Trans-Himalayan Borderlands: Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities 9789048531714

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Trans-Himalayan Borderlands

Asian Borderlands Asian Borderlands presents the latest research on borderlands in Asia as well as on the borderlands of Asia – the regions linking Asia with Africa, Europe and Oceania. Its approach is broad: it covers the entire range of the social sciences and humanities. The series explores the social, cultural, geographic, economic and historical dimensions of border-making by states, local communities and flows of goods, people and ideas. It considers territorial borderlands at various scales (national as well as supra- and sub-national) and in various forms (land borders, maritime borders), but also presents research on social borderlands resulting from border-making that may not be territorially fixed, for example linguistic or diasporic communities. Series Editors Tina Harris, University of Amsterdam Willem van Schendel, University of Amsterdam Editorial Board Members Franck Billé, University of Cambridge Duncan McDuie-Ra, University of New South Wales Eric Tagliacozzo, Cornell University Yuk Wah Chan, City University Hong Kong

Trans-Himalayan Borderlands Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities

Edited by Dan Smyer Yü and Jean Michaud

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Hmong Leng women settling for lunch at the Si Ma Cai periodic market in Lao Cai province, Vietnam, 2009 Source: Jean Michaud Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 192 8 e-isbn 978 90 4853 171 4 doi 10.5117/9789462981928 nur 761

Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0) The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise).



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 11 Trans-Himalayas as Multistate Margins Dan Smyer Yü

I  Territory, Worldviews, and Power Through Time 1 Adjusting Livelihood Structure in the Southeast Asian Massif

45

2 The Properties of Territory in Nepal’s State of Transformation

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3 Trans-Himalayan Buddhist Secularities

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Jean Michaud

Sara Shneiderman

Sino-Indian Geopolitics of Territoriality in Indo-Tibetan Interface Dan Smyer Yü

4 Buddhist Books on Trans-Himalayan Pathways

105

5 Seeking China’s Back Door

125

Materials and Technologies Connecting People and Ecological Environments in a Transnational Landscape Hildegard Diemberger

On English Handkerchiefs and Global Local Markets in the Early Nineteenth Century Gunnel Cederlöf

II Livelihood Reconstructions, Flows, and TransHimalayan Modernities 6 Contested Modernities

Place, Subjectivity, and Himalayan Dam Infrastructures Georgina Drew

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7 Plurality and Plasticity of Everyday Humanitarianism in the Karen Conflict

167

8 Being Modern

189

9 Tibetan Wine Production, Taste of Place, and Regional Niche Identitiesin Shangri-La, China

207

10 Tea and Merit

229

11 In-between Poppy and Rubber Fields

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12 A Fortuitous Frontier Opportunity

263

Alexander Horstmann

Livelihood Reconstruction among Land-lost Peasants in Chenggong (Kunming) Yang Cheng

Brendan A. Galipeau

Landscape Making in the Ritual Lives of the De’ang People in Western Yunnan Li Quanmin

Experimenting a Transborder Livelihood among the Akha in the Northwestern Frontier of Laos Li Yunxia

Cardamom Livelihoods in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands Sarah Turner

Conclusion 285 Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Studies Jean Michaud

Index 299

Acknowledgements This book is the cocreation of the cross-continental and transregional endeavors of contributors from Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America, many of whom are leading scholars responsible for new conceptual currents in borderland and transregional studies in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Southwest China, and the Himalayas. Their thoughts and visions afford us the bases for further interdisciplinary conceptualizations, peer conversations, and debates concerning frontier, border, region, livelihood, and multidimensional (dis)connectivity between different ethnolinguistic communities and nation-states in the trans-Himalayan region. This book is therefore an embodiment of the intellectual synergy of our contributors from different fields of social sciences and humanities but united on an interdisciplinary ground for revisioning more inclusive, diverse Himalayan studies. Our profuse thanks wholeheartedly go to our contributors. Throughout the book, the works of three distinguished scholars are intertextually referenced in such a high frequency that we would like to recognize our indebtedness to their innovative visions of borderland and transregional studies. Jean Michaud, James Scott, and Willem van Schendel have shared the originalities of their scholarly productions in a way that was symbiotic, processual, intertextual, and interwoven in nature. Key conceptual phrases from their texts – ‘Zomia,’ ‘Southeast Asia Massif,’ ‘friction of terrain,’ ‘state effects,’ ‘hegemony of ecology,’ ‘process geographies,’ ‘spatial engagements,’ ‘flows,’ and more – are abundantly found in our individual chapters. Thanks to the inaugural team meeting of the Gunnel Cederlöf-led India-China Corridor Project at SOAS in June 2016, further connections were made with Scott and Van Schendel and through the course of conversations and exchanges, we deepened our understanding of the linkages and connections of the central Himalayas with Northeast India, the Bay of Bengal, and the highlands of Southeast Asia and Southwest China that make their way into this book. Indebted to Michaud, Scott, and Van Schendel, the process geographies practiced in this book present multiple geographical meanings of the trans-Himalayas, not merely as the locality-based understanding of ethnolinguistic communities and nation-states, but also as significations pointing to the moving nature of geography in terms of trade networks, pilgrimage routes, the hydrosphere, environmental flows, climate patterns, geopolitics, and global-local nexuses. Intellectual aspirations and synergies are unfortunately not the only ingredients for making a book. Financial and institutional resources

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Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

are equally crucial for scholarly endeavors. We would like to extend our deep appreciation to Yunnan Minzu University, the host of our 2015 book workshop. Its seed grant for establishing the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies and administrative support made it possible for most of the international participants to travel to Kunming, and secured the conference venue and met other logistic needs. In the last ten years, YMU has become one of the most progressive universities in Southwest China. It hosts half a dozen research centers and institutes specializing in transregional and borderland studies. Its sustained support of the publication of the book is a significant contribution to the advancement of interdisciplinary studies of borderlands, modernities, ecosystems, and globalizations. We wish to give our special thanks to YMU President Na Jinhua, Vice Presidents Wang Deqiang (Ronpa Tashi), Duan Gang, and Li Bingze, Director of Academic Affairs Wang Mingdong, and Deputy Director of International Exchange and Cooperation Geng Yi and her staff. In addition to the support from YMU, this book project benefitted from many funding agencies, academic departments, and research centers that supported the fieldwork, archival search, and write-up of the individual chapters of our contributors. We send our special thanks to the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant (PI – Sarah Turner), the Swedish Research Council (PI – Gunnel Cederlöf), The Social Sciences Foundation of China (PI – Dan Smyer Yü, grant number 15BMZ070), The Wenner-Gren Foundation (PI – Sara Shneiderman), The Hampton Fund of the University of British Columbia (PI – Sara Shneiderman), the Department of Geography of McGill University, the Department of Anthropology at Laval University, the Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University, the Yale Himalaya Initiative, the China Tibetology Research Center, the Tibet Autonomous Region Academy of Social Sciences, and the School of Ethnology and Sociology at Minzu University of China, the Center for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, the CeMIS-CeMEAS Transregional Research Network (CETREN) at the University of Göttingen, and Yunnan Institute of Ethnology. Himalayan studies enchant both the academic and the policy worlds. As an inaugural event of the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University, our book workshop invited special guests from both worlds as keynote speakers and session chairs. We would like to give our special thanks to Danzhu Angben, Deputy Director of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, Luosang Linzhi Duojie, Deputy Director of China Tibetology Research Center, Geoffrey Samuel, Board Adviser of the International

Acknowledgements

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Association of Tibetan Studies, Li Zhang, Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California at Davis, Ashok Gurung, Director of the India China Institute at the New School, Emily Yeh, Chair of the Department of Geography, University of Colorado at Boulder, Andrew Quintman, Steering Committee member of the Yale Himalaya Initiative, Jin Ze, Associate Director of the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Qi Jinyu, Director of the Society for the Study of Ethnicities and Cultures in Northeast Asia. The presentations of their own works and their coleadership of the workshop added more interdisciplinary gravity and policy implications to the book. We also would like to express our appreciation to the following participants and guests of our book workshop who presented their works and shared their perspectives but were unable to have their papers included in this book for various reasons: Kelsang Chimee, Nyingcha Dorje, Bruce A. Huett, Liang Yan, Adam Liebman, Santi Rozario, Shen Haimei, Dawa Tsering, Wang Jianhua (Nyawrbyeivq Aryoeq), Zhang Ning, and Zengji Zhuoma (Zomkyi Drolma). The success of our book workshop also heavily depended on the complex organizing skills of Wang Kun, the workshop coordinator, her colleagues, and her team of student volunteers. We would like to extend our thanks to each of them: Sonam Beiji, Dai Ying, Duan Shudan, He Jiale, Li Jia, Li Yan, Liu Xinku, Ma Zhen, Su Li, Tian Tian, Xie-Li Hongjia, Xie Linjie, Yang Xinlei, Yang Yi, Yao Min, Zhang Cheng, Zeng Qingxin, and Zhang Rong. Their enthusiasm convinces us once again that Yunnan Minzu University is committed to supporting its faculty members and students and collaborating with its international peers for the advancement of the social sciences and humanities in the twenty-first century. Last but not least, we would like to thank the Asian Borderlands Series of Amsterdam University Press for hosting this book. Its Series Editors, Willem van Schendel and Tina Harris, Senior Commissioning Editor, Saskia Gieling, and Editor Jaap Wagenaar are among the most dedicated publishers we have ever worked with. From the peer-review process to revision, they provided us with the best kind of comments, suggestions, guidance, and copyediting. We applaud their unsurpassed professionalism. Dan Smyer Yü

Geographical coverage of the chapters

Introduction Trans-Himalayas as Multistate Margins Dan Smyer Yü Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/INTRO Abstract This introductory chapter lays out a roadmap of the book regarding its overarching themes, conceptual concerns, and individual chapter highlights. It attempts to initiate a trans-Himalayan study aimed at an ethnoculturally and ecologically coherent but geopolitically demarcated world region. Based on the borderland perspectives of the contributors, it deems the trans-Himalayan region a space of multiple state margins between which connectivity and disconnectivity concurrently take place. Concerning the diversity of trans-Himalayan livelihood, territoriality, and modernity, the chapter emphasizes the criticalness of ecological forces, which, along with human-induced global-local forces of change, reshape the multidimensional borderland engagements between different ethnic communities and nation-states in the greater Himalayan region, including the highlands of Southeast Asia and Southwest China. Keywords: Trans-Himalayas, Zomia, livelihood, horizontal connectivity, multistate margins

The Project The concept of this book emerged from two conferences held in March 2013: ‘Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya’ and ‘Himalayan Connection: Disciplines, Geographies, and Trajectories’ – organized respectively by the India China Institute of the New School and the Yale Himalaya Initiative. Both conferences showcased a wide range of papers addressing historical and current topics from diverse ecosystems,

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human communities, and nation-states in the Himalayas. The inquiries pertaining to how we have conceived and are reconceiving Himalayan studies culminated in the keynote presentations and discussions of James Scott, Sara Shneiderman, and Charles Ramble. The themes centered on the conceptual interfacing of concepts of Zomia (Van Schendel 2002; Scott 2009; Michaud 2010) and the Himalayas, deconstructing and reconstructing disciplinary boundaries, and the historical and current shifting of borderlands and territories. First coined by Willem van Schendel, ‘Zomia’ is a term etymologically derived from Tibetan-Burmese languages spoken in the Himalayas and is used to refer to contiguous regions in Northeast India, Southeast Asia, Southwest China, and the Tibetan Plateau (Van Schendel 2002). Its subsequent evolutions by James Scott, Jean Michaud, and Sara Shneiderman have different geographical coverages, contributing toward rich theoretical ground. While the interdisciplinary reconceptualizations of the complexity of bordered connectivity in modern High Asia underlined the core theoretical inquiries of the two conferences, it was also discernible that the default conception of the Himalayas as a region was centered mostly on the geography of the Himalayan territories of Nepal, Tibet, and India, limiting how we explore new frontiers and the diversity of Himalayan studies. My postconference queries resonated with those of the Yale workshop organizers: Does using ‘Himalaya’ as a broad regional signifier invoke an ecological or cultural determinism that de-emphasizes the specificity of political history? Or does it legitimately recognize the webs of ecological, economic and cultural connectivity that have bound together complex entities over time? How might new Himalayan scholarship, oriented toward connectivity and inclusion empowered by new collaborations and analytical tools learn from, but ultimately move beyond, its legacy? How can new voices be included to express greater diversity in Himalayan studies? (Lord, Quintman, and Shneiderman 2013: 1)

Do we have to make either-or choices when we encounter the simultaneity of continuity and discontinuity? If we regard borders as ‘simultaneous obstacles and opportunities’ (11), we could very well treat discontinuity and disconnectivity as new forms of continuity and connectivity as all borders have no absolute closure but consist of regulated ports of entries and exixts as well as of disputed or demarcated but unguarded lines open for illicit and illegal crossings (Van Schendel 2005: 38-68). An area or a region is never absolutely bounded. The end of each is the beginning of the other.

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This is particularly pertinent to areas and regions that are located in the same landmass with a long history of human interactions in addition to the region’s geological, ecological, and climatic integrity. In Fall 2014, the ‘connectivity,’ ‘inclusion,’ and ‘new voices’ evoked by the Yale scholars were naturally integrated into existing and upcoming projects at Yunnan Minzu University’s Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies. This book, as one of the inaugural projects of the Center, is a multinational, collaborative project based on the YMU workshop in summer 2015 ‘Exploring New Grounds in Himalayan Studies: Niched Living, Transboundary State Effects, and Sustainability of Ethno-Ecological Heritages.’ With participating scholars specializing in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Southwest China, and Tibetan studies, the lively discussions and debates centered on a reconceptualizations of Himalayan studies, on how the practices of modernization have complicated the meanings of traditional modes of being and premodern interregional commerce, and how the transborder effects of state-building engender the simultaneity of border marking and borderland residents’ agentive responses to challenges and opportunities. This has led to the current shape of this book as an interdisciplinary experiment sitting within a range of disciplinary competences: anthropology, environmental studies, ethnology, human ecology, geography, history, religious studies, and Tibetology.

Trans-Himalayas and Trans-Himalayan Studies This book is not geared toward constructing or revamping a unique trans­ regional study; however, its chapters are thematized and bound together under the geographical and conceptual rubrics of trans-Himalayas and trans-Himalayan studies. It is thus necessary to begin with the historical connotations of these two overarching phrases that link the chapters in this book with existing works of Himalayan studies and related fields. The intellectual history of Himalayan studies or trans-Himalayan studies began with explorers and colonial officers. Issues related to boundary crossings, frontiers, and borderlands are characteristics of the formative phase of Himalayan studies. The origin of the term ‘trans-Himalayas’ can be traced to Sven Hedin (1865-1952), a Swedish explorer, whose work in three volumes was called Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet (Hedin 1909-1913). Hedin’s descriptive use of the phrase ‘trans-Himalaya’ is indicative of his south-north traverse of the Himalayas from India to Tibet and of how the highest mountains functioned as natural borderlands

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separating Tibet from its southern neighbors. He emphatically posits ‘the Trans-Himalaya as the true boundary range of the elevated country [Tibet]’ (Hedin 1909-1913: vol. 3, 43), while noting that the mighty ‘snow-crowned domes’ and their ‘wild precipitous rocks’ (Hedin 1909-1913: vol. 3, 2, 24) did not fully enclose Tibet within its plateau, but were traversed by passes linking the north with the south. These were the ancient caravan routes that Hedin’s Kashmiri guides and Ladakhi assistants were most familiar with and, that made his adventures and explorations possible (Hedin 1909-1913: vol. 3, 27). His voluminous depictions of Himalayan cultures, religions, and trade practices serve as historical sources for the study of premodern transHimalayan connectivity that considers trade routes, pilgrimage passes, and the advent of the geopolitical encounters between the British India and the Manchu Empire (Waterhouse 2014a: 7). Eighty-three years before Hedin set out for his trans-Himalayan expeditions, Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801-1894), an officer of the British East India Company, was assigned to the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and Darjeeling where he spent 38 years ‘developing trans-Himalayan trade to China through Tibet – in particular an overland route from Calcutta to Peking’ (Waterhouse 2014a: 7). However, Hodgson had his own calling for a wide range of scholarly interests. He is belatedly regarded as ‘a founder of Himalayan anthropology’ (Gaenszle 2014: 209) and has received posthumous recognition for his scholarly achievements. His systematic collection of Buddhist texts, Himalayan flora and fauna, and ethnological writings are the historically traceable origins of Himalayan studies (Waterhouse 2014b). Therefore, he rightfully deserves credit as a foundational scholar of Himalayan studies. Hodgson’s presence in Nepal and Darjeeling represented the British East India Company’s effort to open the Himalayas as ‘a political frontier as well as a scientific frontier’ (Arnold 2014: 200), with the latter serving the interests of the former. The former was ‘a new and exhilarating frontier of colonial knowledge’ (Arnold 2014: 196) furthering the vision of the Himalayas as a ‘settlement of Europeans’ and as a point of interregional commerce supplying resources to ‘the starving peasantry of Ireland and of the Scotch Highlands’ (Arnold 2014: 200). The importance of the Himalayas to the British Empire was thus not merely territorial but also pertained to the livelihoods of the millions of its imperial subjects back home. Its intent for the northward territorial expansion inevitably engaged with Tibet as a frontier of the Manchu Empire. A seed of later geopolitical contentions with modern China was sowed during the time when Hodgson and his compatriots were stationed in the southern foothills of the Himalayas.

