Emily Yeh to Give Presentation on Her Recent Book, "Taming Tibet"
麻豆免费版下载Geography Professor and Chair Emily Yeh recently finished a book on the recent development efforts in Tibet by the PRC. On Friday, October 24, she will give a public presentation on this book in a talk by the same title, Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development.
The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans鈥 apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life.
The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han鈥檚 鈥渓ittle brothers.鈥 Arguing that development is in this context a form of 鈥渋ndebtedness engineering,鈥 Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to鈥攁nd negotiations with鈥攄evelopment, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China鈥檚 modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question."
The Center for Asian Studies is partnering with the Department of Geography to bring this Geography Colloquium Series event. Professor Yeh's talk will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Guggenheim 205 on the CU-Boulder campus.