Demystifying Tibet


Book Description

Recounts the history of Tibet, describes how its culture is more similar to that of central Asia than to that of China, and argues that the idea that Tibet is part of China is a relatively new development.







Imagining Tibet


Book Description

In the past century, the Western view of Tibet has evolved from an exotic Shangri-la filled with golden idols and the promise of immortality, to a peaceful land with an enlightened society now ravaged by outside aggression. How and why did our perception change? How accurate are our modern conceptions of Tibet? Imagining Tibet is a collection of essays that reveal these Western conceptions. Providing an historical background to the West's ever-changing relationship with Tibet, Donald Lopez, Jeffrey Hopkins, Jamyang Norbu, and other noted scholars explore a variety of topics - from Western perceptions of Tibetan approaches to violence, monastic life, and life as a nation in exile, to representations of Tibet in Western literature, art, environmentalism, and the New Age movement.




Contemporary Tibet


Book Description

The subject of Tibet is highly controversial, and Tibet, as a political entity, is defined differently from source to source and audience to audience. The editors of this path-breaking, multidisciplinary study have gathered some of the leading scholars in Tibetan and ethnic studies to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Tibet question. "Contemporary Tibet" explores essential themes and issues concerning modern Tibet. It presents fresh material from various political viewpoints and data from original surveys and field research. The contributors consider such topics as representations and sovereignty, economic development and political conditions, the exile movement and human rights, historical legacies and international politics, identity issues and the local society. The individual chapters provide historical background as well as a general framework to examine Tibet's present situation in world politics, the relationship with China and the West, and prospects for the future.




Tibet, Tibet


Book Description

At different times in its history Tibet has been renowned for pacifism and martial prowess, enlightenment and cruelty. The Dalai Lama may be the only religious leader who can inspire the devotion of agnostics. Patrick French has been fascinated by Tibet since he was a teenager. He has read its history, agitated for its freedom, and risked arrest to travel through its remote interior. His love and knowledge inform every page of this learned, literate, and impassioned book. Talking with nomads and Buddhist nuns, exiles and collaborators, French portrays a nation demoralized by a half-century of Chinese occupation and forced to depend on the patronage of Western dilettantes. He demolishes many of the myths accruing to Tibet–including those centering around the radiant figure of the Dalai Lama. Combining the best of history, travel writing, and memoir, Tibet, Tibet is a work of extraordinary power and insight.




Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, 2003. Volume 11: Tibetan Modernities


Book Description

This book, the first scholarly publication in the West to provide detailed documentation of modern life in contemporary Tibet, presents the cutting-edge field work carried out by an interdisciplinary group of researchers studying caste, pop music, media, painting, education, economics, childbirth and environment in Tibetan communities today.




Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, 2003. Volume 11: Tibetan Modernities


Book Description

This is the first major publication in the West to study modernity and its impact on contemporary Tibet. Based on field work by researchers from the fields of anthropology, sociology, environmental science, literature, art and linguistics, it presents essays on education, economics, childbirth, environment, caste, pop music, media and painting in Tibetan communities today. The findings emerge from studies carried out in Ladakh, Golok, Lhasa, Xining, Shigatse and other areas of the Tibetan world. It will provide important and sometimes surprising results for students of Tibet, China, Himalayan studies, as well as an important contribution to our understandings of modernity and development in the modern world.




Demystifying Tibet


Book Description

"This authoritative view of the history and culture of Tibet comes at a time when this ancient land is in danger of losing its identity under Chinese rule. In a compact narrative account, Lee Feigon examines the country behind the myths to locate the origins of modern Tibet and to sort out its controversial relationship with China. In penetrating the veil of mystery that the West has often constructed over Tibet, he reveals how long and distinguished is its history and how recent is the idea that Tibet is part of China." "Tracing this history through Mongol and Manchu rule in China, the advent of nineteenth-century Western imperialism, and the radical and somewhat racist policies of Communist China which have aimed to transform Tibet, Mr. Feigon draws a compelling portrait of one of the world's most remote and exotic locales. In the 1990s, he shows, the Chinese have flooded Tibet with their own people and threaten to reduce the Tibetans to a colorful but submissive minority in their own land. Their success may determine Tibet's freedom and character for the next hundred years."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet


Book Description

Based on the author’s cross-regional fieldwork, archival findings, and critical reading of memoirs and creative works of Tibetans and Chinese, this book recounts how the potency of Tibet manifests itself in modern material culture concerning Tibet, which is interwoven with state ideology, politics of identity, imagination, nostalgia, forgetting, remembering, and earth-inspired transcendence. The physical place of Tibet is the antecedent point of contact for subsequent spiritual imaginations, acts of destruction and reconstruction, collective nostalgia, and delayed aesthetic and environmental awareness shown in the eco-religious acts of native Tibetans, Communist radical utopianism, former military officers’ recollections, Tibetan and Chinese artwork, and touristic consumption of the Tibetan landscape. By drawing connections between differences, dichotomies, and oppositions, this book explores the interiors of the diverse agentive modes of imaginations from which Tibet is imagined in China. On the theoretical front, this book attempts to bring forth a set of fresh perspectives on how a culturally and religiously specific landscape is antecedent to simultaneous processes of place-making, identity-making, and the bonding between place and people.




The Future of Tibet


Book Description

This book discusses the emergence of democracy's modernizing force in an exiled community with a political history based on a feudal theocracy. Since his exile almost forty years ago, the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile have steered this fledgling democratic community toward the fulfillment of his dream of converting a theocracy to a democracy. The establishment of a tripartite government with separate powers and the development of a framework for a future democratic polity - if and when Tibetans regain their land - is a testament to the ongoing democratizing revolution.