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This legacy was further accentuated after the McMahon Line was drawn at the Shimla Convention in 1941 and the Sino-Indian border wars broke out 20 years later. With the Himalayas divided between postcolonial India and the new socialist China the region was transmogrified into ‘a peripheral hinterland of two irreconcilable civilizations’ (Rawat 2004: 23). From this point on, the diversity of the Himalayas and the advancement of Himalayan studies were overshadowed and hindered by the geopolitics of the two most populous nations on earth. Thus, the signature of Himalayan studies observably remains, to this day, Indo-Tibet centric or Indo-China centric. Today, Himalayan studies continue to suffer from the multiple aftereffects of the cartographical practices of India, China, and other modern, emerging nation-states in the Himalayas and their contiguous regions. Four of the aftereffects particularly echo through the pages of this book and in the greater field of Himalayan studies: – Previously connected ethnolinguistic communities, ecological zones, trade routes, and pilgrimage passages are divided into the territories of modern nation-states (Bergmann 2016; Diemberger, this volume; Saunders 2010; Samuel 2005; Saxer 2013; Shneiderman 2015b). – The identity discourse of the modern nation-states’ territorial sovereignty minimizes local affective senses of place, dwelling, and boundary (Cederlöf 2014; Drew, this volume; Coggins and Yeh 2014; Horstmann, this volume; Li Quanmin, this volume; Shneiderman, this volume; Smyer Yü 2015; Turner et al. 2015). – The moral dichotomization of the ‘barbarians’ and the ‘civilized’ in the critiques of historical imperial encounters reduces the significance of ecologically conditioned, and subsistence-driven interactions, network-building, and territorial expansions in the histories of multiple small-scale human communities and larger cultural systems (Giersch 2006; Harrell 1995; Scott 2009). – State effects are manifest in the territorial practices of national sovereignty, modernization programs, and local agentive responses in the borderlands (Diemberger. Drew, Li Yunxia, Michaud, Turner, Shneiderman, all in this volume). In her chapter, Hildegard Diemberger states plainly that border formation between modern nation-states in the Himalayas is a geopolitical materiality that blocks historical trans-Himalayan commercial and religious flows from the southern Himalayas to the Tibetan Plateau in the north. In her findings, borderlands were not absent among the diverse human communities of the Himalayas but they were porous enough for intercommunity trade,

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pilgrimage, and the flourishing of craftsmanship dependent on geographically distant, locale-specific raw materials. Trans-Himalayan trade routes sustained a diversity of human heritages, not necessarily as ‘free trade zones’ in the contemporary sense, but maintained among what Diemberger calls ‘a galaxy of communities.’ It could be said that borders, borderlands, territories, and sovereignties in the premodern world of the Himalayas were networked as a web of interconnected feudal states, kingdoms, and smaller-scale societies (Tambiah 2013; Sturgeon 2005). The Himalayas then were ‘a vast network of cultural and commercial relations’ (Bergmann 2016: 89). The modern states’ reshaping, reterritorializing, and geostrategizing of the Himalayas have segregated themselves, along with the nodes of this network, behind their borderlines. The displacement and the disintegration of ethnic groups and their ancestral land into two or three modern nation-states in the greater Himalayan region are common geopolitical factors that have altered livelihoods and patterns of human relations. This volume initiates a revisioning of Himalayan studies in the form of a trans-Himalayan study, acknowledging the ecogeological contiguity of the great Himalayas, emphasizing the ethnohistorical integrity and/or connectivity of what we now refer to as frontiers, borderland communities, and transborder livelihoods, and, finally, studying the inherent convertibility of the cultures, empires, civilizations, and modern states to the formation of the current geopolitical cartographies and borderlands of the greater Himalayas. This proposed revisioning of Himalayan studies coincides with the ongoing trend among scholars who call for the studies of world regions (Van Schendel 2002), reconceiving the Himalayas as an integral whole that is reshaped as ‘a multiple-state space’ (Shneiderman 2010), and rejoins the highlands of Southeast Asia and Southwest China with the central Himalayas as a greater Himalayan region (Van Schendel 2002; Michaud 2010). In this regard, this revisioning is premised upon High Asia, in general, as a continuous zone rather than as disconnected spaces at the peripheries of individual nation-states (Bergmann 2016: 90; Van Schendel 2002). Border contentions between adjacent nation-states are not merely a matter of demarcating contended national sovereignties. Their foremost impact is the disruption or the discontinuation of the livelihoods dependent on intercommunal and interregional trade. Known as the ‘Himalayan impasse’ (Saxer 2013: 37; Dodin 2013), this has interrupted the salt-grain trade, seasonal pastoral transhumance, and pilgrimage routes (Saxer 2013). To reemphasize the ecogeological contiguity and the ethnohistorical continuity of the Himalayas does not mean to disregard the geopolitical

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specificities of borders and sovereignties. On the contrary, it engages the concurrent disconnectivity and connectivity of the situation. While globalization emphasizes territorial porosity elsewhere in the world, it entails a different set of occurrences in the greater Himalayan region, namely, the solidification of borderlines, heightened border disputes, the transborder and transregional movements of people, capital, and goods (Van Schendel 2005: 38-68), growing borderland economies, and new livelihood strategies based on ancestral knowledge of local terrain, ecology, and the interethnic and religious affinities that rely on ancient feudal alliances or treaties (Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015; Sturgeon 2005). If this book does innovate a ‘new Himalayan scholarship,’ as hoped for by the Yale workshop organizers, it is a trans-Himalayan study or a trans-Himalayan perspective that finds its emphasis in the prefix ‘trans-’ signifying shifting frontiers, territories, flows, networks of trade and pilgrimage, and spatial engagements of empires and states in both historical and modern terms. The trans-Himalayan study experiment undertaken in this volume is thus a type of transboundary area study or a transregional study aimed at an ethnoculturally and ecologically coherent but geopolitically demarcated world area called for by Van Schendel’s process geographies (2002: 658). It treats space, region, and area not as trait-based, fixed geographical containers of culture, ethnicity, and identity but rather as variables of sociopolitical spatiality.

The Geographical Coverage of the Trans-Himalayas The geography of the trans-Himalaya region in this volume includes the central Himalayas (including their Northeast Indian, upland Bangladesh, Nepali, and Bhutani peripheries), Mainland Southeast Asia, Southwest China, and Northwest China including the Tibetan Plateau. These regions are found largely in the coverage of Scott’s Zomia (2009), Michaud’s ‘the Southeast Asian Massif’ (Michaud 2010: 48), Shneiderman’s ‘the Himalayan Massif’ (2010), and Van Schendel’s 2007 Zomia extended from his 2002 version exclusive of Xinjiang and a large part of Central Asia (Van Schendel 2002; Michaud 2010: 188). This High Asia possesses ‘spatial cohesion’ (Saunders 2010: 3), an entwinement of ecogeological forces as well as translingual connections, religious affiliations, civilizational encounters, and commercial interactions. High Asia is thus an outcome of the coproduction of natural forces and human affairs. Again, the immediate goal of this book is not to build ‘a new architecture for area studies’ as proposed by scholars in the mid-1990s (Center for

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International Studies 1997: 1), but is an experiment of pulling together a wide range of historical and ethnographic cases studies centered on a High Asia that is deeply entangled with multiple imperial histories, modern state effects. There is also the sustained academic ambition to make this disciplinarily ‘illegible’ area (Van Schendel 2002: 652) as a coherent regional study. It is thus necessary to inform readers of how the region is understood in this volume. Seen from the perspective of Vicente Rafael’s notion of region, the spatial cohesion of the geographical areas discussed in this book is revealed through the use of vertical and horizontal coordinates. He writes, ‘In any and all cases, the regional only comes into view comparatively: vertically related to that which seeks to maintain and subsume it, such as the empire, the nationstate, or the metropole; and horizontally in a relation of complementarity and conflict with other regions’ (Rafael 1999: 1208). Translating Rafael’s point into the multifaceted context of this book, the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the modern trans-Himalayas pertain to the ‘power-laden practices of mapping’ (Rafael 1999: 1210). The formation of area studies could be said to be the result of the vertical understanding of areas and regions as formulated in the context of the geopolitics of the Cold War era. It has a traceable genealogy of power beginning with the geopolitically framed domains polarized by the capitalist West and the communist East (Sidaway 2012: 2-3; Cumming 1997: 9). In this vertical line of thinking, the initial engineers of area studies and their governmental patrons defined areas by the geographical domains of given nation-states (Cumming 1997: 7-8; Van Schendel 2002: 655). This past verticality in area studies has become a hindrance to the studies of the border-defying simultaneous occurrences of connectivity and disconnectivity, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, and porosity and impenetrability as they occur in the context of globalization and the new forces of change emerging from regional superpowers. Within this multifaceted context of the trans-Himalayas, the authors of this book work with horizontal, transboundary matters between communities, ecosystems, and states, which the vertical orientation of area studies in the past largely missed. Scholars understand very well that current changes in the trans-Himalayas, like ‘a shaken kaleidoscope’ (Center for International Studies 1997: 2), are transforming every human community into ‘a global phenomenon’ (3). We also recognize the role of revitalizations of past connectivity and enthusiasm for renewing traditional trade routes and networks previously terminated when state-created borderlines cut through them. In this regard, native senses of geography and strategies of

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resilient and sustainable livelihoods are the heart of the horizontal matters in this book.

Changing Habitats and Livelihoods in the Trans-Himalayas The ecological conditions and the age-old historical networks between different human communities display the essence of horizontal connectivity in the trans-Himalayan region. The chapters and existing works of Cederlöf (2008 and 2014), Michaud (2010), Samuel (2005), Shneiderman (2015a), Turner (2010), Drew (2014a), Diemberger (this volume), and other contributors remind us of the extensive connectivity in both premodern and colonial eras. Elements of the natural world are not merely the building blocks of the physical earth, as things-in-themselves but condition human livelihoods through the uneven distribution of natural resources and climatic patterns seasonally predetermining the availability of interregional routes for trade and pilgrimage and controlling the timing of interstate warfare. In her study of the Northeast Indian and Burmese Himalayas that made up part of British India’s nineteenth-century frontier, Cederlöf regards the lifeworlds of different ethnic communities as ‘a protean landscape’ that shapeshifts with the monsoon (Cederlöf 2014: 22). Rivers lose their identity as natural streams of water, flooding indifferently beyond their banks, invading dwelling spaces, and crossing boundaries of all sorts. Likewise, the flooded landscape is no longer solid but a watery medium connecting one community to another. Water, as a natural elemental, determines human social and political behaviors. Commercially, the rising waterways become highways (Cederlöf 2014: 9) that reduce the ‘friction of distance’ (Scott 2009: 264) in interregional trade activities. At the same time, the indifferent watery mass makes the boundaries of ethnic communities and nationstates porous, opening up possibilities of external invasions or outward offensives. The changing natural conditions engendered by the monsoon dictate a range of human affairs. Both the solid landscape and the rivers become fluid. In the central Himalayas, the horizontal connection of human affairs and environmental conditions is reflected in the altitudinally differentiated ecological zones and in the correspondingly differentiated niches that sustain human livelihoods. Each ecological zone of the Himalayas affords a unique livelihood niche but presents both environmentally conditioned sufficiency and deficiency of resources for the sustenance and the cultural continuity of the community. Such afforded niches include the salt-grain

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trade between Nepal and Tibet through Upper Humla (Saxer 2013), the transportation of the ecologically specific plants and pigments used in Buddhist papermaking and icon-making in the area from the southern Himalayas to Tibetan Plateau (Diemberger, this volume), and the teahorse trade between Southwest China and Lhasa and beyond (Ma and Ma 2014). Each points to the resilience and the flourishing of the ecologically situated human communities and lies in their awareness of one another’s environmental conditions as well as material abundance or scarcity. The horizontal knowledge of the environmentally induced, economic comparative advantages and disadvantages found among different communities in the Himalayas materialized as trade networks, religious affiliations, and political alliances long before the advent of the modern era. Human affairs and ecological zones remain horizontally coterminous and in the face of challenges and frustrations, they generate new forms of connectivity. A recurring theme in this book is the transformation of physical landscapes by economic globalization and state-sanctioned modernization programs and the ways in which individuals, households, and communities adapt to new modes of production and living. In this process the livelihoods of the Akha, De’ang, Han, Hmong, Indians, Nepalis, and Tibetans in this volume are undergoing complex changes. These case studies demonstrate how the transboundary modernization programs and the demands of consumer markets compound the pressures on human communities to diversify livelihoods, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Reconstructed livelihoods are the results of what Michaud phrases as the ‘strategy of selective modernity acceptation’ (Michaud 2012: 1868) in reference to the enactment of agency as ‘life projects’ (Michaud 2012: 1867) that are embedded in local histories; they encompass visions of the world and the future that are distinct from those embodied by projects promoted by state and markets (Michaud 2012: 1868; Ortner 2006: 147). To reemphasize, the horizontal relationships between different ways of making a livelihood, Michaud’s ‘life projects,’ in the trans-Himalayas have become more complex and more complicated with the borders that cut through and divide them. This is where transborder livelihoods engender what Sturgeon calls ‘landscape plasticity’ signifying that livelihoods are ‘sites for maneuvering and struggle’ (Sturgeon 2005: 9, 25) in relation to land use, transboundary cultivation, and harvesting of crops, while minimizing challenges and maximizing opportunities. Livelihoods in the borderlands are processual in nature. ‘The past is also a source of visions of how things could be revived or reworked in new contexts’ (Sturgeon 2005: 9, 121). In relation to this facet of livelihoods, the contributors practice an enactment

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of what Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud call for: ‘more inclusive, culturally specific, actor-oriented approaches to livelihoods that consider micro-scale social relations and their embeddedness within local socioeconomic, political, and cultural systems’ (Turner et al. 2015: 6).

Zomia from Dichotomies to Symbioses Van Schendel points out three factors that made Zomia institutionally illegible in area studies: Zomia lacked clear geoideological lines dividing the communist and the capitalist spheres of influence, was alleged to cover only the geographical margins of modern nation-states, and was not sanctioned by the ‘colonial experts’ and the ‘civilizational specialists’ who ‘were keen to make sure that any new area studies were built around the civilizational constructs to which they devoted themselves’ (Van Schendel 2002: 654-656). Van Schendel is instrumental in increasing the legibility of Zomia by presenting these factors to his readers. Subsequently, James Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) and the contributions to the special issue of Journal of Global History entitled ‘Zomia and Beyond’ (2010) edited by Jean Michaud all point to the theoretical fecundity of Zomia. Zomia as a geographical ‘zone of refuge’ and ‘shatter zone’ (Scott 2009: 7, 22) for those running from the state is debated but its conceptual implications are abundant. The most active responses to Scott’s Zomia are centered upon the pairs of opposites that frequently appear in his text, namely the hills and the valleys, the state and the stateless, and the barbarians and the civilized. In Michaud’s special issue, Sara Shneiderman points out that Scott’s dichotomized vision of Zomia does not speak to the complexity of the lived experiences of territory, sovereignty, and agency in the Himalayas. She sees the Himalayas as ‘a multiple-state space’ and ‘an agentive site of political consciousness’ rather than a ‘non-state space,’ in which the subjects of different states constantly enact their agencies to maximize their existential, economic, and cultural interests (Shneiderman 2010: 2829). In a similar vein, based on his ethnographic and historical studies of Southwest China including the Kham region of cultural Tibet, Patterson Giersch also expresses a view different from Scott’s: ‘Zomia was not always a place in which culture or political organization was shaped by refusal’ (Giersch 2010: 238) particularly in reference to local populations’ resistance and the varied imperial and state governing measures (Giersch 2006: 97126). The responses from Shneiderman, Giersch, and other practitioners of borderland and transregional studies rest upon a recent historical fact

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that since the mid-twentieth century, there are no longer nonstate spaces in Scott’s geographical Zomia. Continuing from the works of Shneiderman, Giersch, and others, Scott’s Zomia could also be read with a different emphasis, particularly where he addresses the symbiotic history of the hills and the valleys. The symbiosis of the opposites, in his text, is possibly underread and underdiscussed among scholars. ‘By symbiosis,’ he writes, ‘I mean to invoke the biological metaphor of two organisms living together in more or less intimate association – in this case, social organisms. […] It is not possible to write a coherent history of the hills that is not in constant dialogue with lowland centers; nor is it possible to write a coherent history of lowland centers that ignores its hilly periphery’ (Scott 2009: 26). To note, ‘symbiotic’ in Scott and this volume does not necessarily reflect its etymological emphasis on a relationship to the advantage of all parties involved. Symbiosis might also entail a set of relationships that are forcibly, inequitably, or negotiably engaged but that eventually produce a new set of frontiers and new agentive dynamics of livelihood constructions. This reemphasis of Scott’s symbiotic understanding of the hills and the valleys is meant to be a practical dissuasion from overuse of the ossified dichotomies and opposites such as ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarians,’ and ‘state’ and ‘stateless.’ The discussion of horizontal connectivity in the trans-Himalayas can be extended with Scott’s symbiotic approach to include an emphasis on ecology and subsistence. From this perspective, the historical antecedence of the moralized understanding of ‘barbarians’ and ‘civilized’ was, in fact, the environmental conditions of household livelihoods and subsistence economies, which were the motive forces of material interactions and territorial conquests taking place between different human communities, kingdoms, and empires. In this process, ‘barbarians’ and ‘civilized’ were often reciprocally convertible on the grounds of livelihood-making and the translating of ecological differences into comparative advantages/ disadvantages of subsistence economies. For instance, since this book situates the trans-Himalayas mostly within the geographical coverage of Van Schendel’s Zomia, it should be noted that the border of the People’s Republic of China cuts across the entire region from the Guangxi-Vietnam border to the Xinjiang-Kyrgyz border. Its total length is approximately 10,800 kilometers (Nie and Li 2008: 2). Inevitably China appears frequently as an imperial colossus in both Zomian and trans-Himalayan studies, and yet the critiques mostly remain on the moral scale of how Han Chinese viewed their neighbors as ‘raw,’ ‘primitive,’ and ‘uncivilized’ (Scott 2009: x-xi; Michaud 2010: 195, 198; Harrell 1995: 3-38).

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If we take an ethnohistorical, ecohistorical, and livelihood-focused reading of China’s territorial formation, it is not too difficult to see the current cartographical shape of China is mainly a cocreation of Mongols, Manchus, and Han Chinese. In the process, the former ‘barbarians’ became the rulers and the civilized, while the former rulers became third- or the fourth-class citizens (Buell 2003: 160-161; Ge 2015: 233). Undeniably, the human cost to the conquerors and the conquered alike were high (Lary 2012: 53; Buell 2003: 123); however, the imperial conquests and the reciprocal conversions of varied moral complexes deserve an ecological reading in addition to the resulting moral lessons yielded. Scott suggests emphasizing Owen Lattimore’s historical understanding of the Han-Mongolian-Manchu frontiers premised on ecology. Scott writes, ‘Having shown that “the Mongols” were not some ur-population, but instead enormously diverse, including many ex-Han, Lattimore saw the hegemony of ecology: “The frontiers between different types of soil, between farming and herding, and between Chinese and Mongols coincided exactly.”’ Scott then continues, ‘Ecological niche, because it marks off different subsistence routines, rituals, and material culture, is one distinction around which ethnogenesis can occur’ (Scott 2009: 262). In addition, examples of the simultaneous ethnogenesis and frontier-genesis are amply found in Western China and the Southeast Asian Massif. For instance, the ‘Kayah/Karenni tribe’ is exemplified by Scott’s work on political ethnogeneses in Burma (Scott 2009: 262). The genesis of the Hors (currently known as the Tu in Northwest China) can be traced back to Mongol soldiers and officers. Their hybrid modes of production continue to be found in the middle ground where steppe nomadism and plains agriculture meet. Lattimore’s work on Asian frontiers is a civilizational history that emphasizes what Scott calls ‘the hegemony of ecology.’ Lattimore articulates his keen sense of the ecological duality of nomadism and agriculture in the case of Han-Mongolian-Manchu imperial encounters. He begins with this duality in the physical borderlands separating Han Chinese, Mongols, and Manchus but soon sees a union of opposites in the movements of ecologically conditioned resources mediating the interactions of these three imperial players who shaped the territory of modern China. In their tug of war between wealth and mobility, while the Han Chinese lost wealth and territory to their nomadic counterparts, the nomadic empires lost their mobility to the wealth and lands of the Han Chinese (Lattimore 1940: 76-80). In the mid-1930s, Lattimore’s contemporary, the late geographer Hu Huanyong, proposed the ‘geo-demographic demarcation line’ (Hu 1935) of China, also known as ‘the Aihui-Tengchong Line’ or ‘the Hu Huangyong

24 Dan Smyer Yü Figure 1 The Hu Huanyong Line

Line.’ Drawn from Aihui (currently Heihe) in Helongjiang Province to Tengchong in Yunnan Province, the line cuts China into the southeast half and the northwest half. Besides its significance in demographic studies, the line could also be looked upon as an ecological line, a meteorological line, a civilizational borderland line, an ethnic fault line, and a nomadicagricultural boundary line. The cocreation of modern China’s territory and borderlands by the three imperial polities could be metaphorized as an artificial rotation of the line with Tengchong as the axis, counterclockwise, westward until it reached Central Asia and laid flat on China’s current trans-Himalayan borderline. The duality of nomadism and agriculture, the ‘barbarians’ and the civilized, and the uplands and the lowlands was

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then territorially integrated into one single empire from which the modern republics emerged. The emergence of modern republics and reinforcement of their territorial sovereignties was based on the imperially cocreated cartography. Lattimore’s historiography of Asian frontiers and Scott’s symbiotic approach to dualities and opposites are invaluable to both microscalar and macroscalar approaches to the studies of the verticality and the horizontality of frontiers, territories, and livelihoods in the modern trans-Himalayas.

