China's 'Tibetan' Frontiers

This book is the first English-language study to explore the shifting political rationales and cultural practices in contemporary Trindu, a remote, nomadic and agricultural county in Yushu Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, in the far west of the People's Republic of China. The 1980s social an [...]
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This book is the first English-language study to explore the shifting political rationales and cultural practices in contemporary Trindu, a remote, nomadic and agricultural county in Yushu Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, in the far west of the People's Republic of China. The 1980s social and economic 'reform and opening up' in China has involved limited devolution of power, the localization of fiscal responsibilities and a relaxation of many 'cultural' and some 'religious' prohibitions. By then, however, many aspects of society had undergone far-reaching alterations through the upheavals of the Maoist revolutionary era. The first part of the study investigates the changing resonance of idioms of identification as bases for social inclusion and political mobilization. The second half explores how key social concepts are elaborated in the contexts of 'ritual practice', 'modernity' and 'media'. The author argues that Trindu is intimately bound up with, and has ramifications for, China's nation-state politics, and others within that nation-state, and cannot be understood without primary reference to that politics.