pdt-Mani_large.jpg"><img class="size-large wp-image-672" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/Khyunggon-pdt-Mani_large-500x157.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="157" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Khyung-gön temple during the large Mani ritual, February 2011 (click to enlarge)</p></div>
<p>There are approximately a dozen supra-local annual ritual gatherings of tantrists in Repkong. Two of the largest rituals of the Buddhist tantrists are held in Khyung-gön [Khyung-dgon] temple and Gönlakha [dGon-la-kha] monastery, on the “shady” and “sunny” sides respectively; similar but smaller events are held in smaller areas, within the “shady” side for instance. Finally, one more recent, also very large collective ritual, known as the Shitro [Zhi-khro], based on a very widely practiced ritual tradition, the Karling [Kar-gling] Shitro, brings together tantrists from both sides of the valley. Here, the location varies from year to year, following a five-year cycle of rotation within a fivefold territorial subdivision of Repkong. As for the (religiously more unified) Bönpo tantrists, their own four major annual ritual gatherings are organized along a similar pattern of rotation.[5] All these rituals last typically four or five days, sometimes up to seven. Although they may contain some more spectacular elements like masked dances, processions and so forth, they are primarily of a liturgical character.</p>
<p>What do these ritual gatherings mean for the tantrists? The rituals do not aim in any central way at achieving worldly benefits; they are preeminent occasions of tantric practice centered on a given high tutelary deity: Avalokiteśvara in the major Khyung-gön ritual, Phurwa [Phur-pa] in Gönlakha, etc. The size of the gatherings, their annual character, the prestigious locations, in some cases the presence of a master (<em>lama</em> [bla-ma]), all these factors contribute to make them some of the most, if not often the most, important ritual events of the year for the participants. In particular for strongly religious-minded practitioners, there are clearly (sometimes powerful) religious motivations at play here.</p>
<p>Participation however is also influenced by a whole range of other factors, and in particular by economic considerations. Tantrists, as householders, are most often key income providers for their households, and their engaging (sometimes repeatedly throughout the year) in several-days-long collective rituals has implications for the domestic economy.</p>
<p>For most Repkong households, a yearly activity of crucial economic importance is the caterpillar-fungus (<em>ophiocordyceps sinensis</em>) harvest. The date of the great Shitro ritual was modified in recent years in order to accommodate this activity. Other economic schedules, agricultural or other, may also conflict with fixed annual rituals. For instance, a number of tantrists visit their lay patrons in neighboring areas in order to provide them with ritual services on a roughly annual basis – with slight shifts in timing depending on other factors. In some cases these trips may take up to one or even several months. These commitments, more lucrative and religiously less valued (if not ethically quite problematic – I’ll return to this point in a later post) than the participation in collective rituals, may however remain the priority for many of those tantrists who find themselves faced with this choice.</p>
<div id="attachment_670" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/marka.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-670" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/03/marka-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Preparing the shares of butter (kitchen of Khyung-gön, 2011)</p></div>
<p>In the absence of such major conflicts in the organization of one’s activities, such as in periods of low-intensity economic activity or even relative inactivity, tantrists may still weigh their participation in a supra-local ritual gathering in part according to its economic cost or benefit, in particular if the ritual is held at some distance from their own village. With the development of paved roads and motor transportation in recent decades, travel to the ritual venue has become quicker, but, for all those who cannot use the typical household’s only motorbike on such an occasion, and have to rely on taxis and the like, it comes with a new cost. A major factor in such calculations is the expectation (for most of those rituals) of a distribution among all participants, during the event, of daily lumps of butter (called <em>marka</em> [mar-skal], “share of butter”) and, most importantly, a certain amount of offerings (<em>gye</em>), primarily in the form of money (sometimes along with bricks of tea for instance). <del datetime="2012-03-21T15:26:43+00:00">At a given supra-local ritual</del>Depending on the supra-local ritual considered, the total money offered as <em>gye</em> (depending on the case, by one or several patrons) can range from modest amounts like twenty or so yuan (approx. 2 euros) per officiant – a common figure at the major Khyung-gön ritual – to considerably larger sums, reaching for instance up to 700-800 yuan (approx. 80 euros) at some occurrences of the two largest Bönpo rituals (figures all the more remarkable that these latter rituals are typically very large gatherings, with often several hundred persons receiving a share).</p>
