Conflicting Memories

Conflicting Memories
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2020-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004433244

Conflicting Memories is a study of historical rewriting about Tibetans' encounter with the Chinese state during the Maoist era. Combining case studies with translated documents, it traces how that experience has been reimagined by Chinese and Tibetan authors and artists since the late 1970s.

The Violence of Liberation

The Violence of Liberation
Author: Charlene E. Makley
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520250598

"The Violence of Liberation is an innovative and timely evaluation of Tibetan religious revival and changing gender ideals and practices in post-Mao China-one of the first ethnographies based on extensive in a Tibetan community in China since its re-opening in the 1980s. Makley has provided a powerful and nuanced reading of gendered Tibetan and Chinese cultural orders."--Charles F. McKhann, Director of Asian Studies, Whitman College "Charlene Makely has produced an excellent, beautifully written book on the incorporation of a Tibetan area into the Chinese nation, and the gendered aspects of this process. The work sets a standard for future work in terms of the breadth and depth of its research."--Beth Notar, author of Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China

The Monastery Rules

The Monastery Rules
Author: Berthe Jansen
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520297008

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Monastery Rules discusses the position of the monasteries in pre-1950s Tibetan Buddhist societies and how that position was informed by the far-reaching relationship of monastic Buddhism with Tibetan society, economy, law, and culture. Jansen focuses her study on monastic guidelines, or bca’ yig. The first study of its kind to examine the genre in detail, the book contains an exploration of its parallels in other Buddhist cultures, its connection to the Vinaya, and its value as socio-historical source-material. The guidelines are witness to certain socio-economic changes, while also containing rules that aim to change the monastery in order to preserve it. Jansen argues that the monastic institutions’ influence on society was maintained not merely due to prevailing power-relations, but also because of certain deep-rooted Buddhist beliefs.

Cutting Off the Serpent's Head

Cutting Off the Serpent's Head
Author: Robert Barnett
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1996
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781564321664

Delays by the Lamas.

Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet

Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet
Author: Jane E. Caple
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824878051

The speed and extent of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic revival make it one of the most extraordinary stories of religious resurgence in post-Mao China. At the end of the 1970s, there were no working monasteries; within a decade, thousands had been reconstructed and repopulated. Most studies have focused on the political challenges facing Tibetan monasteries, emphasizing their relationship to the Chinese state. Yet, in their efforts to revive and develop their institutions, monks have also had to negotiate a rapidly changing society, playing a delicate balancing act fraught with moral dilemma as well as political danger. Drawing on the recent “moral turn” in anthropology, this volume, the first full-length ethnographic study of the subject, explores the social and moral dimensions of monastic revival and reform across a range of Geluk monasteries in northeast Tibet (Amdo/Qinghai Province) from the 1980s on. Author Jane Caple’s analysis shows that ideas and debates about how best to maintain the mundane bases of monastic Buddhism—economy and population—are intermeshed with those concerning the proper role and conduct of monks and the ethics of monastic-lay relations. Facing a shrinking monastic population, monks are grappling with the impacts of secular education, demographic transition, rising living standards, urbanization, and marketization, all of which have driven debates within Buddhism elsewhere and fueled perceptions of monastic decline. Some Tibetans—including monks—are even questioning the “good” of the mass form of monasticism that has been a distinctive feature of Tibetan society for hundreds of years. Given monastic Buddhism’s integral position in Tibetan community life and association with Tibetan identity, Caple argues that its precarity in relation to Tibetan society raises questions about its future that go well beyond the issue of religious freedom.

The Snow Lion and the Dragon

The Snow Lion and the Dragon
Author: Melvyn C. Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780520212541

Drawing upon his deep knowledge of the Tibetan culture and people, Goldstein takes us through the history of Tibet, concentrating on the political and cultural negotiations over the status of Tibet from the turn of the century to the present. He describes the role of Tibet in Chinese politics, the feeble and conflicting responses of foreign governments, overtures and rebuffs on both sides, and the nationalistic emotions that are inextricably entwined in the political debate. Ultimately, he presents a plan for a reasoned compromise, identifying key aspects of the conflict and appealing to the United States to play an active diplomatic role.

Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet

Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet
Author: Melvyn C. Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2023-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520920058

Following the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, the People's Republic of China gradually permitted the renewal of religious activity. Tibetans, whose traditional religious and cultural institutions had been decimated during the preceding two decades, took advantage of the decisions of 1978 to begin a Buddhist renewal that is one of the most extensive and dramatic examples of religious revitalization in contemporary China. The nature of that revival is the focus of this book. Four leading specialists in Tibetan anthropology and religion conducted case studies in the Tibet autonomous region and among the Tibetans of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces. There they observed the revival of the Buddhist heritage in monastic communities and among laypersons at popular pilgrimages and festivals. Demonstrating how that revival must contend with tensions between the Chinese state and aspirations for greater Tibetan autonomy, the authors discuss ways that Tibetan Buddhists are restructuring their religion through a complex process of social, political, and economic adaptation. Buddhism has long been the main source of Tibetans' pride in their culture and country. These essays reveal the vibrancy of that ancient religion in contemporary Tibet and also the problems that religion and Tibetan culture in general are facing in a radically altered world.

Chinese Religiosities

Chinese Religiosities
Author: Mayfair Mei-hui Yang
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2008-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520098641

"Extraordinarily timely and useful. As China emerges as an economic and political world power that seems to have done away with religion, in fact it is witnessing a religious revival. The thoughtful essays in this book show both the historical conflicts between state authorities and religious movements and the contemporary encounters that are shaping China's future. I am aware of no other book that covers so much ground and can be used so well as an introduction to this important field." —Peter van der Veer, University of Utrecht

Hidden Tibet

Hidden Tibet
Author: Sergius L. Kuzmin
Publisher: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9380359470

This book traces the history of Tibetan statehood from ancient times to our days, describes the life of the Tibetans at the times of Feudalism and Socialism, the coercive inclusion of Tibet into People’s Republic of China, the suppression of the national liberation movement, the Cultural Revolution, and subsequent reforms. Many pictures and data concerning these events are being published for the first time.