The Trans-Himalayas as Multistate Margins The social realities referred to in Scott’s symbiosis of the hills and the valleys, Van Schendel’s ‘flows’ (2002: 662-665), and Michaud’s ‘transnational social space’ (2010: 209) have encountered multiple state territorial effects and subsequent conceptual frustrations since the advent of the modern era. The question has evolved from ‘Who exactly needs a notion such as Zomia?’ (Michaud 2010: 212) to suggestions of new conceptual puzzle pieces, for example, ‘Zomia thinking’ (Shneiderman 2010: 293), ‘trans-frontier economic space’ (Giersch 2010: 219), ‘selective connection’ (Hathaway 2014: 156; Coggins and Yeh 2014: 9), and ‘multiple and shifting articulations’ (Bergmann 2016: 88). Although ‘Zomia remains an awkward choice of name in relation to an enormous and vastly diverse reality’ (Michaud 2010: 200), its evolving, diversifying conceptual deployments in the trans-Himalayan contexts are rebuilding transhistorical pathways interlinking the past transregional networks with their presently bordered counterparts and overlaying each with the other to affirm the trans-Himalayas as a diverse, interconnected but cut-up, world region. Our contributors’ consistent cross-referencing between the past and the present conditions of their cases coincides with this transhistorical trend of articulating the ever-present but artificially suppressed or rechanneled transborder and interregional networks as modern state effects discussed in the chapters by Diemberger, Drew, Horstmann, Shneiderman, Smyer Yü, and Turner. This hermeneutics of state effects is congruent with Scott’s reading of ‘the relative uniformity of valley culture’ that produces the ‘centralizing’ and ‘flattening’ effects to both valley and hill populations through the spread of valley-based modes of being – for example, political practices and religious beliefs (Scott 2009: 155). Modern states are known for maximizing the leveling effect through modernization programs and global economic and geopolitical outreach. Valley crops are grown in the hills (Li Yunxia, Brendan Galipeau, this volume); the yields of hill crops are distributed in

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the global markets of the lowlands (Turner, Li Qunmin, Cheng, this volume); the affective and premodern senses of place and territory are reemerging and rearticulated (Drew, Horstmann, Shneiderman, and Diemberger, this volume); and the traditional sense of place, the imperial ambivalence of territoriality, and the modern notion of sovereignty are so deeply entangled that they produce third or fourth options for livelihood reconstruction and the solidification of a modern nation’s physical borders (Smyer Yü, Horstmann, this volume). To be emphasized, the notions of the ‘affective boundaries,’ the ‘transHimalayan pathways,’ and the ‘imperial vision’ of frontiers respectively discussed in the chapters by Shneiderman, Diemberger, and Cederlöf in particular point to the divergent and yet entwined local vertical-horizontal coordinates and those of their imperial counterparts regarding placemaking, region-making, and sovereignty-making as processes of imperial territorial engagements and of the remembering of local affective ‘territorial consciousness’ (Shneiderman, this volume). The three authors separately illustrate how the enacted imperial visions of territories and boundaries cut through the integral homelands of different peoples and reorient the verticality of their political centers and the horizontality of their relations with neighboring peers. The territorial foundations of many modern trans-Himalayan nationstates rest upon the visions of their imperial predecessors or former colonial masters. The historical momentum of the imperial territorial vision, although varied, contributed to the formation of modern state sovereignty as ‘the absolute territorial organization of political authority’ grounded in ‘a grammar of fixed boundaries and identities’ (Agnew 2005: 439-440). Postcolonial Indian and socialist Chinese sovereignties are the pertinent examples of the unilaterally defined sovereignty based in an imperial past. The transhistorical nexuses of British India with the Republic of India, and the empires of the Mongols and the Manchus with the modern Chinese republics are respectively the ballasts of the two modern nation-states’ territorial sovereignties. The clear-cut borderlines, actual or intended, in modern trans-Himalayas nullified the leniency of the past imperial indirect rules (Mantena 2010: 7; Giersch 2006: 33) and closed traditional interregional overland trade routes. They have reshaped the trans-Himalayas as what I would call ‘multistate margins,’ referring to the shattering of this once cohesive region into the territorial possessions of different nation-states. The trans-Himalayas stand as an integral ecogeological landmass; however, the past cohesiveness of human affairs has been recentralized toward new political centers or new

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paradigms of governance whose territorially oriented national identities have transformed the trans-Himalayas into multiple territorial frontiers and margins as separately owned or contended state properties. This plains-focused state effect translated the imperial sense of remoteness and frontier into the language of sovereignty, state territory, and development. Livelihoods and cultural identities have inevitably been destroyed and reconstructed. As shown in the chapters of this book, however, this does not mean that the borderland populations are only passive subjects of their states’ territorial redefinitions of their homelands; instead, their resilience, grounded in their histories and knowledge of their habitats, continues to empower them with active responses to the external forces of change.

Transthematics of the Chapters The chapters in this book are parsed into two transregional and theoretical subthemes – ‘Territory, Worldviews, and Power through Time’ and ‘Livelihood Reconstructions, Flows, and Trans-Himalayan Modernities.’ These two transthematics of the book are centered upon an overarching intent to rejoin those differently demarcated massifs, areas, and zones based on our respective accounts of trans-Himalayan connectivity and disconnectivity. Although the threads that bind the chapters together are manifold and the routes of human and ecological connections are numerous, these two subthemes best illustrate a collective agenda to practice a trans-Himalayan study that acknowledges the factors of ecology, subsistence practices, trade routes, and interethnic networks. Thus, this trans-Himalayan study is also geared toward the complex historical, ethnographic, and critical examinations of the local and transregional effects of state-building, economic globalization, religious networks, and modern geopolitics of territoriality.

Territory, Worldviews, and Power through Time In the studies of modern borderlands, the notion of territoriality is mostly concerned with what Van Schendel calls the ‘spatial strategy’ of states (Van Schendel 2005: 46) aimed at permanently demarcating sovereignty in the form of physical borders. In this sense, territoriality and sovereignty is coterminus. Modern borderlands thus have a dual function of ‘fixity and motion’ (41). Fixity is understood as an inherent part of constructing a territorial sovereignty as a containment of its subjects and exclusion of

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outsiders and consists of a set of restricted points and areas of contact with the outside world. Territoriality is, therefore, a nation-branding process involving cartographical, legal, physical, and geopolitical demarcations. It often goes against globalization, represented by a compression of space that is popularly welcomed as the emergence of ‘global villages.’ However, in the actual borderlands and frontiers of modern nations, states’ legal and geopolitical endeavors to solidify their physical borderlines with their neighbors surpasses their efforts to loosen the interstate, cross-border movements of people, goods, and capital. To a large extent, the legal definition of sovereignty slows down or closes the cross-border flows that existed prior to the establishment of the modern sovereign nation and that are now deemed ‘illegal’ or ‘illicit’ (Van Schendel and Abraham 2005) by modern national and international legal definitions. This is a top-down outlook on the geography of national peripheries and frontiers. We are, therefore, compelled to reconceptualize borderland in both modern and premodern terms regarding the encounters of smaller-scale human societies with empires and nation-states, traditional transregional networks of trade, pilgrimage, and environmental flows as well as of transhistorical, pan-Asian religious traditions, such as Buddhism. All of them have cut across ethnic, imperial, and state boundaries for centuries. This is the point where we group together the chapters by Jean Michaud, Sara Shneiderman, Dan Smyer Yü, Hildegard Diemberger, and Gunnel Cederlöf to address the historical and modern formations and conceptualizations of border, territory, transregionality, modernity, and their varied consequences. The chapter by Jean Michaud opens the modern historical perspective of the book by illustrating the ethnodemographic composition of the Southeast Asian Massif and by narrating the encounters between kingdoms, and modern empires and nation-states. It demonstrates the complexity of ethnic diversity and premodern governing systems, and how local encounters with larger empires and global forces of change reshaped their traditional modes of being. Scott’s thesis of Zomia stands out in Michaud’s chapter, highlighting the geographical fact that prior to the mid-twentieth century the Southeast Asian Massif was a ‘shatter zone’ or a zone of refuge for runaways from tribal feuds and imperial invasions. Plains-based empires, feudal states, and, later, modern nation-states pushed the smaller ethnolinguistic groups up into the hills and the whole region underwent an agrarian transition from subsistence farming to industrial agriculture. While Michaud focuses on the livelihood changes, Shneiderman begins her chapter with the question – ‘How do Himalayan peoples conceptualize “territory”’? Based on her case study of the formation of modern Nepal

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and its recent restructuring process in the period between 2006 and 2015, her inquiry is multiscalar, meaning that the scale of territory pertains not merely to the state’s biography of the nation but also to the individual and the communal narratives and lived experiences. If we use her conceptual terms, the sense of ‘the properties of territory’ is based on ‘the practices of territory’ that vary from one ethnic homeland to another and from one historical period to another. Based on Shneiderman’s fieldwork in Dokkha, Banke, and Mustang, these three districts of Nepal show a history during which they had divergent transregional, national, and religious gravitations embodied in their relationships respectively with Tibet, the British East India Company, and a Buddhist orientation. Thus, for centuries, they were relatively autonomous to one another. It was only in recent history that they were integrated into modern Nepal. Shneiderman convincingly presents a case of territorial consciousness that is shaped with what she calls the ‘administrative boundaries’ and the ‘affective boundaries.’ The former signifies the state’s structuring of villages, towns, and regions into administrative units as the national integration process. The latter pertains to complex kinship and social relations, human settlement patterns, and ecogeological constituents such as rivers, mountains, and forests. Territory in Shneiderman’s Nepali case is thus understood in multiscalar terms and in varied historical and living contexts. Territoriality in Dan Smyer Yü’s chapter is discussed as both a state claimed property and a geopolitical contention in the context of the Tibet issue. It is an explicit top-down question of territorial belonging in respect to modern sovereignty but irrespective of what Shneiderman calls the ‘affective boundaries’ embodied in dwelling spaces and the ecological habitats that sustain them. By adopting Van Schendel’s perspective on the modern nation-state’s spatial engagements in the forms of ‘cartographic surgery’ (Van Schendel 2005: 38-68; 2002: 652) detached from but having an impact on the contended physical borderlands, Smyer Yü reemphasizes that religionbased territorial conflicts and ethnic identity reclamations are not new in the Himalayas and that the ongoing Sino-Indian cartographical slicing of the Himalayas is a process of reterritorializing the geographical margins of traditional Tibetan territory. While the territorial claims of China are based on the imperial maps of the Mongol and the Manchu empires, India builds its territorial entitlement mostly upon the British colonial cartography of the Himalayas. Smyer Yü then argues that the recent devolution of the Dalai Lama’s political role through secularist reform among Tibetans in exile is an example of what Talal Asad calls the ‘agentive complexity’ (Asad 2003: 12, 25) in which religion and its secularity are instrumentalized in

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the geopolitics of Sino-Indian territorial disputes but with Tibet largely excluded. The territoriality of Tibet from its ethnolinguistic and religious definition is thus replaced with a bilateral state territorial consciousness preoccupied with the intent to solidify the disputed borderlines insensitive to the ecogeological and affective consciousness of territory on the ground level. Hildegard Diemberger’s chapter subverts the cartographical rigidity of modern nation-states in the Himalayas. Her historical study of Buddhist book artifacts and papermaking across the Himalayas between Tibet and Nepal demonstrates that the trans-Himalayan geographical space was interconnected and compressed differently in history. Although ‘the friction of terrain’ (Scott 2009: xi, 45) was bigger than that of its modern counterpart, human societies were nevertheless linked together with trade, warfare, and transregional religious affairs. The historical pathways and routes of these interethnic and interregional human affairs attested to the existence of the dense networks of human societies in the premodern Himalayas. The borderlines of modern nation-states rather block or restrict these extensive webs of connectivity found in premodern times as shown in the case studies of Shneiderman and Smyer Yü. Complex connectivity and the compression of space in this regard, is not an invention of the current iteration of globalization. It had prior interregional reality in all cardinal directions. Diemberger’s transregional vision of the Himalayas consists of movements and networks of people and objects in what she calls ‘a galaxy of communities’ rendered from S.J. Tambiah’s concept of the galactic polity and Anna Tsing’s reconceptualization of marginal and remote places filled with routes and flows connecting them. Diemberger’s chapter culminates in her articulation of the trans-Himalayan region in the twenty-first century as a ‘transnational virtual space’ for the preservation and movements of heritages, which opens a new scholarly frontier for trans-Himalayan studies. In her chapter, Cederlöf follows the routes of the British expeditions from Bengal to Burma and the southern tip of Yunnan, China. Similar to Diemberger’s assessment of the premodern connectivity between Nepal and Tibet, Cederlöf’s findings show the existing transregional trade corridors and networks before the arrival of the British who were surveying these interconnected highlands. Although she does not situate her historical work in a Zomian context as Michaud does, Cederlöf could be seen to be inadvertently demonstrating Van Schendel’s thesis of Zomia as a map of flows tracing handmade goods from Yunnan and Burma, commercially appropriated waterways, and the British mercantile expeditions. These flows took place along what Cederlöf calls the ‘age-old routes’ woven together with

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lines of movements and dots of diverse ethnolinguistic communities. The Chinese overland and maritime Silk Roads struck the fancy of the British whose mercantile and colonial ventures eventually led to territory-based conflicts in the region. Her historical account illustrates the early evolution of the modern cartographical divisions of the highlands contiguous to both the Himalayan Massif and the Southeast Asian Massif as shown in the works of Michaud, Van Schendel, and others.

Livelihood Reconstructions, Flows, and Trans-Himalayan Modernities The chapters in this subtheme continue to address the varied conceptualizations of borderland but with an emphasis on livelihood reconstruction in the context of transborder and transboundary modernization processes in the southern Himalayas, Southeast Asia, and Southwest China. The authors engage contemporary issues under different borderland circumstances. Borderland in this regard is understood as both the international border of the sovereign state and the cultural boundary of a given ethnolinguistic group within the sovereign state. When borderland is conceptualized in either framework, its dynamics are both historical and modern. Historically the trans-Himalayas, inclusive of the Southeast Asian Massif, are multiple contact zones of regional and local ethnic communities, kingdoms, and empires. The works of Edmund Leach and James Scott, for instance, illustrate the encounters of hill peoples with lowland civilizational systems and modern state effects (Leach 1954; Scott 2009). On the topic of the evolutionary/revolutionary changes of livelihoods in the trans-Himalayas, especially in the contact zones of Southeast Asia and Southwest China, we see the rigidity of state borderlines but we also recognize the continued but varied transborder movements of people, goods, and capital based on premodern trade networks and the existing dwelling patterns of borderland communities. Thus, borderlands in this section of the book can also be understood as the ‘persistent frontiers’ (Giersch 2006: 9) and the ‘landscape plasticity’ (Sturgeon 2005: 9, 25) pertaining to livelihood making and remaking based on the historically existent ‘galaxy of communities’ discussed in Diemberger’s chapter. In the same time, we also recognize modern borderland dynamics in ecological and environmental flows entwined with agentive responses to economic development, human religious practices, place-based affect, and spiritual emotion as shown in Georgina Drew’s chapter.

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Drew’s chapter is centered upon the mutual embodiment of religion and landscape but entangled with development, modernization, and modernity. The case of her ethnographic and discursive inquiry is the Tehri Dam on the Ganga River, a massive hydroelectric project in the Garhwal Himalaya of Uttarakhand State, India. The Ganga River, according to her Hindu interlocutors, is a living goddess; therefore it embodies her divine life force. Its affective and spiritual functions point to a collective subjectivity among Hindus that the Ganga River or rather the deity in the watery form is what Drew documents as ‘a bridge to heaven.’ Modern development projects such as the Tehri Dam radically transform local landscapes animated with intensely felt divine forces and religious emotionality. This is where Drew lays out her arguments for multiple ‘trans-Himalayan modernities’ in their regional manifestations and the developmental landscapes with what she refers to as the ‘terrains of subjectivity and agency.’ Grounded in her ethnographic work, her critical conversations with the perspectives of Maria Kaika, Jean Michaud, Hugh Raffles, and Anna Tsing reveal the conflicting logics of development in the arenas of nation-building centered on material progress, environmental discourses, and place-based religious affect. The hydraulic politics of the Tehri Dam illustrate the divergent outcomes of development and varied agentive responses from different local constituencies: the state’s nationalist agenda for building a stronger India, religious spokespersons’ declaring the death of the river deity, and environmentalists’ proposition for sustainable ecologies. The natural state of the trans-Himalayan flow of the Ganga River is not only artificially regulated but is also conceptually diverted into varied agentive visions of progress and social reconfiguration as the indexes of multiple contested modernities. The theoretical implications of her discussion on trans-Himalayan modernities not only underscore one of the overarching themes of this book but also present a new conceptual frontier of transHimalayan studies regarding the plurality, interactivity, and multicontexts of agency, development, modernization, and spiritual and humanitarian meanings of place and ecological flows. The chapter by Alexander Horstmann presents fresh horizons for the studies of the international humanitarian aid programs in the case of the residents who are caught in the violence of protecting or reclaiming their autonomies in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands. Based on his long years of fieldwork in Myanmar and Thailand, Horstmann argues that humanitarianism in principle could be neutral but, in practice, is partial. The partiality comes from what he calls the ‘politics of everyday humanitarianism’ denoting the local actors’ intimate connection with their international

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compatriots who channel funding into the refugee camps in the borderlands via international humanitarian organizations and church groups. Thus the local-global nexus brings about what Horstmann calls the humanitarian economy that not only financially sustains the borderland refugee communities but also substitutes the state’s role in economy, health, and education, especially on the Thai side of the border. In Horstmann’s account, the international connectivity and economic growth of Mae Sot, a border town, benefits from the humanitarian economy as it hosts the funds and personnel of various international organizations and their staff members. Another front of Horstmann’s chapter ethnographically shows that the Karen conflict continues a set of religious contentions between Christian and Buddhist constituencies as one of the legacies of British rule and American missionary endeavors. The borderlands in Horstmann’s account are both refugee settlements and the entry points of international forces of change. Yang Cheng’s chapter is a study of relocated farmers and the transformation of their farming landscape into Chenggong, a new district of Kunming as a global gateway of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiatives extending China’s economic might into Southeast Asia and South Asia. The newly completed high-speed train station in Chenggong is expected to connect Yunnan with Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and eventually India. This irreversible urbanization process fully covers the fertile soil of the farmland with the asphalt streets and concrete buildings of universities, shops, and real estate complexes. The meager earnings of urban livelihoods motivate the former farmers to regain their social respectability by resuming their farming life. Yang recounts how an increasing number of them have begun renting farmland within the commutable radius of 50 to 90 kilometers mostly for vegetable growing catering to restaurants, hotels, and supermarkets across China and beyond. In the theoretical front, Yang argues that this type of tenant-entrepreneurial farming, resulting from state-corporate development, is what she calls a ‘circular livelihood’ in which the ancestral farmland is no longer available while the farming skills afford these former farmers to resume their farming livelihood with added cash values. This economically motivated livelihood reconstruction entails the movements of people, capital, and goods. This transregional and transethnic theme of livelihood reconstruction is similarly captured in the chapters by Brendan Galipeau, Li Quanmin, Li Yunxia, and Sarah Turner. Borderland populations are caught in the dichotomy Michaud calls to ‘modernize or perish.’ Galipeau’s chapter on Tibetan winemaking in Shangrila (Gyalthang) is a complex case of how wine as a local commodity intertwines the cultural