<p>In Tibetan religious culture, and in particular in the ritual practice, large figures have their importance; the size of an event is typically correlated with the religious benefits that it produces. Thus the attendance figures at the tantrists’ large supra-local rituals definitely matter for them. In discussions about participation numbers and current trends in such matters, tantrists often spontaneously identify “money and butter” or, more precisely, the usual level of monetary offerings at a given ritual as a key factor in potential participants’ motivations – at least for a substantial proportion of the tantrists. Many tantrists in their thirties and above mention with a smile that, in their youth, it was the prospect of “getting a share” that drew them to the rituals.</p>
<p>Conversely, the strikingly dwindling numbers of participants in the major Khyung-gön ritual over the last twenty years or so (from five hundred in its heyday of the 1980s to a mere fifty or so actively officiating tantrists in the ritual in 2011) reflect in large part, according to many of my informants, the stagnation of the level of <em>gye</em> offerings in a general context of increasing cost of living. Today, twenty or so yuan does not even adequately cover the cost of transportation for those tantrists coming from the more distant villages of the northern, lower part of Repkong; and thus no-one is really surprised to see that the Mapa [sMad-pa] and Langgya [Gling-rgyal] groups of villages, although known for their substantial numbers of tantrists, are much less represented nowadays at the Khyung-gön event.</p>
<p>A more minor, but commonly acknowledged factor in the interpretation of recent trends like the decline of participation in Khyung-gön, is less economic in nature; like the preceding comments, however, it contributes to providing a decidedly more earthly, or (to use Trainor’s term) “rematerialized”, picture of (Tibetan) Buddhist practice.[6] Following strong recommendations regarding the abstention from, or reduction of, meat consumption by the Dalai Lama in 2006, a number of religious centers throughout Amdo and other Tibetan areas abolished the consumption of meat during religious assemblies. The tantrists assembled in Khyung-gön debated the issue and decided to follow suit… but today, in hindsight, it seems clear to a number of my interlocutors that the absence of meat from the great ritual gathering, which takes place in the first month of the Amdo Tibetan year (a period otherwise marked by much feasting, which is virtually synonymous with the enjoyment of meat), has definitely reduced the attractiveness of the ritual for many tantrists, thus most probably contributing also to the decline in participation.</p>
<p>While I think that these elements provide a welcome corrective or balance to certain current trends in academic (and other) discourses on Tibetan religion, as well as contribute to a more accurate view of the complex dynamics of optional collective rituals, I must emphasize again that I am not in any way reducing religious activity to its economic or material dimensions. A last point may serve to place these dynamics of participation in yet another, this time more sociological, light.</p>
<p>The question of whether boys still at their very early stages of learning the religious tradition of the tantrists, or even yet younger, should be allowed to take place with their elders at the major rituals (or to run and romp around in the temples during these events) has recently been discussed, both in Buddhist and Bönpo circles. In 2010, Alak [A-lags] Khyung-gön, the master associated with the important temple of the same name, decided to impose more rigorous practice conditions, and to forbid the children from entering the temple during the ritual. A highly respected elderly tantrist from Gyawo Gang [rGyal-po sGang] village is said to have voiced his strong regrets about this decision. He himself had first come to Khyung-gön “on the back of his father” (meaning, at a very young age). By coming there repeatedly, year after year, it had become part of him, like a smell that impregnates something; he had grown to like the moment when it was time to go to the Khyung-gön ritual. He also had arguments on religious grounds: all beings entering the great Khyung-gön temple are entering into the presence of Avalokiteśvara (a widespread notion in Repkong); thus the children should not be shooed out, even when they are noisy. Finally, using religious imagery to convey the sociological point underlying his objections, he added that this decision meant the “loss of the accomplishments (<em>ngödrup</em> [dngos-grub])” of the ritual. In effect, the ritual is centered on the production of empowered pills (<em>Mani rilbu</em> [Ma-ni ril-bu]), which are the “accomplishments” (<em>ngödrup</em>) of the ritual. The banning of the children, for this old tantrist, severed the link with the upcoming generation, and therefore boded ill for future participation and, thus, for the future of the great ritual itself. The decision was going to impact an important process of socialization of the young tantrists into ritual practice – a process which had (along with other factors, as we have seen) contributed for many generations to make optional, long liturgical rituals in a cold temple, attractive to young minds.</p>
