Two weddings in 2009 and 2015 respectively have received wide publicity among Tibetans and others within and out of China. The first was that of Lobsang Dundrup, a renowned singer from Gyalrong, and his new bride. While his friend posted their wedding photos on her blog, it received sharp critiques from Tibetan netizens for their “un-Tibetan” or “un-Buddhist” behavior since the couple were wearing clothes made of wild animal pelts. The singer was made to apologize in public for his “bad” conduct. The second is that of a young Gyalrong couple working in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan. The images posed as both modern Chinese city and “traditional” Tibetan couples, which had been posted on blogs, wechat and other social media, attracted even much wider attention both home and abroad. While the Chinese newspapers and thousands of netizens were amazed at the refreshing images of “modern” Tibetan youth who were seen to have left their home region physically but manage not to leave their Tibetan spirits behind, many Tibetans and others, notably Tsering Woeser, a highly-profiled Tibetan writer, were deplored at their pseudery or “staged” pretentiousness as heavily Sinicized Tibetans. The accusations of the “un-Tibetan” behaviors of the two different couples shed new light on intense anxiety among Tibetan intellectuals and others that the Gyalrong case foreshadows the diminishing of Tibetan culture and identity at the Sino-Tibetan borderlands and in Tibetan regions in general. This kind of anxiety simultaneously reflects an urge and earnest call for the re-Tibetanizing or re-civilizing of borderland Tibetans by reinforcing Buddhist teachings and Tibetan values. Therefore, this article will look into the symbolic meaning embedded in these two Gyalrong weddings as well as the ongoing conflicts and convergences of the “Sinicization” and “Tibetanization” discourses. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr  
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Two Gyalrong Weddings Under Fire: Rethinking of the Ongoing “Sinicization” and “Tibetanization” on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, Tenzin Jinba, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), National University of Singapore

The practice of a non-contractual, nonobligatory, and nonexclusive visiting sexual system among a matrilineal group in Southwest China has generated as much interest in anthropology as in the mass media. The Na (or Moso) who live on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan (near Lake Lugu) have come to be regarded internationally as an unusual case in the ethnography of the region. The Na case, though a striking example of a matrilineal system in an overall regional patrilineal environment, is not unique. These cases have to be considered from a cross-regional perspective and across contemporary ethnic boundaries. In Drapa (Zhaba), a valley south of Ta'u (Daofu) in Kardze Prefecture, a significant number of local Tibetan inhabitants still practice a form of visiting system. The visiting system which is associated with the uxorilocal residence for offspring from a non-contractual sexual relationship has so far been described as a form of union based on a matrilineal rule of descent. Using data that was collected during fieldwork conducted mainly in five different villages in the Drapa valley, this paper demonstrates that, while matrilineality prevails, the visiting system is not necessarily dependent on the respect of the matrilineal descent rule. The prime factor to be taken into consideration here is the importance of maintaining some continuity in the household. It can be said Drapa society is a matrifocal, household-oriented society in which most people play no social roles other than their kinship ones, and where the household is their only basic social affiliation. The matrifocal principle, when understood in combination with the household-centric orientation, should also be considered as a more general set of ideas with regards the house as a more complex set of relations that linked together the building, the household members, and forces associated with them, such as fortune, luck, prosperity, etc. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr  
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Communities, Stéphane Gros, Matrifocality and the House in Drapa (Zhaba), Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council)