34 Dan Smyer Yü

and commercial meanings of place, identity, and what he calls the ‘niched living’ in the ongoing process of the economic development in northwestern Yunnan. In his ethnographic documentation, Tibetans in the area, especially Catholic Tibetans, successfully identify their new economic niche in individual household winemaking and wine marketing. According to his extensive fieldwork, it is a case of successful new livelihood building during which local Tibetans fully take advantage of the state-sanctioned viticulture development in the region for economic gain. In marketing their small-production wines, the Catholic Tibetans associate their wine with Shangrila’s paradisiacally perceived landscape and the French missionary winemaking technique brought to the region in the nineteenth century. Galipeau recaps the marketing strategy of the Tibetan winemakers with Demossier’s idea of terroir, or the taste of place. Both place and identity in the case of the Catholic Tibetans are simultaneously grounded in their ancestral landscape and reoriented toward the wine countries of their European Catholic progenitors. The dual significations of place and identity are thus the bases of the niched living or the livelihood reconstruction of the Catholic Tibetans as winemakers. To them, the places of their biological ancestors and European religious forebears have joined together as the landscape of their new livelihood in both tangible and intangible terms. In the midst of the physical transformation of their ancestral landscape, the Catholic Tibetans are able to retain the affective elements of it, including the cross-continental Catholic history, for rebuilding their livelihood. Li Quanmin’s chapter presents a unique case of the De’ang tea-offering rituals as a way of sustaining cultural memories and strengthening community solidarity. Its uniqueness lies in Li’s ethnographic account that the De’ang are less entangled with the outside world compared to other ethnic communities discussed in this book; however, the external pressure on their livelihood is shown in how Buddhism is reevoked as the moral compass for sustaining their livelihood and cultural integrity. Through her ethnographic observation of three annual De’ang Buddhist festivals, Li documents the importance of the tea-offering rituals to the community’s moral health and prosperity, and, therefore, the increase of merit provided to the dwelling landscape of the De’ang. The high point of the chapter is Li’s coinage of ‘merit-landscape,’ which is interpreted from assorted theoretical angles, such as those of Tim Ingold, Dan Smyer Yü, and James Gibson. In her concerted articulation, merit-landscape signifies a gift-exchange process between the tea growers and the Buddhist ritual masters. The sequence of the merit transfer is circular, meaning that the tea offered to the masters is eventually transformed into the merit that the gift-givers accumulate and

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the blessings that the landscape receives. In this case, the integrity of the native landscape of the De’ang is preserved through their tea-offering rituals. Unlike other ethnic communities whose landscapes are being reshaped by China’s modernization, the De’ang are able to preserve their traditional ways of sustaining their lifeworld. Approximately 200 kilometers away from the De’ang along the YunnanLao border, Li Yunxia has done her fieldwork among the Akha for over a decade. Her chapter narrates how the Akha enact their agency to optimize economic opportunities in rubber planting and trading. Li situates her work in the context of globalization and China’s outward modernization programs toward its Southeast Asian neighbors. Adopting Aihwa Ong’s perspective, Li looks at the economic dynamics of the borderlands as a type of globalization favoring local populations’ ‘experiments of freedom’ (Ong 2006). Borderlands are thus the meeting grounds of the diversely expressed agencies and differently positioned institutions of border residents, external investors, states, and the transregional market. The agency of the Akha on both Lao and Chinese sides is largely expressed in efforts to indigenize the modernizing forces from afar. These forces of change compel the Akha to reclaim or reuse the ancestral lands repossessed by the Lao and the Chinese states, respectively. While they optimize the economic gains from Yunnan Province’s relocation of its rubber plantations to the Lao side, the Akha on the borderlands have learned to negotiate with their states for economic freedom of mobility and profitability. The last chapter of the book by Sarah Turner builds on the idea of frontier as a landscape that is frequently related to as an object of resource extraction. She finds that, in the case of the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands, frontier in this sense is intertwined with the very concept of borderlands. Critiquing, as others have done, earlier conceptions of frontier such as that of Owen Lattimore, which emphasized the frontier as a point of encounter between so called ‘civilized and uncivilized’ populations, Turner points instead to the malleability of frontiers, be it culturally, economically, or politically, taking on board Pat Giersch’s idea of the frontier as a ‘middle ground’ where indigenous and nonindigenous peoples meet. This is where Turner presents her case study of the black cardamom trade of Hmong and Yao in the SinoVietnamese borderland and how Hmong and Yao cultivators enact their agencies to find the balance between commercial opportunities and the preservation of their cultural traditions. As she puts it, the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands are ‘a transnational space’ of livelihood reconstruction and commodity trading.

36 Dan Smyer Yü

In many ways the chapters in this book are expansions of our contributors’ existing works that respectively underscore four trends in transregional studies and borderland studies in the highlands of Southeast Asia and Southwest China, the Himalayas, Northeast India, and the Tibetan Plateau. First, an inclusive, processual geography of the greater Himalayas is in practice. It factors in the human and natural moving matters, for example, imperial encounters, trade, religion, and water, which signify multiple complex local, regional, and global nexuses (Michaud 2010; Shneiderman 2010; Smyer Yü 2015; Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015; Samuel 2005; Cederlöf 2014; Drew 2014a). Second, it is becoming clearer that transborder livelihood changes in the region are mostly consequences of the modern nation-states’ territorial endeavor to harden their physical borderlines and of their differentially implemented cross-border modernization programs (Shneiderman 2015b; Michaud and Turner 2016; Horstmann 2014; Turner and Pham 2015). The former presents a geopolitical reality of highly controlled border crossing, while the latter subjects borderland communities to the reconstruction of their livelihoods, making them increasingly dependent upon the statecorporate development agenda and the fluctuation of market demands locally and globally. Third, the studies of ethnic and national identities in the region have discernibly shifted toward the territorial and environmental affect of given human societies rooted in their culturally coherent ancestral homelands but are currently fragmented into the frontiers and borderlands of different modern nation-states (Shneiderman 2015a; Smyer Yü 2014). Forth, trans-Himalayan or Himalayan studies are becoming ever more publicly engaged and geared toward policy implications in the global arenas of climate change, transboundary hydraulic politics, preservation of cultural and linguistic heritages, border disputes, humanitarian discourses, and conflict resolution (Drew 2014b and 2015; Horstmann 2014; Cederlöf and Sivaramakrishnan 2014). Between the book workshop in summer 2015, and the publication of the book, four new Himalayan research centers were inaugurated on the campuses of our workshop participants, namely the Center for Study of Buddhism and Himalayan Nations at Qinghai Minzu University, the Pan-Himalayan Center for Cultural and Religious Research at Sichuan University, the Tibet Himalaya Initiative at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the Center for Trans-Himalaya Tourism and Culture Studies at Sichuan Leshan Normal University. Five research centers in Europe and North America initiated a formal collaborative alliance with the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University. Himalayan studies are obviously mushrooming on a global scale. The chapters in this book are

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our continued effort to cocatalyze with our peers more interdisciplinary, inclusive, and innovative studies of the greater Himalayan region.

References Agnew, John. 2005. ‘Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95.2: 437-461. Arnold, David. 2004. ‘Hodgson, Hooker and the Himalayan Frontier, 1848-1850.’ In The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858, ed. David Waterhouse, 189-205. London: Routledge. Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bergmann, Christoph. 2016. ‘Confluent Territories and Overlapping Sovereignties: Britain’s Nineteenth-Century Indian Empire in the Kumaon Himalaya.’ Journal of Historical Geography 51: 88-98. Buell, Paul. 2003. Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire. Oxford: The Scarecrow Press. Cederlöf, Gunnel. 2008. Landscapes and the Law: Environmental Politics, Regional Histories and Contests over Nature. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Cederlöf, Gunnel. 2014. Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cederlöf, Gunnel, and Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, ed. 2014. Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Center for International Studies. 1997. Area Studies, Regional Worlds: A White Paper for the Ford Foundation. University of Chicago. Coggins, Chris, and Emily Yeh. 2014. ‘Introduction: Producing Shangrilas.’ In Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ed. Chris Coggins and Emily Yeh, 3-18. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Cumming, Bruce. 1997. ‘Boundary Displacement: Area Studies and International Studies during and after the Cold War.’ Bulletins of Concerned Asian Scholars 29.1: 6-26. Dodin, Thierry. 2013. ‘International Seminar: The Himalayan Impasse.’ www. himalayas.hypotheses.org/1279. Drew, Georgina. 2014a. ‘Transformation and Resistance on the Upper Ganga: The Case of British Canal Irrigation.’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37.4: 670-683.

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Drew, Georgina. 2014b. ‘Developing the Himalaya: Development as if Livelihoods Mattered.’ Himalaya: The Journal for the Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies 34.2: 31-38. Drew, Georgina. 2015. ‘Hidden Hardships: Water, Women’s Health, and Livelihood Challenges in Rural Garhwal, India.’ Journal of Canadian Women’s Studies 30.2-3: 102-110. Gaenszle, Martin. 2004. ‘Brian Hodgson as Ethnographer and Ethnologist.’ In The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858, ed. D. Waterhouse, 206-226. London: Routledge. Ge Chengyong. 2015. ‘Studies on the Hu-Image Figurines of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.’ Chinese Cultural Relics 1-2: 232-245. Giersch, C. Patterson. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giersch, C. Patterson. 2010. ‘Across Zomia with Merchants, Monks, and Musk: Process Geographies, Trade Networks, and the Inner-East-Southeast Asian Borderlands.’ Journal of Global History 5.2: 215-239. Harrell, Stevan. 1995. ‘Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to them.’ In Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell, 3-38. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hathaway, Michael. 2014. ‘Transnational Matsutake Governance: Endangered Species, Contamination, and the Reemergence of Global Commodity Chains.’ In Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ed. Chris Coggins and Emily Yeh, 153-174. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hedin, Sven. 1909-1913. Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet. 3 vols. London: Macmillan. Horstmann, Alexander. 2014. ‘Stretching the Border: Confinement, Mobility and the Refugee Public among Karen Refugees in Thailand and Burma.’ Journal of Borderlands Studies 29.1: 47-61. Hu, Huanyong. 1935. ‘The Distribution of Population in China.’ Acta Geographica Sinica 2.2: 32-74. Lary, Diana. 2012. Chinese Migrations: The Movement of People, Goods, and Ideas over Four Millennia. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lattimore, Owen. 1940. Inner Asian Frontiers of China. Boston: Beacon Press. Leach, Edmund. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure. London: G. Bell & Son. Lord, Austin, Andrew Quintman, and Sara Shneiderman. 2013. ‘Himalayan Connections: Disciplines, Geographies, Trajectories, Yale University, March 9-10, 2013, Workshop Report.’ New Haven: Yale Himalaya Initiative.

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Ma Jianxiong and Ma Cunzhao. 2014. ‘The Mule Caravans of Western Yunnan: The Oral History of the Muleteers of Zhaozhou.’ Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 4.3: 24-42. Mantena, Karuna. 2010. Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Michaud, Jean. 2010. ‘Editorial: Zomia and Beyond.’ Journal of Global History 5.2: 187-214. Michaud, Jean. 2012. ‘Hmong Infrapolitics: A View from Vietnam.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 35.11: 1853-1873. Michaud, Jean, and Sarah Turner. 2016. ‘Tonkin’s Uplands at the Turn of the 20th Century: Colonial Military Enclosure and Local Livelihood Effects.’ Asia Pacific Viewpoint 57.2: 154-167. Nie Hongyi and Li Bin. 2008. ‘Policy Options in China’s Territorial Contentions’ [中国在领土争端中的政策选择]. Quarterly Journal of International Politics 16: 1-34. Ong, Aihwa. 2006. ‘Experiments with Freedom: Milieus of the Human.’ American Literary History 18.2: 229-244. Ortner, Sherry. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press Rafael, Vicente L. 1999. ‘Regionalism, Area Studies, and the Accidents of Agency.’ American Historical Review 104.4: 1208-1220 Rawat, Rajiv 2004 ‘A Historical Review of Geographic Studies in the Trans-Himalayas.’ Department of Geography, York University, Toronto, Canada. http://ibrarian.net/navon/paper/A_HISTORICAL_REVIEW_OF_GEOGRAPHIC_STUDIES_IN_THE_.pdf?paperid=16797063. Samuel, Geoffrey. 2005. Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Saunders, Robert. 2010. ‘A Forgotten Core? Mapping the Globality of Central Asia.’ Globality Studies Journal 16 (20 April): 1-17. Saxer, Martin. 2013. ‘Between China and Nepal: Trans-Himalayan Trade and the Second Life of Development in Upper Humla.’ Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review E-Journal 8 (September). http://cross-currents.berkeley. edu/e-journal/issue-8. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shneiderman, Sara. 2010. ‘Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia? Some Scholarly and Political Considerations across Time and Space.’ Journal of Global History 5.2: 289-312. Shneiderman, Sara B. 2015a ‘Regionalism, Mobility, and ‘the village’ as a Set of Social Relations.’ Critique of Anthropology 35.3: 318-337.

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Shneiderman, Sara B. 2015b. Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities between Nepal and India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sidaway, James D. 2012. ‘Geography, Globalization, and the Problematic of Area Studies.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103.4: 984-1002. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2014. ‘Sentience of the Earth: Eco-Buddhist Mandalizing of Dwelling Place in Amdo, Tibet.’ Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 8.4: 483-501. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2015. Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Eco-aesthetics. Boston: De Gruyter. Sturgeon, Janet. 2005. Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Tambiah, Stanley. 2013. ‘Galatic Polity in Southeast Asia.’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3.3: 503-534. Turner, Sarah. 2010. ‘Borderlands and Border Narratives: A Longitudinal Study of Challenges and Opportunities for Local Traders Shaped by the Sino-Vietnamese Border.’ Journal of Global History 5: 265-287. Turner, Sarah, and T.T.H. Pham. 2015. ‘“Nothing Is Like It Was Before”: The Dynamics between Land-Use and Land-Cover, and Livelihood Strategies in the Northern Vietnam Borderlands.’ Land 4.4: 1030-1059. Turner, Sarah, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Southeast Asia from the Fringes.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20.6: 647-668. Van Schendel, Willem. 2005. ‘Spaces of Engagement: How Borderlands, Illicit Flows, and Territorial States Interlock.’ In States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization, ed. Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham, 38-68. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Van Schendel, Willem, and Itty Abraham, eds. 2005. States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Waterhouse, David. 2004a. ‘Brian Hodgson: A Biographical Sketch.’ In The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858, ed. D. Waterhouse, 1-24. London: Routledge. Waterhouse, David, ed. 2004b. The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858. London: Routledge.

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About the author Dan Smyer Yü is Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University. Prior to his current faculty appointment, he was a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and a core member of the Transregional Research Network (CETREN) at the University of Göttingen in Göttingen, Germany, and a New Millennium Scholar at Minzu University of China, Beijing. He is the author of The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment (Routledge, 2011), Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Ecoaesthetics (De Gruyter, 2015), and numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles. His current research interests are religion and ecology, environmental humanities, transboundary state effects, hydraulic politics, climate change and heritage preservation, Buddhism and peacebuilding, and comparative studies of Eurasian secularisms. He is also a documentary filmmaker.

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Adjusting Livelihood Structure in the Southeast Asian Massif 1 Jean Michaud

Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH1 Abstract The uplands east of the Himalayan range stretch over 10 countries, deep into Northeast India, Southwest China, and Mainland Southeast Asia. This region, which I call the Southeast Asian Massif, harbors high valleys and mountain ranges where a staggering diversity of cultures and social systems have thrived or, according James C. Scott’s thesis, found a refuge against state inclusion. This chapter offers a general introduction to these populations, focusing on geography, social structures, livelihood practices, relationships with the state and the lowlands, and current issues revolving around rampant modernization and forced inclusion to the global economic order. Keywords: Southeast Asian Massif, Zomia, minorities, livelihoods, modernization

I have suggested elsewhere that what the peoples living in the Highlands of Asia, and in particular in the Southeast Asian Massif, possibly share most is a sense of being different from the majorities surrounding them, a sense of geographical remoteness, and a state of marginality and sometimes domination, all of which connected to a degree of cultural, political, and economic remoteness from Asia’s main seats of power in the lowlands, the 1 This chapter stems, in a much shortened version, from my ‘Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Scale, Magnitude, and Range in the Southeast Asian Massif,’ in Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the South-East Asian Massif, ed. Jean Michaud, Meenaxi B. Ruscheweyh and Margaret B. Swain. 2nd ed. (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2016).

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river deltas and the coastal zones (Michaud 2006). Geographical remoteness becomes a sign of political separation and subordination for those peoples who through history are most likely to have been classified by the powersthat-be as inferior, dangerous, ‘uncivilized,’ ‘savage,’ ‘barbarian,’ or ‘raw.’ And to add to this complexity, their visual representation on an ethnolinguistic map yields a highly fragmented cultural mosaic with contrasting colors rather than a legible picture in harmonized shades. Yet, from a distance, when ‘jumping scale’ as Van Schendel (2002) put it, this highland mosaic can form a distinctive and relatable picture, becoming a legitimate subject for academic research, though clearly an unusual one. In this chapter, I first paint a portrait of the highlands at the time of contact with European observers, in order then to better see the current trends in livelihoods adjustments influenced by the political and economic relationship tying together the highlanders with the modern state and the global market. All twelve chapters in this book belong to Van Schendel’s greater Zomia. But seven of these belong more precisely to James C. Scott’s smaller Zomia (Cederlöf, Turner, Li Yunxia, Horstmann, Galipeau, Yang, and Li Quanmin); therefore they also fit into the Southeast Asian Massif. While this chapter addresses more specifically the latter, inside which my field research has been taking place for 25 years, I believe that many of the general considerations developed below – but also a good number of field observations – can also apply, at least in part, to the other cultural terrain covered by the remaining authors, namely the Himalayan/Tibetan world (Shneiderman, Smyer Yü, Diemberger, and Drew). I write the following with this synergy in mind. Table 1 Southeast Asian Massif

Total Population (N)

Total of Highland Minorities (N)

Highland Minorities by Region (%)

Highland Minorities in the SEAM (%)

495,057,080 252,644,049 188,919,904 –

60,775,378 27,392,382 12,814,087 100,981,847

12.27 10.84 6.78 10.78

60.2 27.1 12.7 100

Region

Southwest China + Taiwan Mainland Southeast Asia Northeast India + Bangladesh Southeast Asian Massif Source: Michaud 2016: 3

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Locating the Subjects The human groups living in the Southeast Asian Massif tend to dwell in regions situated above roughly 300 meters in elevation, although this figure may vary significantly, especially when considering urban settings. The Massif covers approximately 2.5 million square kilometers, or the size of Western Europe. From west to east, it includes most of the Seven Sister states of Northeast India (the southern uplands of Assam, south and east Arunachal Pradesh, most of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, and the eastern part of Tripura), eastern Bangladesh (the Chittagong Hill Tracts), the eastern edge of Tibet along with southern Sichuan, a section of Chongqing and Hubei, western Hunan, all of Guizhou and Yunnan, most of Guangxi, western Guangdong, the hinterlands of the islands of Hainan and Taiwan, the vast hills surrounding Burma’s central plain (mostly the Ethnic States), the north and west of Thailand along the border with Figure 1 The Southeast Asian Massif

Source: Michaud et al. 2016: xxi

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Burma, central Peninsular Malaysia, all of Laos above the Mekong Valley, south-central Vietnam along the Annam Cordillera plus the northern uplands wrapping around the Red River Delta, and the eastern fringe of Cambodia (Michaud et al. 2016). Apart from the two islands and upland Malaya, it constitutes one immense continuous massif, a cluster of adjacent mountains and high valleys, and also a terrain of remarkable physical and climatic diversity. In the Massif, China’s southwestern region is of particular interest. It forms a huge and complex assortment of mountain ranges, high plateaus, and valleys encompassing the geographic and demographic core of the Massif. The province of Yunnan lies at its heart. As 60 percent of all indigenous inhabitants of the Southeast Asian Massif dwell in Southwest China (Table 1), one might expect this area to have commandeered the lion’s share of academic surveys of these highland societies, but such is not the case. Communist averseness to outside observers and the modern Chinese state’s political project of simplifying ethnic distinctions within its borders have hindered in-depth investigations of the region’s ethnic makeup. Compared with much more intensively studied regions in Mainland Southeast Asia and Northeast India, reliable data and independent research can be difficult to come by in China (Harrell 1996). Due to a long history of dealing with the ever-increasing presence of a strongly centralized state, Southwest China often def ies scholarly logic and its dynamic endogenous history, with its complex political, religious, linguistic, economic, and biophysical particularities, is only partly understood and acknowledged to date (Herman 2007; Swain 2002; Yang 2009).