Notes:<ol class="footnotes"><li id="footnote_0_630" class="footnote">Gellner, D.N., 1992, <em><a href="http://www.mandalabookpoint.com/main_details.php?sid=40&amp;cat=Buddhism" target="_blank">Monk, householder, and Tantric priest : Newar Buddhism and its hierarchy of ritual</a>, </em>Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York (1992: 135; see also figures 14 and 15 on pp. 136-137).</li><li id="footnote_1_630" class="footnote">In order to make the reading of Tibetan terms easier for non-Tibetanists, I provide here simple, relatively standard phonetic transcriptions according to central Tibetan pronunciations, with standard transliteration in square brackets at the first occurrence. For toponyms or Amdo terms not used in central Tibetan, I provide a transcription closer to the Amdo pronunciation.</li><li id="footnote_2_630" class="footnote">See for instance Günchö [dGun-chos] or “Winter dharma session” gatherings, such as <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20101203161011/http://www.qhtb.cn/buddhism/view.jsp?id=171" target="_blank">here</a>.</li><li id="footnote_3_630" class="footnote">Leach, E.R. 1968, Introduction, in <em>Dialectic in Practical Religion</em>, E.R. Leach (ed.),<em> </em>Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1-6 (p. 1).</li><li id="footnote_4_630" class="footnote">Thar, T., 2008, <a href="http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=bonpo%20tantrics%20in%20kokonor%20area&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=0CCIQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fhimalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk%2Fcollections%2Fjournals%2Fret%2Fpdf%2Fret_15_14.pdf&amp;ei=Q3xaT6jsAYTBhAeX3_moBA&amp;usg=AFQjCNFMphwWn05PKH-YF0hcmAyvbGtuIQ&amp;cad=rja" target="_blank">Bonpo Tantrics in Kokonor Area</a>, <em>Revue d&#8217;Etudes Tibétaines</em>, 15, pp. 533-552 (p. 543-544).</li><li id="footnote_5_630" class="footnote">Trainor, K., 1997, <em><a href="http://www.cambridge.org/fr/knowledge/isbn/item1117039/Relics,%20Ritual,%20and%20Representation%20in%20Buddhism/?site_locale=fr_FR" target="_blank">Relics, ritual, and representation in Buddhism : Rematerializing the Sri Lankan <em>Theravāda</em> tradition</a>, </em>Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York.</li></ol>&nbsp;
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		<title>New publications (2): Amdo and Kham</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/587</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/587#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:41:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Nicolas Sihlé</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Amdo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnomusicology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kham]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oral literature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[publications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Derge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kardze]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Minyak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Qiang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[song]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The editors of Asian Highlands Perspectives have recently announced the publication of a further three new volumes (see here for a previous set of recently published volumes). Free downloads are available by following the links below, and at-cost hard copies are available here. &#160; AHP12: Silence in the Valley of Songs: Work Songs from the Sman shod Valley, by Zla ba sgrol ma (ཟླ་བ་སྒྲོལ་མ་) The text and more than a hundred full-page color plates document Tibetan folk music (particularly work songs), and local life [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The editors of <em>Asian Highlands Perspectives</em> have recently announced the publication of a further three new volumes (see <a href="http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/230" target="_blank">here</a> for a previous set of recently published volumes). Free downloads are available by following the links below, and at-cost hard copies are available <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/asianhighlandsperspectives" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/02/Silence_Front_Cover.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-612" src="http://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/428/files/2012/02/Silence_Front_Cover-206x300.jpg" alt="" width="206" height="300" /></a>AHP12: <a href="http://www.plateauculture.org/writing/silence-valley-songs-work-songs-sman-shod-valley" target="_blank"><strong>Silence in the Valley of Songs:<br />
Work Songs from the Sman shod Valley</strong></a>,<br />
by Zla ba sgrol ma (<span style="font-size: medium">ཟླ་བ་སྒྲོལ་མ་</span>)</p>
