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Imagining the Good Life
This is a book of great originality that analyses cultural change and experience of development in terms of the pursuit of the ‘good life’ as a social process. While recent anthropological critiques of development highlight the importance of ‘local knowledge’, this book argues that these critiques have not gone far enough, and suggests that a much more fundamental issue concerns the ends of development as seen from a more holistic, cultural perspective. Based on ethnographic research among an ethnic Tibetan community in the Nepal Himalaya, the book eloquently illustrates how the pursuit of the good life is inextricably tied to space and history, and demonstrates the relevance of ethno-historically generated conceptions of the ‘good life’ to the practice of development.
Fluid Boundaries
More than an ethnography, this book clarifies one of the most important current debates in anthropology: How should anthropologists regard culture, history, and the power process? Since the 1980s, the Thakali of Nepal have searched for an identity and a clarification of their "true" culture and history in the wake of their rise to political power and achievement of economic success. Although united in this search, the Thakali are divided as to the answers that have been proposed: the "Hinduization" of religious practices, the promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, the revival of practices associated with the Thakali shamans, and secularization. Ironically, the attempts by the Thakali to define their identity reveal that to return to tradition they must first re-create it—but this process of re-creation establishes it in a way in which it has never existed. To return to "tradition"—to become Thakali again—is, in a way, to become Thakali for the very first time.
The Navel of the Demoness
This groundbreaking study focuses on a village called Te in a "Tibetanized" region of northern Nepal. While Te's people are nominally Buddhist, and engage the services of resident Tibetan Tantric priests for a range of rituals, they are also exponents of a local religion that involves blood sacrifices to wild, unconverted territorial gods and goddesses. The village is unusual in the extent to which it has maintained its local autonomy and also in the degree to which both Buddhism and the cults of local gods have been subordinated to the pragmatic demands of the village community. Charles Ramble draws on extensive fieldwork, as well as 300 years' worth of local historical archives (in Tibetan...
Himalayan Languages
With its many and diverse languages, including some with very long documented histories, its cultural diversity, and its widespread multilingualism- both the stable and transient kind- the Himalayan region is a treasure trove of empirical data for linguistic research on language typology and universals, historical linguistics, language contact and areal linguistics. Himalayan Languages contains contributions on Himalayan linguistics written by some of the leading experts in the field. The volume is divided into three parts: First, a general overview is given of the linguistic study of Himalayan languages and language communities. The second part offers synchronic studies of individual languages of the region (Indo-Aryan languages Shina and Kalasha, and Tibeto-Burman languages Belhare, Magar, Kinnauri, Classical Tibetan and Thangmi). The papers in the third part of the volume address topics in historical and areal linguistics, with an emphasis on the Tibeto-Burman languages of the region, discussing grammaticalization processes (in Sunwar, Newar, Seke, Tshangla and Bantawa) and the subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman.
Rgyalrong Conservation and Change: Social Change On the Margins of Tibet
The explosive growth of China's economy since the late 1970s has impacted the whole world including the minority peoples in the west of China - people like the Qiang, Tibetans and Yi. Based on fieldwork in the high valleys of the eastern margins of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, David Burnett has produced a unique study of a people known as the Rgyalrong (officially classed as Tibetans). The Rgyalrong have been impacted by secular education, tourism, and migration to the cities that have resulted from economic reform. Amidst these changes, they endeavour to retain something of their traditional customs, songs, festivals, arts and crafts. They are a people who realize that if they lose their unique culture they will lose their very identity. The issues raised in this book relate not only to the Rgyalrong but to minority peoples everywhere as they experience the forces of globalization.
Statemaking and Territory in South Asia
“Statemaking and Territory in South Asia: Lessons from the Anglo–Gorkha War (1814–1816)” seeks to understand how European colonization transformed the organization of territory in South Asia through an examination of the territorial disputes that underlay the Anglo–Gorkha War of 1814–1816 and subsequent efforts of the colonial state to reorder its territories. The volume argues that these disputes arose out of older tribute, taxation and property relationships that left their territories perpetually intermixed and with ill-defined boundaries. It also seeks to describe the long-drawn-out process of territorial reordering undertaken by the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that set the stage for the creation of a clearly defined geographical template for the modern state in South Asia.
Vajradhara in Human Form: The Life and Times of Ngor chen Kun dga' bzang po
The present book presents a detailed study of the life and times of the tantric expert Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo (Ngor chen Kun dga’ bzang po, 1382–1456), who was one of the most outstanding and influential Sakya masters of fifteenth-century Tibet. Among his many influential activities, Ngorchen is best remembered for his founding of the monastery of Ngor Ewam Choden (Ngor E waṃ chos ldan) in 1429. Withdrawing from the worldly distractions of the bustling town of Sakya (Sa skya) and sectarian conflicts, he left his traditional alma mater, the monastery of Sakya, and established his own monastic seat in the remote Ngor valley, some 30 kilometres southwest of modern Shigatse (gZhis ka rtse) ...
The Scientific Study of Society
Tradition recognises five social sciences: anthropology, economies, social psychology, sociology, and political science. But who knows what is going on in all five disciplines? Social scientists from one discipline often know little or nothing about the progress made by social scientists from another discipline working on essentially the same social problem. Sometimes, even of a neighbouring discipline is terra incognita. the methodology The problem becomes worse when we widen the remit to natural scientists and engineers. I have found little evidence myself that they see themselves as standing on the other side of an unbridgeable golf between two cultures. They observe the intellectual exce...