Foundations of Highland Social Structures Nevertheless, all over the Massif, we can still assert that the rapid pace of global modernization has subjected groups in that unusual social space to drastically different forms of pressure than the ones that had previously shaped their societies. Faced with the relative paucity of endogenous historical records, to better appreciate the distinctiveness of highland societies and the unique factors that have affected their adaptation to modernity, it helps to consider their recent past. Records exist showing how they have appeared to the outside world at the time of European colonization, roughly one and a half centuries ago.

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Ancient Feudal Groups Societies of the Southeast Asian Massif that occupied areas above the lowlands but below the highest, most isolated mountains, be it in Assam, Vietnam, or Guangxi for instance, were in fairly regular contact with the lowland powers, their ideas and their economies. Many among what I will call here midland groups eventually drifted into joining regional feudal, hierarchical social organizations.2 At the time of the intensification of European contact around the mid-nineteenth century, it was noted that a section of the Assamese under the Ahom of Northeast India (thirteenthnineteenth century CE) had been highly differentiated between a dominant elite controlling the land and the means of production, and the peasants laboring for them. In Yunnan, the Naxi, Bai, Dai, and Yi operated along the same pattern after the kingdoms of Dian (fourth-first century BCE), Nanzhao (eighth-tenth century CE), and Dali (tenth-thirteenth century CE) had flourished. Elsewhere, in the Daliangshan Mountains of Sichuan, the Nuosu Yi had a complex slave-owning caste system. The Tujia and Dong in Guizhou, the Zhuang in Guangxi as well as the Thái and Tày in Vietnam plus the Shan in Burma had also set up polities of a feudal nature. This frequent occurrence of feudal states does not mean, however, that everybody within them was adhering equally to their stratified social organization. Exceptions were numerous, involving either groups not related to them and living in high or remote enclaves within their domain, or even people from within their own ethnicities, as many subsistence agriculturalists culturally part of these feudalized ethnicities still lived in far-flung locations where the arm of the state did not reach them fully. Egalitarian Groups Indeed, in the mountains above these midland fiefdoms and in isolated pockets on their peripheries, European colonial observers found a mosaic of what they called tribes, scattered through a sort of archipelago of higher slopes, isolated valleys, and mountaintops where lowland powers rarely ventured and feudal lords had not seen the need to systematically implant their own peasants (Vial 1898; Pollard 1905; Lunet de Lajonquière 1906; 2 Historians are debating whether the notion of feudalism can apply to social formations outside the European Middle Ages. I use the term here, as Condominas explained (1976: 39ff.), only to make a useful distinction between societies with internal social differentiation based on ownership and control of power on the one hand, and the landless peasantry on the other.

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Gilhodes 1996; Savina 1930). The social organization of these isolated groups was predominantly egalitarian, based primarily on kinship, and their political formalization was determined by, and limited to, blood ties. These groups dispensed with a centralized form of political authority and were therefore stateless (or acephalous). In the Massif, examples of such groups include the Boro, Naga, Drung, Hmong, Lahu, Karen, Yao, Lisu, Akha, Khmu, Rhade, Jorai, Katu, Talieng, Seediq, Truku, Semai, Jakun, and many more. Social ties in egalitarian groups were most commonly based on lineage (the known genealogy) or clan (the known and assumed genealogy as expressed in a common surname). They exhibited a fully integrated organization, meaning that political, economic, and religious matters were not differentiated, in constant interplay in all matters of daily life. As Max Weber famously wrote, these groups had yet to experience the ‘disenchantment of the world’ (Jenkins 2000). Historical Livelihood Practices Social structures had a central impact on forms of livelihoods (Forsyth and Michaud 2011). At the time of European contact, the upland economy was structured along the lines of feudal versus egalitarian systems. The threeway division between the lowlands, midlands, and highlands geographically defined the distance between civilizational cores, peripheries, and distant fringes, that is, barbarity. The common economic aspects of feudalism across time and space are well known (cf. Roseberry 1989; Cancian 1989). An elite in control of the land and agricultural surpluses used forms of coercion to extract wealth from the labor of the peasantry, providing them in return with access to land as tenant farmers and ensuring them with a minimum of personal security as well as economic and political stability. Outside the perimeter of the feudal polity’s direct grasp, trade relationships and elaborate exchange systems with surrounding polities allowed elites to use surpluses to derive further profits. Tribute could also be extorted from weaker neighbors, forced to pay a price to safeguard their political liberty; conversely, tribute also had to be paid to more powerful overlords. Beyond the grip of the feudal state, egalitarian societies in turn participated in what can be understood as three possible systems: huntinggathering, horticulture, or a simple protofeudal form of peasantry. In all cases, the household constituted the fundamental economic and ritual unit. Subsistence-oriented agriculture took care of the household’s immediate

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needs, while indispensable commodities that could not be grown, gathered, or produced locally were procured on the market. Hunter-gatherers, such as the Maram-Naga of Northeast India or the Mlabri of Thailand and Laos, lived in small nomadic bands of no more than a few dozen individuals and only took from nature what it provided. Small-scale herders, rare in the Massif although common in the rest of Van Schendel’s Zomia, were limited to the periphery of the Tibetan Plateau in western Yunnan and Sichuan. Horticulturalists, on the other hand, constituted the bulk of the egalitarian groups, the ubiquitous practice of swiddening being their main form of food production. The most aggressive form of this specialist forest agriculture, pioneering swiddening, utilized very short fallows or none at all and was limited to actively nomadic groups or those heavily involved in growing land-exhausting crops such as the opium poppy (Geddes 1976; Kunstadter et al. 1978). Rotational swiddening on the other hand, with long fallows, was a more finely balanced activity with limited long-term impact on the environment, and was practiced by groups willing to settle for longer periods of time in a given vicinity, such as most groups in Vietnam’s Central Highlands (Boulbet 1975). Early forms of peasantry chiefly existed among groups closer to the feudal clusters and were symptomatic of a gradual attraction toward these strong cores. The Kachin/Jingpo/Sinpho in the India-Burma-China borderlands, in the orbit of the feudal Shan, famously studied by Leach in 1954, offered a telling example of this balancing act (Sadan 2013). Far from living in autarchy and operating separately, highland, midland, and lowland societies were tied together through elaborate trade networks. Different ecological niches and variations in their degrees of industrialization, diffused chiefly from the core states, ensured that inhabitants from each tier could deliver specialized produce, goods, and services. Goods that were gathered, hunted, herded or grown in the high and middle regions (rare timber, coffin wood, medicinal plants, game, and various parts of animals considered essential in the Chinese, Indian, Thai, or Vietnamese pharmacopeia) were traded for indispensable processed goods common in the lowlands but often lacking in the highlands (cloth, precious metals, steel tools, salt, petrol, matches, firearms, or gunpowder). Midland groups could sell their rice, fruit, clothes, and jewelry to those living below or above them, and could make available troops and excess labor to lowland powers within the framework of tributary relations. Midland groups were also in a position to extort similar privileges from the less functionally organized peoples dwelling in the upper reaches and on the fringes of their domains. The feudal groups regulating the trail and river systems profitably acted as

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middlemen in this bidirectional circulation, as documented by Le Failler (2014) in a detailed historical description of this process in and around the Thái polity of Sip Song Chau Tai in northwestern Vietnam.

Relationship to the Lowlands and the State Then and Now Politically speaking, historical relationships between highland and lowland societies have been complex and often strained (Poisson 2009). Before European colonization and the advent of national territories bounded by modern borders, the highlands and their inhabitants were of limited interest to lowland rulers. Politically as much as economically, these fringes acted as buffer zones (Lieberman 2003). Unless some precise geostrategic aspect came into play such as mining access or invasion corridors, keeping marginal inhabitants in check through tributary relationships was usually considered a better strategy than conquering and policing underpopulated, barbarian marches at a higher cost. Such was the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts on the joint fringes of India, Burma, and Bangladesh; in the Kam and the Naxi domains shielding China from Tibet; in the Sip Song Panna, Kachin, and Shan states buffering between China, Laos, and Burma; in the Sip Song Chau Tai separating northern Vietnam and Laos; and in the ‘Montagnard’ domain between Vietnam and Cambodia. China would become the first lowland power to invade and permanently occupy such highland peripheries (Herman 2007; Yang 2009). This occupation happened increasingly as expanding lowland demography and farming demand made access to more land necessary. The arrival from the Americas in the sixteenth century of new crops such as maize, potato, and cassava favored this massive human migration to the uplands. Local upheavals such as the Taiping, Miao, and Panthai rebellions in the nineteenth century were triggered at least in part by migrations of Han settlers from the plains to fertile high valleys in the southwest combined with the increased presence of the Han state on its southern frontier, complete with military domination and relentless taxation. The Zomia Hypothesis: Up until the Mid-Twentieth Century Might the Southeast Asian Massif have been a zone of refuge for marginal peoples and runaways? That is what James C. Scott suggests in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009). The book is the first scholarly attempt to theorize the remoteness – which

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Figure 2 Van Schendel’s Zomia (2002) and its 2007 extension,* with Scott’s Zomia (2009)

Source: Michaud 2017 *  Personal communication with Van Schendel and Scott, 2009.

Scott associates with the ‘friction of terrain’ (40) – of the Massif, and its inhabitants’ defiance of the state as self-styled ‘barbarians by design’ (8). Scott calls the region Zomia from a neologism coined by Willem van Schendel (2002). Originally, as in Figure 1, what Van Schendel meant by Zomia included the whole of the Himalayas and their high peripheries (Shneiderman 2010). Scott focuses solely on the eastern portion but retains the name, generating a degree of confusion not only as to what does Zomia cover exactly, but also on what is the fundamental difference between Scott’s and Van Schendel’s Zomia – not to mention the Southeast Asian Massif but that is another debate. The substance of Scott’s thesis is that over the course of centuries, the uplands of Zomia were populated by people fleeing lowland domination. He proposed that these ‘runaways,’ as he calls them (Scott 2009: 8), wanted to ensure that the very notion of ‘the state’ did not take root within their own societies. Zomia thus became a major zone of refuge from domination, a

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‘shatter zone’ (143) where populations practiced forms of ‘nonconfiscatable’ ‘escape agriculture’ (196, 187) like growing root crops on swiddens or under the forest canopy with the aim of not being detected and ultimately, ‘not being governed.’ But with ‘the state’ encroaching on the highlands from every direction, Scott believes that over the last two centuries, Zomia gradually underwent ‘the last great enclosure’3 (4) this planet has known. Roughly since World War II, he estimates, his theory of flight and avoidance has ceased to apply as lowland governments relentlessly expand ‘distance demolishing technologies’ (11) and crack down on defiance to their project. Scott’s thesis has shed light on creative forms of resistance and resilience by highland populations throughout history and up to the present day. Some of his generalizations, however, warrant a healthy skepticism (Lieberman 2010), not least because states have actually operated successfully in the Massif for centuries. We saw above that a number of endogenous feudal states and kingdoms thrived in the uplands (and that certainly applies to Tibet, too). But Scott’s theory remains appealing, engaging, and highly original, especially when applied more precisely to kinship based, stateless societies (Michaud 2017). As with Van Schendel’s 2002 proposition, it offers a dramatic change in scale that shows the ground from high above, revealing a picture rarely seen before. Facing the State in the Twentieth Century James C. Scott estimates that past the first half of the twentieth century, the state definitively reined in the uplands that had so far escaped its grasp. The state won, Scott declares, and the process of enclosure was completed. I suggest that this pronouncement demands more nuance. Over the twentieth century, official national positions toward mid- and highlanders in the Massif have varied between countries, the paternalistic positions taken by socialist regimes (China, Vietnam, and Laos chiefly but also for a while, Cambodia, Burma, and India) contrasting with the more pragmatic ones taken by capitalist regimes (most others, including during the European colonial era). Over revolutionary times and their accompanying wars – that is, roughly between 1910 and 1975 – communist ideology in the Massif was influenced by the dominant position of the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin (1913) had outlined 3 In the sense of surrounding and shepherding peoples into mainstream society rather than the Marxist sense of fencing off space to empty it of its original inhabitants and profit elites

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that within a socialist republic everyone was to be of equal legal status. Underlying this ostensibly inclusive rhetoric was the need for socialist forces to win the allegiance of the largest possible segments of the peasantry and labor force during struggles of independence and revolution in China, Vietnam, and Laos, but also during colonial times in French Indochina and British India, Burma and Malaya when highland societies’ historical antagonism with the old lowland powers was actively fanned. This strategy was largely responsible for assurances made during the early years of the struggle that routinely promised highland groups the right to unilaterally declare cultural, political, and territorial independence once the colonists/ anticommunists had been defeated (Michaud 2009). With the revolutionary and independence wars over, however, virtually all promises for minority self-rule were forgotten or at best replaced with watered-down substitutes that gave priority to a unified nation ruling over an indivisible national territory. The change of tone can be detected in the policies and attitudes of the Indian state before and after independence in response to Naga and Mizo demands for autonomy (Pachuau 2014). It also happened in China, Vietnam, and Laos, where the new socialist states backtracked on their early promises, opting instead for ‘supporting’ highlanders to ‘catch up’ with the enlightened industrial socialist masses by joining the proletariat working in mines, dams, and factories, complete with matching educational and health services (Viet 1968). On the bright side, all national minorities were granted full-fledged national citizenship; but this status entailed that in return for the help bestowed on them by their ‘big brothers,’ the ‘little brothers’ were to ‘progress’ by leaving behind their ‘backward’ ways and behaving like modern socialist subjects. Cultural, religious, economic, and especially political distinctions in the highlands were only to be tolerated if these did not impede integration into the socialist nation – in other words, not very often (Nguyen 1968; Evans 1985). In Vietnam, this policy was creatively labeled ‘selective cultural preservation’ (Nong 1978; Salemink 2000), an astute socialist tactic also shared by China, Laos, and authoritarian regimes. It boils down to the encouragement of minorities’ cultural, economic, and political absorption into the majority while allowing benign cultural expressions to persist in simplified formats. The latter include house architecture and clothing along with dance and music expressed during annual ‘culture days’ and ‘minority festivals’ (Mueggler 2002). Such ‘culture’ may be made public through vectors like ‘traditional’ villages frozen in time and humming with songs and choreographed footsteps arranged for tourist consumption – not to mention sanitized representations in ethnological museums and on postage stamps

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(Oakes 1998; Walsh and Swain 2004; Nyíri 2006). The end result promotes only the picturesque and inoffensive – conveniently rebranded ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (Salemink 2001; Goudineau 2003) – as a token contribution to the nation’s ethnic variety. Under more liberal regimes in the twentieth century, on the other hand, highlanders have been in an even weaker legal position, with some even lacking national citizenship. Such is the case in Thailand, where around half of the adult members of ‘hill tribes’ have been refused legal recognition despite most of their lineages having tilled the land there for several generations (Toyota 2005). In Bangladesh, where poverty is a huge national concern with the non-Bengali minority population remaining proportionally minuscule, deliberate attempts to settle Bengali Muslims in the minority highlands and to use tough repressive measures against the non-Muslim minorities are still being reported. In Cambodia, a nation still in a state of political and economic uncertainty, the state can simply not afford to pay much attention to the minute numbers of highland groups and their particular needs (Bourdier 2015). Malaysia and Taiwan now show good intentions, but believe more in national modernity for all than in cultural exceptionalism (Simon 2006; Gomes 2007). In Burma (Myanmar), armed confrontation and repression remain until 2016 the core policy of the military leaders and there is little hope for a permanent and satisfactory solution any time soon as illustrated by the constant flow of Karen and Rohingya refugees fleeing the country (Horstmann 2011). In India, national policy makers have shown indifference and a lack of sensitivity toward the special problems of the Northeast. Combined with the continued exploitation of the region’s natural resources. This has kept alive local tribal4 groups’ demands for independence, or at least for more regional autonomy; armed insurgent groups have proliferated in recent times, often operating in alliance with similar armed groups in the jungles of northern Burma (Baruah 2001, 2005; Hazarika 1995). Beyond these legal and financial quandaries, the liberal countries sharing the Massif have taken a rather pragmatic path to the management of their national minorities. The philosophy is essentially that if peripheral peoples can take care of themselves without being an obstacle to national wealth, a burden on the national economy, or a threat to the nation, and if 4 I use the term ‘tribal’ here due to the fact that in India (Scheduled Tribes) and Taiwan (Plain Tribes, Mountain Tribes), indigenous peoples have co-opted the tribal terminology and made it a core characteristic of their self-distinction, even a foundation notion for their ethnonationalist claims.