From 1907 to 1911, some 4,000 commoners from the Sichuan Basin ventured west. Enticed by promises of large tracts of uncultivated land and three years of free rent, seeds, animals, and farm implements, they ascended the Tibetan Plateau seeking new lives for their families – and new benefits for a changing China. At the start of the twentieth century, Kham was a borderland on the cusp of political and societal transformation. Situated between Sichuan Province and central Tibet, its polities and population stood at the center of a local struggle for authority between Chengdu and Lhasa, a struggle with regional and imperial implications. The plan to settle the lush river valleys and high plains of Kham, to convert its purported wastelands into fertile farms, was one component of a comprehensive endeavor to end this struggle, to transform internal governance and exert control over the borderland sufficient to substantiate external assertions of sovereignty. Notices posted on yamen walls across the province appealed to the nascent nationalism of Sichuan’s poor farmers, urging them to emulate Euro-American pioneers who ventured into dangerous and distant lands in service to their nation. Beyond turning rocks into crops, once in Kham, they were to be ambassadors of “civilization,” modelling both ‘proper' farming and loyal society, supporting a parallel effort to acculturate the Khampas, to sever their affinity with Lhasa, transforming them into imperial subjects and citizens of the burgeoning Chinese state. This paper explores the reorientation of imperial frontier settlement policies wrought by newly globalizing norms such as sovereignty, the role of Sichuan settlers in establishing exclusive Chinese authority in the borderland, and projecting it to the global community. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Settling Authority: Sichuanese Farmers in Early Twentieth Century Eastern Tibet, Scott Relyea, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), Hamline University

When a nation-state looks to intensive agriculture for its national essence, what are the implications at the local level? This paper looks at agricultural colonization efforts (tunken屯垦) of the Chinese state in Kham during the Republican era (1912-1949) and places these efforts in the context of a national discourse on agrarianism. Chinese nationalists circulated theories about agrarianism (or nongben zhuyi) as a necessary feature of Chinese civilization since ancient times. Elements of imperial Chinese agrarianism, distilled through early modern movements in Japan, France and elsewhere, were reinserted into Chinese nationalist politics under Chiang Kai-shek, resulting in what I call “the agrarian theory of China”—or the theory that China is by definition a nation founded on agriculture. Agrarianism was a major component of Republican China’s strategy in the borderlands, where administrators implemented tunken projects. However, “China” as an imagined community based on agriculture was subject to the environmental limitations of particular locations in the borderlands such as the Kham region. This paper examines tunken as a conduit for exchanges of ideas between national and Kham regional administrators during the early twentieth century. Drawing on a large body of Chinese documents, I show that the Kham region functioned as a policy laboratory when the administration of Liu Wenhui took creative steps to reconcile the agrarian theory of China with environmental conditions that were often inhospitable to agriculture. The challenge of establishing a new province in Kham titled Xikang prompted Han modernizers to pioneer visions of agricultural expansion that satisfied the twin imperatives of economic development and cultural assimilation. Unlike imperial incarnations of tunken, Xikang modernizers appealed to nationalist impulses in attracting planters and sought solutions to environmental problems in scientific experimentation. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Mark Frank, Chinese Physiocracy: Kham as Laboratory for the Agrarian Theory of China, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council)

Frontier territories characterised by intense socio-economic, political, and cultural inter-actions, in the mid-nineteenth century the easternmost fringes of the Tibetan plateau saw the rise of the ris med movement, an influential religious approach fostering inclusiveness and non-sectarianism. Teachings, empowerments, and transmissions of various schools and lineages were actively sought and received, through a constant flow of masters, adepts, and pilgrims from one monastery to the other. Testimony to these thriving interactions was Kha stag 'Dzam yag, a Khams pa trader from a nomadic area in ‘Bri zla zal mo gangs and author of a travel account describing his thirteen-year long pilgrimage from eastern Tibet to Lha sa and gZhi ga rtse, and from there to northern India and Nepal. During his travels through the Tibetan plateau, the author visited monasteries and sacred sites belonging to different schools of Tibetan Buddhism, receiving blessings and instructions from masters of various religious lineages. The pious candor of his record reveals the inextricable bond between spiritual and mundane affairs, since the connection between a master and a disciple was based on a mutual giving and receiving. Whereas the first provided teachings and refuge, the latter was expected to repay his guru’s kindness through offerings and gifts. Kha stag 'Dzam yag’s personal experiences as both a pilgrim and a trade agent for the Khang gsar bla brang of Ngor E wam chos ldan, a monastic community he had actively supported in the years preceding the 1950s, exemplify the intertwining of economics and religion and help to shed some light on the influence exerted by the monasteries of central Tibet on their branches in the sGa pa and sDe dge areas. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, The Price of Enlightenment: The Travel Account of Kha stag ʼDzam yag, a Pilgrim and a Tshong dpon (1944-1956), Lucia Galli, eastern Himalayan region, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council)