<p>The text and more than a hundred full-page color plates document Tibetan folk music (particularly work songs), and local life in Sman shod Valley, Sde dge County, Dkar mdzes Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Bo nyed, a local elder, describes the situation that motivated this timely documentation, &#8220;In the past we sang constantly, but now people don&#8217;t sing no matter where they are or what they are doing. Now everyone is silent.&#8221; The text includes richly contextualized and annotated transcriptions of the songs&#8217; Tibetan lyrics with English translations.</p>
<p>Audio materials related to this publication can be found at: <a href="http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/zlaba001.html" target="_blank">http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/zlaba001.html</a><br />
The text can also be <a href="http://tibetanplateau.wikischolars.columbia.edu/file/view/AHP+12--Silence+in+the+Valley+of+Songs+by+Zla+ba+sgrol+ma.pdf"><strong>downloaded here</strong></a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">AHP13: <a href="http://www.plateauculture.org/writing/warming-your-hands-moonlight-lavrung-tibetan-oral-traditions-and-culture" target="_blank"><strong>Warming Your Hands With Moonlight:<br />
Lavrung Tibetan Oral Traditions and Culture</strong></a>,<br />
by G.yu lha (<span style="font-size: medium">གཡུ་ལྷ་</span>)</p>
<p>Lavrung is a little studied Qiangic language spoken by a small group of Tibetans in Rangtang County, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. This work provides the first monographic introduction to Lavrung Tibetans and their language and culture, focusing on the use of trilingual (Lavrung, Chinese, and Tibetan) figurative speech in villagers&#8217; everyday discourse. Background on local oral traditions, including folktales, riddles, work songs, and secret curative chants, is also provided. A Lavrung-English word list, fifty-six full-color photographs, and several maps showing the location and distribution of Lavrung-speaking communities are also included.</p>
<p>Audio and video related to this publication can be found at: <a href="http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/gyulha001.html" target="_blank">http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/gyulha001.html</a><br />
The text can also be <a href="http://tibetanplateau.wikischolars.columbia.edu/file/view/AHP+13--Warming+Your+Hands+With+Moonlight_Lavrung+Tibetan+Oral+Traditions+and+Culture+by+G.yu+lha.pdf"><strong>downloaded here</strong></a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center">AHP14: <a href="http://www.plateauculture.org/writing/may-all-good-things-gather-here-life-religion-and-marriage-mi-nyag-tibetan-village" target="_blank"><strong>May All Good Things Gather Here:<br />
Life, Religion, and Marriage in a Mi nyag Tibetan Village</strong></a>,<br />
by Bkra shis bzang po (<span style="font-size: medium">བཀྲ་ཤིས་བཟང་པོ་</span>)</p>
<p>This work documents marriage customs and related oral traditions in Bang smad Village, Bang smad Township, Nyag rong County, Dkar mdzes Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Villagers speak the poorly documented Mi nyag language. This study provides novel linguistic and ethnographic data, including a Mi nyag-English word list, maps showing the distribution of Mi nyag-speaking communities, and numerous full-color photographs of village life and wedding festivities. Of special interest are the transcribed wedding speeches locally given in Mi nyag and Tibetan.</p>
<p>Audio related to this publication can be found at: <a href="http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/bkrashis001.html" target="_blank">http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/bkrashis001.html</a><br />
The text can also be <a href="http://tibetanplateau.wikischolars.columbia.edu/file/view/AHP+14--Life%2C+Religion%2C+and+Marriage+in+a+Mi+nyag+Tibetan+Village+by+Bkra+shis+bzang+po_opt.pdf"><strong>downloaded here</strong></a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Report on workshop: ‘Performing Identity: Ethnicity and Ethno-nationalism in the South-east Asian Borderland Region of North-east India’.</title>
		<link>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/567</link>
		<comments>http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/567#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:40:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Meenaxi Barkataki-Ruscheweyh</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arunachal Pradesh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnicity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[India]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Meghalaya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nagaland]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The workshop titled ‘Performing Identity: Ethnicity and Ethno-nationalism in the South-east Asian Borderland Region of North-east India’ was held 15-17 Dec. 2011 in Göttingen, Germany. It was hosted by the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in co-operation with the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen. The BMBF-funded competence network &#8220;Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia&#8221; at Göttingen University was actively involved in the local organisation of the workshop. The workshop was sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation, the University of Göttingen and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The workshop titled ‘Performing Identity: Ethnicity and Ethno-nationalism in the South-east Asian Borderland Region of North-east India’ was held 15-17 Dec. 2011 in Göttingen, Germany. It was hosted by the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in co-operation with the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen. The BMBF-funded competence network &#8220;Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia&#8221; at Göttingen University was actively involved in the local organisation of the workshop. The workshop was sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation, the University of Göttingen and the Asian Borderlands Research Network.</p>