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they can even contribute to the national economy – through ethnic tourism, for instance – they are welcome to remain as different from lowlanders as they wish. The end result, it is theorized, will in any case be a ‘natural’ integration into the majority through market forces, the media, and national education. The disinterest of lowland majorities toward highland cultural differences can be theorized in a concentric Mandala model, fundamental in Asia, which rates degrees of civilization from the core outward, based on distance and geographic, linguistic, religious, economic, cultural, and historical distinctions (Drekmeier 1962). The highland/lowland dichotomy, contested by scholars (Brookfield 2011) following the publication of Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed has in fact long been a central narrative fueled by age-old lowland prejudices against the distant, heavily forested, littleknown highlands, home of suspicious and dangerous people among whom malevolent spirits roam freely (Reid 1999; Poisson 2009). For sedentary lowlanders seeing themselves as ‘cooked,’ a classic Chinese notion for a civilized society, the highlands and their forest barbarians were believed to be ‘raw’ (Fiskesjö 1999). All across the Massif, groups dwelling higher up have been assigned derogatory labels; those living in intermediate regions of moderate altitude with thin forest cover, large expanses under permanent cultivation, and closer proximity to dominant lowland civilizations, are deemed more palatable for political alliances. In continuity with this outlook, despite their small numbers compared to national majorities, since the 1980s governments have blamed highlanders for most if not all of the deforestation, land erosion, and chemical poisoning of land in nearly every watershed around the Massif, which is an absurd claim (Leibold 2014). Nevertheless, swiddening is publicly decried by state officials as harmful to the environment and to eradicate its practice, isolated populations are forced to relocate along national road networks and crop substitution programs are implemented everywhere to sedentarize swiddeners and permanently shift them to commercial agriculture. Such a history of mistrust means that in the Massif today, highlanders generally face governments stubbornly showing them ‘the right way’ while lacking reliable cultural information about them, governments vigorously implementing policies of cultural integration and economic standardization (Duncan 2004). Education is geared toward Sinization, Indianization, Thai-ization, Kinhization, and the like (Hansen 1999; Lee 2001; Messier and Michaud 2012). Tourism, a booming industry in the Massif, becomes a crucial factor in this equation as domestic tourists from the new middle classes are increasingly flocking to gaze at the ‘barbarians within.’

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Conclusion: Modernize or Perish Most challenges in the Massif relate to what has been theorized as the ‘agrarian transition’ paradigm, in which rural life centered on subsistence agriculture steadily gives way to industrial agriculture and the transformation of peasants into wageworkers serving the growing demands of industrialists and urban areas (Kelly 2011). Many issues can also be connected to debates on modernization, globalization, and development (Hall et al. 2011), in the wake of which thought-provoking research has blossomed around the notions of agency, resistance, and the indigenization/vernacularization of modernity (Scott 1990; Sahlins 1999; Ortner 2006; Merry 2006). In the highlands, distance has helped shielding many people from some of the dramatic global events of the twentieth century, but not all of them. Groups in the midland regions of the Massif saw their strategic advantage as trade intermediaries vanish as road infrastructure began to extend into the highlands, bringing in the modern state and its agents shortcutting the previous equilibrium. Their old feudal organizations were declared unsuitable to the modern world, both socialist and capitalist. Subsistence agriculture, adjusted to the household’s needs and often based on swiddening, has been forcibly replaced with cash cropping and plantations geared to market demand; this has exposed often ill-informed and inadequately literate highlanders to the hazards of brutal market shifts most of them are not yet equipped to fully apprehend or adjust to. An unprecedented movement of peasants turned unskilled labor is thus pouring out of the mountains toward the urban centers. The switch to highland commercial agriculture has been supported by the circulation of international capital and the globalization of the agricultural market as well as in large part the new hegemony of Western discourse on environmental protection as conveyed to the local level through development projects conceived and implemented by externally funded international agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Hand in hand with international environmentalist discourse and the spreading of cash cropping, such drastic changes have opened the way for the final monetization of highland exchanges, with payment by barter narrowed to a circle of close kin and neighbors. Increasing recourse to the market has brought to the mountains goods and commodities that have never before been readily available and improved opportunities for the sale of local niched-agricultural produce. In particular, channels for the provision of cash cropping inputs such as hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides have opened up (Turner et al. 2015).

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Throughout the Southeast Asian Massif, the national economic programs are all geared toward economic growth and cultural progress, and ‘modernity’ has become the bright horizon offered to all as the shining way forward. While there are obvious material benefits to this strategy, the drawbacks and the cultural costs, no doubt substantial, are yet to be measured on the long-term.

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Gomes, Alberto. 2007. Modernity and Malaysia: Settling the Menraq Forest Nomads. London: Routledge. Goudineau, Yves, ed. 2003. Laos and Ethnic Minority Cultures: Promoting Heritages. Paris: UNESCO. Hall, Derek, Philip Hirsch, and Tania Murray Li. 2011. Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Singapore: NUS Press. Hansen, Mette Halskov. 1999. Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Harrell, Stevan. 1996. ‘Introduction.’ In Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan, ed. Melissa Brown, 1-10. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. Hazarika, Sanjoy. 1995. Strangers in the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast. New Delhi: Penguin. Herman, John E. 2007. Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200-1700. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Horstmann, Alexander. 2011. ‘Sacred Networks and Struggles among the Karen Baptists across the Thailand-Burma Border.’ Moussons 17: 85-104. Jenkins, Richard. 2000. ‘Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the Millennium.’ Max Weber Studies 1.1: 11-32. Kelly, Philip F. 2011. ‘Migration, Agrarian Transition and Rural Change in Southeast Asia.’ Critical Asian Studies 43.4: 479-506. Kunstadter, Peter, E.C. Chapman, and Sabhasri Sanga, eds. 1978. Farmers in the Forest: Economic Development and Marginal Agriculture in Northern Thailand. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Leach, Edmund R. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma. Boston: Beacon Press. Lee, Maryjo Benton. 2001. Ethnicity, Education and Empowerment: How Minority Students in Southwest China Construct Identities. Hampshire: Ashgate. Le Failler, Philippe. 2014. La rivière Noire. L’intégration d’une marche frontière au Vietnam. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Leibold, James. 2014. ‘Is China’s Go West Policy Doomed?’ The National Interest, 25  September 2015. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ chinas-go-west-strategy-doomed-10542. Lieberman, Victor. 2003. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 8001830, Vol. 1: Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lieberman, Victor. 2010. ‘Review Article: A Zone of Refuge in Southeast Asia? Reconceptualizing Interior Spaces.’ Journal of Global History 5.2: 333-346. Lunet de Lajonquière, Étienne-Edmond. 1906. Ethnographie du Tonkin septentrional. Paris: Ernest Leroux. Merry, Sally E. 2006. ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle.’ American Anthropologist 108.1: 38-51.

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Messier, Philippe, and Jean Michaud. 2012. ‘“The Nice Culture and the Good Behaviour”: State Media and Ethnic Minorities in Lào Cai Province, Vietnam.’ Identities 19.3: 339-359. Michaud, Jean. 2006. Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the South-East Asian Massif. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Michaud, Jean. 2007. ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880-1930. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Michaud, Jean. 2009. ‘Handling Mountain Minorities in China, Vietnam and Laos: From History to Current Concerns.’ Asian Ethnicity 10.1: 25-49. Michaud, Jean. 2010. ‘Editorial: Zomia and Beyond.’ Journal of Global History 5.2: 187-214. Michaud, Jean. 2012. ‘Hmong Infrapolitics: A View from Vietnam.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 35.11: 1853-1873. Michaud, Jean. 2013. ‘Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos.’ In Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia, ed. Sarah Turner, 22-39. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Michaud, Jean. 2016. ‘Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Scale, Magnitude, and Range in the Southeast Asian Massif.’ In Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the SouthEast Asian Massif, ed. Jean Michaud, Meenaxi B. Ruscheweyh and Margaret B. Swain, 1-40. 2nd ed. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Michaud, Jean. 2017. ‘What’s (Written) History For?: On James C. Scott’s Zomia, especially Chapter 6½.’ Anthropology Today 33: 6-10. Michaud, Jean, Meenaxi B. Ruscheweyh and Margaret B. Swain (eds). 2016. Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the South-East Asian Massif, 2nd ed. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Mueggler, Erik. 2002. ‘Dancing Fools: Politics of Culture and Place in a “Traditional Nationality Festival.”’ Modern China 28.1: 3-38. Nguyen, Khac Vien, ed. 1968. ‘Mountain Regions and National Minorities in the D.R. of Vietnam.’ Vietnamese Studies 15 [entire issue]. Nong, Quoc Chan. 1978. ‘Selective Preservation of Ethnic Minorities Cultural Tradition.’ Vietnamese Studies 52: 57-63. Nyíri, Pál. 2006. Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Oakes, Timothy. 1998. Tourism and Modernity in China. London: Routledge. Ortner, Sherry Beth. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press. Pachuau, Joy L.K. 2014. Being Mizo: Identity and Belonging in Northeast India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Poisson, Emmanuel. 2009. ‘Unhealthy Air of the Mountains: Kinh and Ethnic Minority Rule on the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier from the Fifteenth to the

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Turner, Sarah, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia.’ Environment and Planning, D: Society and Space 20: 647-668. Vial, Paul. 1898. Les Lolos. Histoire, religion, moeurs, langue, écriture. Shanghai: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique. Viet, Chung. 1968. ‘National Minorities and National policy in the DRV.’ Vietnamese Studies 15: 3-23. Walsh, Eileen Rose, and Margaret Byrne Swain. 2004. ‘Creating Modernity by Touring Paradise: Domestic Ethnic Tourism in Yunnan, China.’ Tourism Recreation Research 29.2: 59-68. Yang, Bin. 2009. ‘Central State, Local Governments, Ethnic Groups and the Minzu Identification in Yunnan (1950s-1980s).’ Modern Asian Studies 43.3: 741-775.

About the author Jean Michaud is a social anthropologist and professor at Université Laval in Canada. Since 1987, he has conducted anthropological research in highland India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Yunnan on social change and responses to modernity among highland societies. He is the author of ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880-1930 (Brill, 2007), and coauthor of Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands (UW Press, 2015), and The Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif, 2nd ed. (Rowman & Littlef ield, 2016). He coedited  Moving Mountains: Ethnicity and Livelihoods in Highland China, Vietnam and Lao (UBC Press, 2011). His research articles include ‘Zomia and Beyond’ (Journal of Global History, 2010), ‘Hmong Infrapolitics: A View from Vietnam’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012), and ‘What’s (Written) History For? On James C. Scott’s Zomia – especially Chapter 6½’ (Anthropology Today, 2017).

2

The Properties of Territory in Nepal’s State of Transformation1 Sara Shneiderman

Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH2 Abstract How do Himalayan peoples conceptualize ‘territory’? In English, this concept joins the multiple scales of individual land ownership, communal emplacement in locality, and belonging and ownership of sovereign space at the national level. But how are the links between these different scales envisaged in Himalayan worldviews and languages – if at all? These questions emerge out of my ongoing study of the state-restructuring process in Nepal since 2006 – in which political debates over all three scales of territorial belonging have played an important discursive role. Here I investigate how such political categories are constituted in relation to practices of territoriality at the grassroots level in rural Nepal, both before and after the 2015 earthquakes. Keywords: Nepal, Himalaya, territory, state transformation, disaster, politics 1 This chapter has resulted from research conducted between 2014 and 2016 through the project ‘Restructuring Life: Citizenship, Territory and Religiosity in Nepal’s State of Transformation,’ funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Grant Number 8988) and a Hampton Faculty Fellowship from the University of British Columbia. I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of project researchers Bijaya Gurung, Yungdrung Tsewang Gurung, Hikmat Khadka, Bir Bahadur Thami, and assistants Kiran Dhakal, Sangmo Tsering Gurung, Komintal Thami, and Sangita Thami; and UBC student assistants Kamal Arora and Aadil Brar. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented in April 2015 at the State University of New York at Buffalo at the conference ‘Articulating Ethnicity: Language and the Boundaries of the Himalayas,’ and in November 2015 at the American Anthropological Association in the panel ‘The Properties of Territory and Terrain.’ I thank the organizers and participants of both events for their comments and suggestions, especially Emily Yeh in her role as discussant at the latter. Thanks also to the editors of this volume for their encouragement, insight, and patience.

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Introduction How do Himalayan peoples conceptualize ‘territory’? In English, this concept joins the multiple scales of individual land ownership, communal emplacement in locality, and belonging and ownership of sovereign space at the national level. But how are the links between these different scales envisaged in Himalayan worldviews and languages – if at all? These questions emerge out of my ongoing study of the state-restructuring process in Nepal since 2006 – in which political debates over all three scales of territorial belonging have played an important discursive role. These are not new questions for Himalayan anthropology. Several classic ethnographies address these issues for specific linguistic and cultural communities. Place and space have also been major orienting frameworks for multiple strands of analytical engagement with the region over the last few decades. Think, for instance of edited volumes like Himalayan Space (Bickel and Gaenszle 1999), which addresses the relationship between language and terrain; Selves in Time and Place (Skinner, Pach, and Holland 1998), which considers emplacement in the subjective terms of phenomenology; or Territory and Identity in Tibet and the Himalayas (Buffetrille and Diemberger 2002), which explicitly addresses the relationships between territory and identity with reference to anthropological, Tibetological, and comparative religion approaches. There are also strong, if contested, links between traditions of cultural and political ecology and the Himalayas. This was perhaps initiated in Fredrik Barth’s (1965) work on the ‘niches’ that the Swat Pathans and their neighbors inhabited, and followed by the much-critiqued theory of Himalayan degradation (see Ives 1987 for an overview), which linked certain ‘cultural’ behaviors to specific outcomes in land-use change. But these bodies of literature have rarely investigated the relationships between such localized political conceptions of territory, and the broader national and transnational configurations within which they are nested. A recent notable move in that direction is Joelle Smadja’s edited volume, Territorial Change and Territorial Restructuring in the Himalaya (2014). At the same time, broader recent literatures on the theme of territory in anthropology, but also geography and political theory, have largely proceeded on Foucauldian premises where territory is understood primarily from the state’s perspective, and is conceptually linked most strongly to the notion of sovereignty as a mode of biopolitical control (Elden 2013; Moore 2005). This top-down notion of territory also plays a strong role in constituting James Scott’s vision of how state power works – both from the state’s perspective

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in Seeing Like a State (1998), and from the perspective of what he calls the inhabitants of ‘nonstate spaces’ in the Art of Not Being Governed (2009). These are people who have sought out specific types of terrain in which they choose to live precisely because it is beyond the scope of the state’s territorializing power. Yet in none of these approaches are we given much insight into how such marginal peoples themselves territorialize the land on which they live, how they produce their own geographical boundary concepts, and what they believe the properties of their territory so enclosed to be. Then there is the political economy literature, which seems to come more out of British social anthropology, which addresses ‘the land question’ or ‘agrarian question’ as it has often been framed in India. This body of work entails largely Marxian approaches most recently exemplified in the context of Nepal by Fraser Sugden (2009, 2013) and Ian Fitzpatrick (2011). This work ties in with trends beyond the Himalayas, such as Tania Li’s recent Land’s End (2014) about capitalist relations in indigenous Indonesia, or work by Jens Lerche, Alpa Shah, and Barbara Harriss-White (2013) in India on revisiting the agrarian question. However these works do not interface directly with the phenomenological and linguistically informed earlier wave of work on space and place for individual Himalayan communities that I just invoked. For both social science in general then, but particularly in Himalayan anthropology, we are at a juncture where a rapprochement between various approaches to territory, territoriality, and terrain are necessary to understand how and why certain political claims are being made. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus specifically on dynamics within the contemporary nation-state of Nepal; however, I believe that the larger analytical framework, as well as the specific territorial concepts described here may have broader applicability beyond Nepal’s borders. Debates over all three scales of territorial belonging (individual, communal, national) have played an important discursive role in the ongoing process of state restructuring in Nepal that began with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2006, and culminated in the contentious constitutional promulgation of 20 September 2015 (see Shneiderman and Tillin 2015 for background). Although the importance of territory has been taken for granted in Nepal’s state-restructuring process, political actors seem to have proceeded based on the assumption that everyone in Nepal – and in the international community – understands territory in the same way. Perhaps this conflation of multiple perspectives on territory is one of the factors, beyond the obvious political ones, leading to the ‘lack of consensus’ which has long dominated Nepali media headlines. Such different views

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continued to be in evidence as protests over provincial demarcation and other elements of the 2015 constitution escalated. My recent research has sought to understand how political expressions of territoriality are constituted in relation to practices of territoriality at the grassroots level, or how such practices and expressions of what I call the ‘properties’ of territory articulate with properties of other key categories under debate during this process of transformation, such as citizenship and religiosity. In other words, although one of the key questions at the central political level has been how to restructure Nepal’s internal territorial boundaries, it seems that there is relatively little policy-relevant evidence base for understanding how various Nepali citizens actually understand their own relationships to place and to existing boundaries, for instance of village, municipality, district, and zone, and therefore how they might like to see those boundaries shift – or not. Of course, one of the major vectors of the debate over restructuring has focused on identity, ethnicity, indigeneity and their putative links to certain territorial spaces. Much of my own previous work has addressed these questions of ethnic consciousness. Here I do not want to rehash this, but rather focus on the category of what Mukta Tamang (2009) has called ‘territorial consciousness’ in broad terms, delinking it for analytical purposes for a moment from ethnicity per se. My contention is that while much of the debate over restructuring initially focused on indigenous claims to belonging in certain territories, this is actually a more broadly significant category for all Nepalis that deserves deeper investigation. Recent agitations in the Madhesh, or Tarai plains, are strong evidence of this fact. Specific indigenous groups certainly have special relationships with specific territories that should be acknowledged by the country’s new political and cartographic form. However it is also important to find ways of recognizing these special relationships that do not either collapse all indigenous territorial consciousnesses into a single, flat, undifferentiated category, or exclude those citizens who are not formally classed as indigenous from the possibility of possessing territorial consciousness. All of us are emplaced in the environments in which we live, and for many Nepalis of all backgrounds – both rural and urban, indigenous and other – territorial belonging is an important component of identity, even across very different kinds of terrain.

Methodology In an effort to understand these relationships, and their community-specific differences as well as commonalities, I first began to envision the ‘territory’

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component of the research project ‘Restructuring Life: Citizenship, Territory and Religiosity in Nepal’s State of Transformation’ (see note 1 for details). The idea behind the larger project was to conduct an ethnography of the state-restructuring process between 2006 and 2015 ‘from the outside in’ – in other words, to move away from a focus on the perceived lack of actual transformation at the central political level to understand what kinds of transformation actually occurred at the level of consciousness for common people in various parts of Nepal between the end of the civil conflict between Maoist and state forces in 2006 and the constitutional promulgation in 2015. I chose three districts out of Nepal’s 75 in which to conduct research: Mustang, Dolakha, and Banke (see figure 1). In some ways, these choices replicate the hackneyed framework for understanding Nepal as a series of ecological zones: mountains, hills, and plains. But I chose them not because I think they are ‘representative’ of the entire country – as no three districts could be – but because they highlight three different sets of relationships between individuals, political agency, and concepts of territory. Mustang and Dolakha were places in which I had significant experience from past research, giving me a fairly good grasp of broader historical, political, and social contexts, but Banke was a new location for me. I have been working with Nepali research collaborators in each district, and altogether we had conducted approximately 230 interviews by the time of the 2015 Figure 1 Map of Nepal’s current 75 districts, with research districts of Banke, Dolakha, and Mustang highlighted

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earthquakes, which put the project on hold. We used a shared questionnaire with open-ended questions regarding experiences and understandings of citizenship, territory, and religiosity. This was complemented by participant-observation in day to day life – accompanying interlocutors to the district administration office to apply for citizenship (nagarikta), for instance, observing the process of surveying land for registration, and participating in temple management committee meetings.