For centuries, Central Tibet and its capital Lhasa were regarded as the center—as is obviously expressed in the very name of the region in Tibetan, dBus, “Center”—of political and religious life in the Tibetan world; the cultural center where all Tibetans aspire to go, at least once in their lifetime. But changes seem to be taking place, raising questions about a possible increase in the role of the borderlands in Tibetan cultural production. The margins that are A mdo and Khams experience a new visibility at the religious, cultural, and political levels. A mdo is now the scene of a significant cultural revival and the cradle for new expressive forms such as Tibetan film-making. At the same time, Khams and A mdo are experiencing a thriving religious revival, with famous lamas founding new religious places drawing in their vicinity huge settlements of Tibetans from all over Tibet, as well as Chinese devotees. Immolations, the new language of protest, was initiated in these areas. Tourism is flourishing in Khams where rGyal thang has been renamed Shangri la in 2002, attracting as many as 6 millions tourists in 2013, as well as many Tibetans from A mdo and even Lhasa looking for jobs. The main sacred mountains in these Tibetan backwaters, A myes rma chen and Kha ba dkar po, used to attract only local people worshipping their yul lha, are now becoming pilgrimage places for pilgrims from more distant areas of Tibetan plateau. This paper addresses the various factors contributing to this decentralization process and its consequences. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr 
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, Katia Buffetrille, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, The Increasing Visibility of the Borderlands, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

The Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) sent their first missionary on an exploratory mission to the Sino-Tibetan borderlands in 1847, and they retained a presence in the region until 1952. Together with their Protestant counterparts, the missionaries spent longer periods in the region, and arguably were more intensely involved in its local affairs, than any other category of Westerner. This paper considers the MEP's interactions with local, regional and international trading networks from three points of view: First, many of them were astute observers, playing a role as “incidental ethnographers” alongside their other activities (cf. Michaud 2007). So what do missionary sources tell us about trade in the region? Secondly though, the missionaries were far from being detached observers. Rather, they may themselves be considered as local ‘actors' who were closely involved with trade, both directly and indirectly. In the paper, I shall discuss the nature of the MEP’s economic activities, and show how it changed in different periods between 1847 and 1952. The MEP were persistent advocates for Tibet's opening to Western commerce, hoping that this would in due course facilitate their evangelistic agenda. The paper will review the arguments that they presented, and assess their influence on wider international engagement with the region. While focusing on the MEP, I propose to take a comparative view, noting the differences and similarities with Protestant experiences in the same period. The paper is primarily based on original sources in the MEP archives in Paris, as well as contemporary missionary publications, and informed by more recent scholarship. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr 
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, John Bray, French Catholic Missions and Sino-Tibetan Trade: Local Networks and International Enterprise, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council)

This conference is an outcome of the collaborative ERC-funded research project “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands” This research project focuses on the area of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands situated within the People‘s Republic of China, and referred to as Kham by Tibetans who make up most of the population of this region divided between the provinces of Sichuan to the east, Yunnan to the south and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west. This research project intends to explore from a comparative perspective the possible definitions of this entity called Kham, which in the course of history has never strictly corresponded to any administrative unit or coherent whole, and which ultimately should be considered as a land of encounters, a place of métissage. The multidisciplinary team undertakes ethnographic field studies and documentary research including archival research and contribute fresh, first-hand material to the socio-cultural diversity of Kham.In-depth investigation of the internal diversity of Tibet and its connection with the outside remains sketchy and thus a particular focus of this project is to delve into the complexities of Tibetan society in China. The multi-tiered and multi-scalar approach, with an emphasis on networks, will enhance work on historical mapping, which is still practically non-existent in this region. This project aims to strengthen international academic exchanges and to produce a strong network of collaboration on Kham studies: it is our hope that this conference will contribute significantly to this end. For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Making Movies in the Gesar Heartland: The Burgeoning of a Kham Film Production in rDzogs-chen, Isabelle Henrion Dourcy, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), University of Laval

