Lucia Galli (University of Oxford), "The Price of Enlightenment: The Travel Account of Kha stag ʼDzam yag, a Pilgrim and a Tshong dpon (1944-1956)"

In recent years, increasingly sophisticated work has traced the remarkable changes in early twentieth-century state-building along China's southwestern and Tibetan borderlands. During this same period

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

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

As a member of a deeply-rooted traditional craft-making family in the Meshö (Sman Shod) Valley of Kham region, I will present the results of my ongoing fieldwork and academic study on the renaissance

This paper examines the fascinating life of Wangchuk Tempa 汪学鼎 (1886-1961), the de facto early-twentieth-century political and military leader of Gyalthang (rGyal Thang) in southern Kham, in order to

This paper discuses rivalry for the throne of Dergé between 1890 and 1940. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, internecine feuds created a power vacuum serious enough to invite

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

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

In this paper, I will begin by considering the concept of “house society” and its applicability to Southwest China. I ask the question of why no scholar, Levi-Strauss included since he originally

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

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,

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