Translating Territory One of the first challenges in designing the research, as always, was figuring out how to ask questions. As I said at the outset, in English ‘territory’ has multiple connotations, at least for me: individual land ownership, communal emplacement in locality, and belonging and ownership of sovereign space at the national level. That is why I chose the term, instead of ‘land,’ for instance, ‘place,’ ‘space’ or ‘landscape.’ But I realized as I sat down with my coresearchers to design the questionnaire in the summer of 2014 that when I wrote the research proposal I had not thought carefully enough about what the Nepali term for ‘territory’ might be. As our research team talked – one researcher from Banke, one from Dolakha, one from Mustang, and myself – it became clear that the regionally, ethnically, and linguistically specific concepts that each was familiar with did not align easily. Moreover, within each of their sociolinguistic worldviews there existed a variety of terms which approximated some elements of what I was hoping to describe with ‘territory,’ but none which linked them in the same way. Just within our research group, we were dealing with four different speech forms: ‘standard’ Nepali, Thangmi (a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Dolakha and Sindhupalchok districts; see Turin 2012 for details), the Mustang dialect of Tibetan, and a Khas dialect spoken in the western part of the country. Even when everyone spoke the presumably shared the language of Nepali, each used vocabulary with which the others were unfamiliar. Our colleague from Banke spoke about the uncertain political valences of ailani jagga, or unregistered land, on which many people in Banke lived. The researcher from Dolakha spoke about the figure of the amin, the surveyor from the district land revenue department who was responsible for designating the boundaries of property ownership. Then there were the yulsa, the territorial deities who marked village boundaries in Mustang. Each researcher drew blank looks from the others, to whom their fundamental conceptual frameworks for understanding the

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shared thing that I called ‘territory’ were in several important ways alien. They all gently told me that I was misguided as I continued to insist that they were all talking about the same thing with different words. Eventually, after hours of discussion over several days, we agreed upon a shared vocabulary in Nepali that could be used to ask the questions that we desired, providing enough of a broadly comprehensible framework to allow comparison between responses from the different districts, but allowing enough space for locally specific terminology and issues to be discussed. In the interest of moving the discussion of territorial concepts in the Himalaya forward, I list below some of the terms that we discussed in both Nepali and Tibetan, and group them in conceptual categories. Some of these have their own extensive literatures, while others are less well-described. Here I simply cite key existing scholarly sources, but much more could be said about each term, its pragmatic uses, and political and affective valences. The first set of terms in Nepali pertain in some ways to the spatial, physical, emplaced aspects of territory, not necessarily as a bounded political unit: Bhume – earth, soil2 Jamin – ‘land,’ or earth as a natural resource (often grouped with jal [water] and jangal [forest] especially in indigenous rights discourse)3 Sampatti – property, usually in the individual sense but also can be used in terms of collectivity, also in the sense of ‘cultural property’ in discussions of ‘heritage’4 Jagga – ‘place’ in the generic sense, as in Thangmi migrant laborers from Nepal describing Darjeeling with: yo jagga pharak ho (‘This place is different’)5 -than/-sthan – location, often divine abode: Bhumethan, Bhimsenthan (derived from sthana in Sanskrit)

The second set of terms in Nepali comprise a political vocabulary aligned with what I described earlier as the state-based approached to understanding 2 According to Turner, ‘the ground, a place’ and ‘belonging to the earth,’ as well as ‘sacred place or ground’ and ‘a particular class of deities’ (1997: 480-482). For scholarly discussions of the concept, see Lecomte-Tilouine (1993) and Shneiderman (2015b: chapter 6). 3 See Poudel (2008) for an interesting exploration of these concepts as the basis for integrated development. 4 ‘Property, possessions, effect, riches, prosperity’ (Turner 1997: 588). 5 Turner (1997: 206) defines jagga as ‘place, land, field, estate.’

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territory. These terms work to aggregate specific instantiations of the first set of terms into a singular whole, territorializing specific terrain into a flat, governable, and knowable landscape: Desh – country6 Muluk – possessions7 Bhugol – geography

Finally, I list the term kipat on its own, as it indexes a specific relationship between a designated collectivity and designated territory, as mediated by state recognition. Defined as, ‘a customary system of land tenure’ (Forbes 1999: 115), it is in some ways comparable to other specific land tenure terms such as raikar, guthi, adhya, kut (all described in Regmi 1976). However, kipat is the only form of land tenure that historically recognized the collective rights of particular ethnic communities. I’ve argued elsewhere (Shneiderman 2015b: chapter 6) that in contemporary discourse, kipat has come to signify the special relationship between indigenous bodies and territory, or in other words, to embody territorial consciousness. That being said, how can we figure this kind of relationship for members of other communities who did not have documented historical kipat – whether they style themselves as indigenous or otherwise? In other words, how do we think territorial consciousness beyond the frame of indigeneity? Again, this is a key question for understanding how Madheshi regional identities and their movements fit into the bigger picture. The Tibetan terms used in the interviews we conducted in Mustang district to describe the embodied, subjective dimensions of territorial emplacement (roughly paralleling the first set of Nepali terms as above) are as follows: Yul – country (roughly cognate to desh) Sa – earth, soil (roughly cognate to bhume) Yulsa – territorial deity, also used to refer to small territorial monuments8 6 Perhaps best articulated in the poetry of Bhupi Sherchan, for instance in the 1960 work, ‘I think my country’s history is a lie’ (translated in Hutt 1991). 7 See Burghart (1984) for an in-depth discussion of the political meaning of ‘muluk’ as ‘possession’; and see a critique of Burghart in Chalmers (2003). 8 See Samten Karmay (1996) for a discussion of how yul sa, which literally means ‘local land,’ has come to mean ‘deity of the local territory.’ He ultimately argues that the cognate ‘concept of the yul lha type deity was originally connected with the territorial divisions of the polity in early clanic society’ (1996).

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Lungsa – village Shing – field, agricultural land

The final set of terms in Tibetan, which invoke administrative and political boundaries are: Gyalsa – administrative territory (community-based) Gyalkhap – administrative territory (state-based)

These may be different usages from those that scholars are familiar with from central Tibetan standard dialects. I am grateful to Emily Yeh for pointing this out.9 She highlights the fact that rgyal khap would be understood as ‘country, nation-state, or kingdom,’ rather than the lower levels of administration that Mustang interviewees used it to refer to; and that rgyal sa would mean ‘capital’ rather than a community-based sense of administrative territory. My sense is that these different usages derive from Mustang’s long-standing incorporation into the Nepali polity, which provokes a scaling of territorial terminology to the local political context. There is a bountiful literature in Tibetan studies that discusses such terminologies, and the strong linkages that they effect between concepts of ‘sacred space’ and concepts of ‘political territory’ (see Blondeau 1998; Blondeau and Steinkellner 1996; Buffetrille and Diemberger 2002; Ramble 1995, 1997, 2008). However, this literature focuses primarily on expressions of territoriality within historical Tibetan polities, rather than on how such Tibetan conceptions are reconfigured in relation to contemporary nation-states, such as Nepal, India, or China. Building upon the rich Tibetological literature in this domain to consider how Tibetan worldviews about the relationship between space, the divine world, and political boundaries articulate with contemporary political claims over territory within the nation-states in which Tibetan-speaking peoples live today may be a productive long-term endeavor.

Administrative and Affective Boundaries10 Now I’d like to go a step further by considering the relationship between what I call ‘administrative boundaries’ and ‘affective boundaries.’ As I have 9 In discussant comments at the American Anthropological Association panel ‘The Properties of Territory and Terrain,’ November 2015. 10 The first three paragraphs of this section are based on Shneiderman 2015a.

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described elsewhere (Shneiderman 2015a), until the 2017 local elections,11 the smallest unit of state administration in Nepal was the village development committee (VDC). Introduced in the early 1960s as part of Nepal’s last great phase of territorial restructuring, which also created the country’s 75 districts, this is a geographically and demographically flexible designation. It can describe anything from a ‘typical’ village with houses and community life clustered around a shared physical and/or cultural center, to a disparate smattering of houses across a hillside with little social cohesion, to multiple smaller centralized villages which are clustered together for administrative purposes. In other cases, VDC boundaries cut across areas that residents conceptualize as single villages, as constituted by kinship, ethnic, and/or economic relations. For this reason, the term gavisa has become an important conceptual complement to the idea of the gau. The former is an acronym made up of the first syllables of the three words in the Nepali rendering of village development committee: gau vikas samiti. Recognizing that gau and gavisa signify distinct, but related categories helps tease out the different meanings of ‘the village,’ as discussed further in the recent Critique of Anthropology special issue ‘Resiting the Village,’ that I coedited with Jonathan Padwe and Tony Sorge. In contemporary Nepali discourse, the term gavisa signif ies the administrative aspect of what we might term ‘the Village’ with a capital ‘V’ – the framework through which citizenship and land documents are issued, as well as central government funds distributed – while gau continues to signify ‘the village’ with a lower-case ‘v,’ or what I call the village as a set of social relations. By this I mean the lived experience of the village for those who inhabit it, which in some places and times may be coterminous with its boundaries as an administrative unit, but at others may diverge from that significantly. When asked where the territorial boundaries of their gau are, most respondents from our research sites answered in concrete terms that allude to specific geographical features such as rivers and hills, as well as particular patterns of human settlement. They provided similarly 11 Phase 1 of the 2017 local election was held on 14 May 2017. Phase 2 was held on 28 June 2017. Phase 3 is scheduled for 18 September 2017, but has not yet taken place as this volume goes to press. These were the first local elections for 20 years, since 1997. Before the elections took place, a Local Level Restructuring Commission redrew boundaries, combining VDCs into a smaller number of larger units known as nagarpalika (municipality) and gaupalika (rural municaplity). This chapter was submitted before local level restructuring was implemented, and is based on research conducted between 2014-2016. It therefore describes administrative boundaries as they were at that time, before the 2017 local level restructuring was completed.

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descriptive responses when asked where the boundaries of their gavisa were – but clearly differentiated between the two sets of boundaries, and the affective content of each zone so delineated. This begins to tell us more about the constituent elements of ‘territorial consciousness’ (Tamang 2009). Here I want to extend the argument about territorial consciousness and its importance in shaping political subjectivity beyond gau or gavisa, to the urban contexts where increasing numbers of Nepal’s citizens live. Simply because one has not lived there since time immemorial, or because one has a village elsewhere does not mean that territorial consciousness is not present in the city. This is something that we saw evidence of from our interviews in the city of Nepalgunj, an urban center in Banke district in Nepal’s western Terai. There, it is the municipality, or nagarpalika, that frames meaningful political territory. Interviewees from diverse caste Hindu, Muslim, and indigenous Tharu backgrounds were well aware of where the boundaries lay between the municipality and the VDCs beyond them. People situated themselves as either being a person of the nagarpalika or a person of the gau who happened to be living or working temporarily in the municipality. These distinctions were in some sense affective, carrying with them the valences of the classic urban/rural binary, but in another sense were shaped by administrative prerogatives, as the location listed on a person’s citizenship card remains a defining feature of identity regardless of actual place of residence. Even people who had been born and spent their entire lives in the municipality alluded to villages from which their parents had migrated, often stating that they were a person of that village because it said so on their citizenship card, even if they had not spent much time there themselves. In Dolakha, interviewees in a VDC adjacent to the municipality of Bhimeshwor, which included the district headquarters of Charikot, expressed concern about plans that had been floated to merge their VDC with the municipality. They expressed that they would be subject to greater governmental regulation if they were incorporated into the municipality – while remaining a VDC would enable better management of their own properties of territory.12

12 This VDC was eventually annexed to Bhimeshwor nagarpalika in the 2017 local level restructuring.

76 Sar a Shneiderman Figure 2 District administration office, Charikot, Dolakha district

© Sara Shneiderman, 2015

Figure 3 Border post between Nepal and India, Banke district

© Sara Shneiderman, 2015

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Trajectories of Territorial Integration Each of the three districts in which we conducted research – Banke, Dolakha, and Mustang – experienced different historical trajectories of territorial integration within the Nepali nation-state, which to a significant extent shapes the way that contemporary residents experience and understand territorial concepts. These different experiences are especially relevant in our effort to understand how people move between different scales of territorialization. In other words, the way that people navigate the interface between their locally produced knowledge of affective boundaries, and their knowledge of administrative boundaries as produced in relation to larger scales of territory such as the district and the nation-state is mediated by regionally specific historical experiences of state incorporation. Dolakha, Banke, and Mustang were all parts of independent principalities before their incorporation into the Nepali nation-state. The year that is usually cited as marking the country’s unification at the hands of the first Shah king, Prithvi Narayan, is 1769. However, a closer look at these particular territories tells a more complicated story. Dolakha was a strategic entrepôt on the Kathmandu-Lhasa trading route, famous for minting the first coin in the region in approximately 1546 AD (Regmi 1980: 171). Although annexed by P.N. Shah, it was only under Bhimsen Thapa’s rule in 1805-1806 AD that its Newar rulers began paying tax regularly to a central government. What is now Banke was part of an area of contemporary western Nepal that in fact remained under the British East India Company’s control until the 1860s. This presents an anomaly in Nepal’s nationalist narrative of noncolonization, and Nepal’s prime minister, Jang Bahadur, finally only gained control of these regions in exchange for his complicity in helping the British subdue the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. He bestowed the label ‘Naya Muluk’ – or ‘new possessions’ – on the area. This term, which is still used today, highlights the historical lack of integration into the central polity that the region has always experienced, and also points to its status as an uncomfortable reminder of what journalist Prashant Jha has called Nepal’s ‘partial sovereignty’ (Jha 2014). Mustang still maintains its identity as a Buddhist kingdom with a ceremonial royal family. As Ramble (2008: 24-28) describes, in 1789 P.N. Shah’s Gorkha forces swept through Mustang en route to battle with the kingdom of Jumla, and in recognition of Mustang’s lack of resistance the region was allowed to retain de facto autonomy while paying tribute

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to its new rulers. It was only, ‘the democratic reforms that followed the implementation of the Partyless Panchayat System in the 1960s that precipitated the decline of this system’ of traditional governance in Mustang (Ramble 2008: 28). I cannot delve further into these distinctive histories here. But I recount them in brief to make the point that it is hardly surprising that there are multiple vocabularies of territoriality at work in contemporary Nepal. From diverse locally embedded linguistic and cultural practices that produce concepts of territory in the phenomenological sense, to diverse trajectories of political integration into the nation-state at work in each region, these multiple vectors of territorial experience intersect with each other to produce the full range of territorial imagining in Nepal today. If we wish to understand the political conjuncture at which Nepal finds itself, it is essential to bring these diverse histories into conversation with each other in a rigorous manner that preserves the distinctiveness of each locale’s trajectory of territorial experience, yet brings them into a single analytical frame. Of the three research districts, Dolakha was the earliest integrated into the nation-state structure, and is now most completely incorporated into its administrative architecture. This is to some extent signaled by the strong presence of kipat as an index of state-society relationships in the territorial vocabularies encountered there, which was not present in our discussions in the other two locales. Yet we documented very strong statements of territorial knowledge and belonging in all three research contexts albeit expressed in very different ways. Mountains oriented people’s description of both affective and administrative boundaries in Mustang, while rivers played the same role in Banke. Both natural features present formidable challenges to daily life, but are also orienting features of it. The engagement with which people described their territories and the boundaries that define them was remarkable – especially when in many cases they then claimed ignorance about political debates over territorial restructuring. When asked whether they thought boundaries should change, those who were familiar with federalism debates and in favor of federal restructuring stated just as strongly as those who were not that administrative boundaries should not change. Many people made strong statements about their affective comfort level with their own territorial situatedness, even when they had a political desire for administrative change; but often seemed not to have considered the possible impact of administrative boundary shifts on the affective dimensions of territorial

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consciousness before being asked these questions. Some of these politics were played out further in resistance to the recommendations of local level restructuring committees across the country, often in vain.13 All of this once again emphasizes the multilayered nature of territorial consciousness. It can not be reduced to either its affective or administrative dimensions, but rather the relationships between these must be better understood. Certainly any process of political restructuring that seeks to redraw territorial demarcations would proceed more effectively with reference to an evidence base that acknowledges the validity of these multiple layers of territorial belonging, and seeks to bring them into pragmatically viable alignment. Postearthquake Dynamics To conclude, I want to consider how the major earthquakes of April and May 2015 have compelled people in many parts of Nepal to rethink the contours of territorial belonging on multiple levels. Of our research districts, this is only directly relevant in Dolakha, which was one of the fourteen districts classified by the Nepali government as ‘severely affected.’14 However, the other districts have also been affected by the earthquakes’ political aftermath; and although the 2015 earthquakes unleashed an especially forceful set of disruptions, these were not unique. Lessons from the earthquakes are applicable for understanding other forms of territorial change, such as landslides and floods which affect the entire country and broader region on a regular basis. The earthquakes compelled a deeply physical reshaping of both terrain, through landslides, large cracks in the earth, and so on; but also a reshaping of relationship to territory in sociopolitical terms. Due to the dynamics of relief distribution and earthquake-induced displacement, family residential patterns are being restructured, often from joint to nuclear family abodes, largely due to the ever-increasing constraints on buildable land. Many people have relocated near recently built roads, both because these are often the only available flat areas to settle, and because there is a strong sense that those on the road have better access to facilities.

13 See, for instance, a 7 December 2016 article that describes protests in Mustang over proposed revisions to local administrative boundaries. https://nepalmonitor.org/reports/view/12468. This story was echoed across the country in many other locales. 14 http://data.unhcr.org/nepal/.

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The earthquake appears to have heightened the sense of ownership over particular territories – in the political sense of gavisa – at the same time as people have sought to make use of the natural resources that their gau affords. In this context, gau might be understood as the intersection of specific geographical terrain, embodied knowledge of it, and a network of emplaced social relations. People have rapidly adapted to the new situation by mobilizing resources within both frameworks. When they realized that the gavisa was the operative unit for the distribution of relief people petitioned the gavisa secretary for better response by the international organizations that had divided up their service areas by gavisa. They also mobilized existing local administrative structures, such as the Community Forest User Group, to rethink the communal use of natural resources embedded in the gau at a time when wood and water, for instance, were in higher than ever demand. In this context of ongoing environmental and political upheaval, the question then becomes: what will happen after the new constitution as promulgated in September 2015 actually restructures administrative boundaries?15 Will citizens who before the earthquake supported identity-based territorial restructuring turn against this idea as they seek to maintain the existing administrative boundaries that the earthquakes have compelled them to mobilize within to negotiate for state resources more effectively than ever before? Even preearthquake interviews suggested this tension – between a desire for territorial recognition of the affective boundaries of identity, and a desire to maintain familiar administrative boundaries for pragmatic purposes – that is now significantly heightened. I’ll be watching carefully how the reassertions of territorial self-determination, so to speak, that the earthquakes have brought about at the affective micro-level articulate with the macro-level process of federal restructuring as it proceeds in administrative terms. Even while aftershocks continue, at the time of writing community members are asserting belonging and a renewed commitment to property ownership through the sweat and heartache of the rebuilding process. We might see this process as one of reterritorialization, or maybe regrounding – which along the way compels those engaged in it to become even more intimately aware of the specific properties of the terrain in which they live, and the territory that such terrain defines. Despite their trauma, those affected by the earthquake are 15 As this volume went to press, local level restructuring had just been implemented in some portions of the country through the 2017 local elections. Further research will be necessary to understand how, in fact, the reshaped administrative boundaries shape territorial concepts.