Throughout the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), more and more travelers –officials, military and merchants- went to the Southwest border of China and dedicated some of their time to writing travel accounts, poetry, to drawing maps or to sketching what they saw. As such, frontier officials actively contributed to collecting geographical and anthropological data about the border areas. They then provided the Peking Court with first-hand information to help it draw up policies and secure administrative control of the border. Regarding the officials posted to Tibet, their personal writings took the form of travel diaries, notebooks, or poems, and testified mainly to the routes they would take before entering Central Tibet. Some anthropological or cultural observations are sometimes included. Their accounts were mostly about the southwestern border territory they had to cross to reach Central Tibet rather than Central Tibet itself. From their narratives, the three-to-six-month journey from Chengdu or Xining to Lhasa appears to be both a painful expedition full of hardships and an early-eighteenth-century exploratory experience. It then becomes obvious that the Qing took control of the area and that the roads and supplies for officials and their escort became better and better organized provided that the local chieftains agreed to provide Manchu officials with corvée labor. However, the Qing's national endeavor of mapping the southwestern border of China did not grant Manchu officials authority over the inhabitants of the southwestern territory as illustrated by a few examples dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr  
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Manchu Officials’ Khams Travel Accounts: Mapping a Course Through a Qing Territory, Fabienne Jagou, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council)

This project seeks to discern the physical and conceptual boundaries of the Tibetan region of Gyalthang, in southern Kham.  At issue are questions about the relationships between older conceptualizations of place and newer understandings of identity vis place in twenty first century Sino-Tibetan borderlands. How do the various peoples who live within its boundaries understand Gyalthang? Following the theoretical work of Jonathan Z. Smith (Map Is Not Territory, 1978), I argue that the complex and dynamic webs of ethnic identity in the region neither conform to fixed physical or conceptual boundaries, nor elevate Gyalthang or even Kham as a central aspect of homeland for many of its inhabitants.  My work is based on an evaluation of historical sources coupled with ethnographic and folkloric data gathered during fieldwork conducted over the past twenty-five years in Gyalthang. Do Gyalthangpa (Tibetans of rGyal Thang) understand themselves to be Khampas? Today, Gyalthang is part of Northwest Yunnan Province of the P. R. China, roughly corresponding to Shangri-La County (Ch. xianggelila xian 香格里拉县), and more expansively the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Ch. diqing zangzu zizhizhou 迪庆藏族自治州). Gyalthangpa speak several local Tibetic languages (Bartee, 2007), and there are pockets within this territory where Tibetan inhabitants identify neither as Gyalthangpa nor Khampa. While Ganden Sumtseling Monastery was, since the late seventeenth century (Schwieger, 2011; Bstanpa rGyalmtshan, 1985, Hillman 2005), an important center of identity-gravity in the region, some of the geographical areas controlled by the eight kangtsens (monastic colleges) fall outside of Gyalthang. Gyalthang cannot be cleanly defined by the constellations of monastic power. With no specific historical political or religious demarcation of the boundaries of Gyalthang, and with no unified linguistic or ethnic identity, what then makes (or made) Gyalthang Gyalthang?  International conference “Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Sino-Tibetan Kham Borderlands,” Februray 18-20, 2016. This conference is an outcome of a collaborative ERC-funded research project (Starting grant no. 283870). For more information, please visit the project's Website: http://kham.cnrs.fr
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : UPS2259, CEH, Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, Eric Mortensen, Boundaries of the Borderlands: Mapping Gyalthang, Territories, Communities, and Exchanges in the Kham Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ERC (European Research Council), Guilford College