<p>The event was inaugurated jointly by the Dean of the Social Science Faculty of Göttingen Univeristy, Professor Roman Loimeier and the Cultural Attaché at the Indian Embassy in Berlin, Professor H.S. Shivaprakash. The event also included a special screening of the film ‘A measure of Impunity’ produced and introduced by Professor Sanjoy Hazarika. Screening of two ethnographic films from the region, a book exhibition, a photo exhibition on the Asian Borderlands and a book-reading (of a recent publication: <em>Unruly Hills</em> by BG Karlsson) were also organised within the framework of this workshop.</p>
<p>The interdisciplinary workshop brought together more than forty social scientists, including several leading experts and many young researchers, from over a dozen countries and over thirty universities world-wide. The main speakers included Professor Barend Jan Terwiel, Professor Sanjib Baruah, (Bard College, New York), Professor Guido Sprenger, (Heidelberg), Professor Ülo Valk, (University of Tartu in Estonia) and Dr. Philippe Ramirez (CNRS).<br />
21 papers on the themes politics of identity, dynamics of religious conversions, belief narratives, new approaches, performance of identity as well as on the immediate region beyond the north-east, and belonging to the disciplines of anthropology, political science, sociology, folklore and religion, history, geography and literature were presented.<br />
The principal objective of the workshop of bringing together European scholars – both beginners and established scholars &#8212; working on the north-east was really fulfilled as an overwhelming majority of the participants were from Europe. Since most of them were sole representatives of their home institutions, the initial assumption that European scholars working on north-east India were often working in very small groups in their departments and hence were rather isolated within their research environments was confirmed. Moreover, there were a dozen Indian scholars, about half of them actually native to north-east India, and this brought in a new dimension to the deliberations. There were many new faces, and lots of interaction between the experts and the beginners, the ones from the region and those form outside, all united by their common interest in the region.</p>
<p>Professor Sanjib Baruah’s talk titled provocatively ‘<em>After Identity: Hydropower and the Politics of Anxiety in the Eastern Himalayas</em>   in which he claimed that it is no longer ethnicity and identity issues but issues like dams, earthquakes and floods that are and will bring people from the north-east together, started the proceedings on Friday morning while Dr. Ramirez’s catchy title, ‘Did the British Really Invent the Northeastern Tribes?’  in which he maintained that the north-east forms a consistent regional system – an idea worth exploring in itself and which might form the basis of a lot of future work on the north-east – brought up the end on Saturday afternoon. Several excellent student presentations, especially those by Kaustubh Deka (JNU, New Delhi) on the role of student organisations in ethnicity formation, by Miriam Bishokarma (Zuerich) on the Gorkhaland state demand issue, by Margaret Lyngdoh (Tartu, Estonia) on the Name Magic of the Khasis and by Andreas Kuechle (Berlin) on using Bourdieu’s theory to understand Naga village society were the highlights of the workshop. The participation of native researchers like Dr. Abraham Lotha (Nagaland) and Charisma Lepcha (Sikkim) added depth and value to the discussions and the well-researched and illuminating papers of European researchers like Dr. Erik de Maaker (Leiden) and Professor Gunnel Cederloef (Uppsala) ensured the high academic standards of the meet.  Several new research projects, book projects and Ph.D. projects were also presented and discussed during the meet. On the whole, it was a great learning experience for everyone.</p>
<p>The workshop ended with the hope that this kind of initiative would be taken by others at other locations in the future and that a network of scholars working on the north-east could be formed. It was also quite a pleasure to hear that this was the very first time that a workshop focussing on Northeast India had been organised in Europe, and as the organiser, I can only hope and wish that it will not be the last.<br />
For more on the workshop, please go to  <a href="http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/215003.html">www.uni-goettingen.de/de/215003.html</a></p>
<p>22.12.2011, Volkach</p>
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