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likely to be ever more confident in their own political agency and willing to defend their place as they seek recognition as active owners of territorially embedded futures on their own terms.

References Barth, Fredrik. 1965. Political Leadership among Swat Pathans. New York: Humanities Press. Bickel, Balthasar, and Martin Gaenszle, eds. 1999. Himalayan Space. Zürich: Völkerkundemuseum Zürich. Blondeau, Anne-Marie, ed. 1998. Tibetan Mountain Deities. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Blondeau, Anne-Marie, and Ernst Steinkellner, eds. 1996. Reflections of the Mountain: Essays on the History of and Social Meaning of the Tibetan Mountain Cult in the Himalayas. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Buffetrille, Katia, and Hildegard Diemberger, eds. 2002. Territory and Identity in Tibet and the Himalayas. Leiden: Brill. Burghart, Richard. 1984. ‘The Formation of the Concept of Nation-State in Nepal.’ Journal of Asian Studies 44.1: 101-25. Chalmers, Rhoderick. 2003. ‘“We Nepalis”: Language, Literature, and the Formation of a Nepali Public Sphere in India, 1914-40.’ PhD diss., University of London. Elden, Stuart. 2013. The Birth of Territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fitzpatrick, Ian. 2011. Cardamom and Class: A Limbu Village and Its Extensions in East Nepal. Kathmandu: Vajra Publications. Forbes, Anne Armbrecht. 1999. ‘Mapping Power.’ American Ethnologist 26.1: 114-138. Hutt, Michael. 1991. Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ives, Jack. 1987. ‘The Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation: Its Validity and Application Challenged by Recent Research.’ Mountain Research and Development 7.3: 189-199. Jha, Prashant. 2014. Battles of the New Republic. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. Karmay, Samten. 1996. ‘The Tibetan Cult of Mountain Deities and Its Political Significance.’ In Reflections of the Mountain: Essays on the History of and Social Meaning of the Tibetan Mountain Cult in the Himalayas, ed. Anne-Marie Blondeau and Ernst Steinkellner, 59-75. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Lecomte-Tilouine, Marie. 1993. ‘About Bhume, a Misunderstanding in the Himalayas.’ In Nepal Past and Present, ed. Gerard Toffin, 127-133. New Delhi: Sterling.

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Lerche, J., A. Shah, and B. Harriss-White. 2013. ‘Introduction: Agrarian Questions and Left Politics in India.’ Journal of Agrarian Change 13.3: 337-350. Li, Tania. 2014. Land’s End. Durham: Duke University Press. Moore, Donald. 2005. Suffering for Territory. Durham: Duke University Press. Poudel, Durga D. 2008. ‘Management of Eight “Ja” for Economic Development of Nepal.’ Journal of Comparative International Management 11.1: 15-27. Ramble, Charles. 1995. ‘Gaining Ground: Representations of Territory in Bon and Tibetan Popular Tradition.’ Tibet Journal 20.1: 83-124. Ramble, Charles. 1997. ‘Tibetan Pride of Place; Or, Why Nepal’s Bhotes Are Not an Ethnic Group.’ In Politics and Ethnicity in a Hindu Kingdom, ed. D. Gellner and J. Pfaff, 379-413. London: Harwood. Ramble, Charles. 2008. The Navel of the Demoness. New York: Oxford University Press. Regmi, Mahesh Chandra. 1976. Landownership in Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press. Regmi, Mahesh Chandra. 1980. Regmi Research Series Cumulative Index for 1980. Kathmandu: Regmi Research Series. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven: Yale University Press. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shneiderman, Sara. 2015a. ‘Regionalism, Mobility, and “The Village” as a Set of Social Relations: Himalayan Reflections on a South Asian Theme.’ Critique of Anthropology 35: 318-337. Shneiderman, Sara. 2015b. Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities between Nepal and India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Shneiderman, Sara, and Tillin, Louise. 2015. ‘Restructuring States, Restructuring Ethnicity: Looking across Disciplinary Boundaries at Federal Futures in India and Nepal.’ Modern Asian Studies 49.1: 1-39. Skinner, Debra, Alfred Pach, and Dorothy Holland, eds. 1998. Selves in Time and Place. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Smadja, Joelle, ed. 2014. Territorial Changes and Territorial Restructuring in the Himalayas. New Delhi: Adroit Publishers. Sugden, Fraser. 2009. ‘Neo-liberalism, Markets and Class Structures on the Nepali Lowlands: The Political Economy of Agrarian Change.’ Geoforum 40.4: 634-644. Sugden, Fraser. 2013. ‘Pre-Capitalist Reproduction on the Nepal Tarai: Semi-Feudal Agriculture in an Era of Globalisation.’ Journal of Contemporary Asia 43.3: 519-545. Tamang, Mukta. 2009. ‘Tamang Activism, History, and Territorial Consciousness.’ In Ethnic Activism and Civil Society in South Asia, ed. David Gellner, 269-290. Delhi: Sage.

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Turin, Mark. 2012. A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture. Leiden: Brill. Turner, Ralph. 1997. A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language. New Delhi: Allied.

About the author Sara Shneiderman is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs/Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. She works in the Himalayan regions of Nepal, India, and China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region. Her research explores the relationships between political discourse, ritual action, and cross-border mobility in producing ethnic identities and shaping social transformation. Current research includes an ethnography of ‘postconflict’ state restructuring in Nepal that focuses on citizenship, territory, and religiosity (funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation); participation in the University of Toronto-based project Infrastructures of Democracy: State-Building in Nepal’s Agrarian Districts (funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council – SSHRC); and a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant focused on the politics of postearthquake reconstruction in Nepal. She is the author of Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) and several articles on Himalayan Studies; Nepal’s Maoist movement and political consciousness; and ethnicity, indigeneity and affirmative action.

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Trans-Himalayan Buddhist Secularities Sino-Indian Geopolitics of Territoriality in Indo-Tibetan Interface Dan Smyer Yü

Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH3 Abstract This chapter is concerned with trans-Himalayan Buddhist secularities as a parallel development of state-sanctioned secularisms and as an integral part of Buddhist modernism in India and among Tibetans in the diaspora. It inquires into how the differently expressed Buddhist secularities in these two constituencies are engaged in the geopolitics of Tibet in relation to China. Situated in this transregional context, the author makes two arguments. First, Tibetan Buddhism in the last half a century has been a moving matter in the trans-Himalayan flows of people, ideas, and interregional politics. Its secular engagements and their outcomes are now affecting the ways how Tibetans and non-Tibetans project the future status of Tibet. Second, secularism and secularity are two sets of divergent practices and yet both dialectically lodge in one another. In such unique entanglement, the trans-Himalayan Buddhist secularities in essence are projects of both Buddhists and geopoliticians. Keywords: secularism, secularity, Tibet card, Sino-Indian geopolitics, Indo-Tibetan interface

The history of Buddhist studies in the Himalayas is often traced back to Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801-1894), an officer of the British East India Company stationed in Nepal exploring the trade routes to China through Tibet (Waterhouse 2004: 7). His fine collection of Buddhist texts contributed

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to the establishment of Buddhology in the West by pioneering figures like Max Müller and Nathaniel Wallich (Lopez 2004: 49-51). Toward the end of the nineteenth century while European Buddhologists were indulging themselves in the textual and historical studies of Buddhism, native Buddhists in these regions rather began to link their traditional doctrinal teachings to pan-Asian Buddhist political actions. For instance, the birth of the Calcutta-based Maha Bodhi Society founded by Anagarika Dharmapala in 1891 attested to this transregional trend of modern Buddhist practices. It later spawned a variety of the socially engaged Buddhisms throughout Asia and the rest of the world, and compelled contemporary scholars to rethink Buddhist practices in the framework of Buddhist modernism, which is understood as a product of Western colonialism, industrialization, and modernization as well as of Asian Buddhists’ agentive responses to these forceful changes of our modern times (McMahan 2008: 5). This chapter is a study of trans-Himalayan Buddhist secularities as a parallel development of state-sanctioned secularisms and Buddhist modernism in contemporary India and among Tibetans in diaspora. I wish to inquire into how the differently expressed Buddhist secularities in these two constituencies are agentively engaged in the geopolitics of Tibet in relation to China. The working definition of secularism in this chapter is understood as a state-sanctioned principle that constitutionally ensures the separation of religion and state and/or legally warrants equal treatment of all religions within its sovereign territory; whereas secularity broadly refers to public expressions of religion as well as institutional appropriations of religious practices for nonreligious purposes. Situated in this transregional context, I attempt to make two arguments regarding the studies of secularism and secularity. First, in the ethnographic sense, Tibetan Buddhism in the last half a century has been a moving matter in the trans-Himalayan flows of people, ideas, and interregional politics. Its secular engagements and their outcomes are plural in nature contingent upon how secularism and secularity are locally interpreted and generate global perceptions of Tibet politics, which are now affecting the ways how Tibetans and non-Tibetans project the post-Dalai Lama status of Tibet. Second, secularism and secularity are two sets of divergent concepts and practices and yet both dialectically lodge in one another. In such unique entanglement, the trans-Himalayan Buddhist secularities in essence are projects of both Buddhists and politicians. They are entwined with geopolitical debates of Tibetan affairs in the near future and the Buddhist ambitions of spreading Buddhism globally in a set of secular discourses attempted to encapsulate human universals beyond the trans-Himalayan region.

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Tibet Card in a Trans-Himalayan Indian Secularity When I arrived on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi in April 2016, I found myself speaking in a public lecture series that grew out of a student protest march against the judicial killing of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri separatist convicted and later executed in 2013 for his role in the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. These well-organized lectures took place every Friday evening. The terraced public area and its adjacent parking lot are now called ‘Freedom Square’ by the students. In many ways, JNU is an integral part of India’s civil society. The JNU community represents the nation’s religious, ethnic, and political diversity and its members engage in national public debates, such as the issue of India’s frontier and the territorial ownership of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. In addition to the variety of protests against the terrorist actions and judicial execution of Afzal Guru, the controversy includes the secular politics of religion-based national and ethnic identities in India. It inevitably triggered a variety of public debates and upswings in diverse collective emotions at Freedom Square, originating from different ethnoreligious constituencies, such as Dalits of Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu orientations, Muslims from Kashmir, and Buddhist Tibetans. The state-sanctioned secularism that is tolerant of religious differences in India is obviously pushed to the edge of the envelope in the case of Afzal Guru. It also allows outside observers to see the public presence and political role of religion as a type of religious secularity, which I will delineate shortly. I was particularly drawn to Dibyesh Anand’s lecture at the Freedom Square. After flying in from London, he delivered a talk entitled ‘In Perspective of Kashmir: Azaadi as an Anti-Colonial Idea.’ As a native of Kashmir and a scholar of modern Tibetan studies, Anand compared the cases of Kashmir and Tibet, making a passionate argument for the self-determination of the Kashmiris. At the same time he also described the depressing aspect of the state-sanctioned nationalisms in India and China. He remarked that whether they are on the right or the left of the ideological spectrum, the nationalists and patriots in these two countries stand united when it comes down to the defense of their states’ sovereignties. He pointed out that the Indian left could advocate rights for the weak and the Chinese left could oppose class oppressions; however, on the issue of the territorial ownership of Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, and Tibet, the sovereignties of the Indian and the Chinese states rise above these nationalists’ ideological beliefs in democracy, justice, and equality. Obviously, human universals concerning the freedom and autonomy of a people are rather predicated upon the

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particularities of its modern ruler, namely the nation-state. Particularized human universals are a pronounced condition of modern nationalism under which statecraft assumes itself to be the vessel of the national consciousness. In other words, nationalism in its variety is not merely ‘a state of mind’ (Kohn 2008: 10) and ‘an imagined community’ (Anderson 1991), but also possesses instrumentality for other kinds of objectives but pursued in the name of national unity and security. The case in point here is that India is currently playing the Tibet card in the context of its border disputes with China in the Himalayas. Talk of the Tibet card is widespread among scholars, policy researchers, and geopolitical critics in India. This enthusiastically pursued Tibet card is trans-Himalayan in nature as those who advocate it dwell first on the Sino-Indian border disputes, SinoPakistan alliance, and a projected water war between nations situated in the river systems sourced from the Tibetan Plateau, and then on crediting India as the sole spiritual source of the Sino-Indian and Sino-Tibetan Buddhist nexuses. The logic of the Tibet card apparently rests upon both religion and the modern sense of sovereign territoriality. The former is being conscripted to serve the sanctified status of the latter. The latter is a product of what Van Schendel calls the ‘cartographic surgery’ (Van Schendel 2002: 652) of the region by modern nation-states, especially those that emerged after World War II. Cartographic lines have literally overwritten and, therefore, sliced up the ecogeological contiguity and ethnolinguistic familiality of the Himalayan region. They were the primary sources of border disputes and later also evolved into ideological dividing lines during the Cold War era, which shaped the way how each modern nation-state in the region perceives and constructs its own and its neighbor’s national character. Tibet is a case in point between the Indian and the Chinese states. The Tibet card is not new to the contemporary politics of Tibet between Indian and China. Hodgson’s Himalayan anthropology in the nineteenth century built the Buddhist civilizational linkage between India and Tibet through his collection of Tibetan Buddhist texts in Nepal. However, the antecedence of his ethnological and Buddhological work was his colonial assignment to open trade routes to China via Tibet. The strategic importance of Tibet as a buffer or as a British India-China corridor was thus the premise of Hodgson’s presence in the Himalayas. In mid-twentieth-century Himalayan anthropology, the metaphor of the ‘zipper’ replaced the ‘buffer,’ highlighting the Indo-Tibetan interface in which Tibetan civilization was looked upon as ‘a variant of the Indian hierarchical tradition’ (Fisher 1978: 2). This appeared to be a Southern Himalaya-centric vision of the Tibetan plateau with an assumption that the civilizational force shaping Tibetan

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culture came from ancient India. In the twenty-first century, the assertion that in the past there was a south-to-north export of Indian civilization, especially of Buddhism, to Tibet allows India to claim itself to be the source of Pan-Asian Buddhist civilization. However, at the same time, Indo-Tibetan relations are increasingly being reframed in the context of India-China geopolitical contentions. Tibet, especially the exiled people of Tibet on Indian soil, is now a card to be played. In his latest public opinion piece, Brahma Chellaney, a leading Indian geostrategist, elevates the trans-Himalayan political value of Tibet to India’s ‘strategic asset,’ ‘instrument of leverage,’ and ‘ultimate trump card’ (Chellaney 2015) in response to China’s playing the Pakistan card and the Kashmir card. While China has solidified its territorial sovereignty over Tibet, India hosts the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (OHHDL) and the exiled Tibetan government. Metaphorically speaking, China possesses the body of Tibet while India holds the heart of Tibet. The political role of the fourteenth Dalai Lama officially ended in 2011; however, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) based in Dharamsala has not yet risen to the same charismatic scale as OHHDL, the religious and civilizational symbol of Tibet. The Tibet card Chellaney advocates in essence is thus a Dalai Lama card. This geopolitical emphasis on his religious role in India-China politics predominantly serves the national interests of India. The secularity of Tibetan Buddhism in this regard is being appropriated as a geopolitical instrument. In the contemporary trans-Himalayan context, the power of religion in the public sphere deserves more nuanced understandings and interpretations. The increasing number of religion-based participants in public affairs in different national constituencies subverts the secularist thesis that religious beliefs and practices have declined in modern societies (Casanova 2006: 7). On the contrary religion is found in a variety of political engagements. Religious values are being made into a ‘universally accessible language’ (Mendieta and VanAntwerpen 2011: 5) and accepted as part and parcel of modern social imaginaries (Taylor 2002: 116). In the case of Buddhism, this vision of the public sphere is well demonstrated in socially engaged Buddhist practices the world over. Therefore, the secularist thesis concerning the decline of religion is being proved inadequate. Religion is rigorously engaging the public. Tibetan Buddhism also has an overwhelming presence in the global public sphere; however, the Tibet card phenomenon in India does not quite fit this trend of translating religious values into social ethics for the public good. Instead, its focus is on the India-centered policy implications and

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geopolitical impacts of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism. In other words, the political instrumentality of both is the value of the Tibet card to India’s strategic needs allegedly constrained by China’s presence in the Himalayas and other fronts of India-China contentions. To battle what he calls ‘China’s cartographic aggression,’ Chellaney proposes the use of the Tibet card as India’s leverage ‘to reopen the issue of China’s annexation of Tibet’ (Chellaney 2015) while the Dalai Lama no longer contends the territorial debate on Tibet with the Chinese state. In the public sphere of India, the Tibet card played from Chellaney’s angle is diversely interpreted. While I was participating in the Second Symposium in Memory of the Late Professor Dawa Norbu at JNU in April 2016, I noticed that the ‘Tibet card’ was one of the terms that frequently appeared in the presentations of the invited scholars and policy analysts. I presented my transregional work on the porosity of ethnic boundaries in the case of the spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China. It did not appear quite attuned to those who contend China’s cartographic representation of Tibet. A senior defense analyst and former Indian diplomat politely dismissed the secular presence of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary China as a part of Xi Jinping’s maneuvering of Buddhism for his political gain. However, off the podium, I entered assorted conversations with scholars and students about the Tibet card. Among Tibetan students and scholars based in India at the symposium, some are concerned with whether or not the Indian state will decide to deport all Tibetan refugees back to China or make them fully integrated into Indian society as Indian citizens after the passing of the Dalai Lama. Their rationale is based on the perception that the Tibet card is a Dalai Lama card and, therefore, when the Dalai Lama is no longer with them, India would no longer host Tibetan refugees. Others favor the Tibet card, as they believe that it is best to resolve the Tibet issue while the Dalai Lama is still alive. If India joins the Tibet cause, the assumption is that China will reconsider rather than ignore the matter. Everyone seems to be doing a bit of fortune-telling concerning the fate of Tibet on Indian soil. In my conversations with Indian participants, the Tibet card is more diversely understood. Those who are situated in the policy circle tend to take the same position as that of Chellaney by positing China as a threat to India. Those who are in the fields of development studies and economics prefer to drop the Tibet card based on the rationale that Tibetan refugees proportionally receive much more international attention than India’s poor, who have little presence in the public sphere of India. Those who are ideologically left leaning, as Anand remarked during his lecture, prefer to

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look at Tibet as Kashmir to India as a long-term issue for negotiation rather than to take a side. Quite a few of them look upon China as a positive reference for India’s economic and social development with the rationale that China has economically risen as a third world country with a respectable track record of maintaining its national integrity. Those who are in the left spectrum appear to prefer downplaying or not playing the Tibet card against China. In the religious front, the perception of Tibet on Indian soil is synonymous with Tibetan Buddhism because of the Dalai Lama’s global Buddhist presence. I had conversations with a few conservative Indian graduate students who look upon Buddhism as a socially radical religion that presents instability to Indian society by citing how Buddhist conversion of Dalits has been politicized. From the perspective of these religious conservatives the Buddhist side effect of the Tibet card would likely contribute to the intensification of communalism in India; therefore, they prefer the Tibet card not to be played in India’s domestic fronts but only for the advantage of India’s national security. In comparison, Buddhist Dalits whom I met on campus are all appreciative of the Dalai Lama’s public statements on fighting the caste system; however, some of their radically minded peers allege the Dalai Lama to be an ally of the Brahmins, as not willing to build a true alliance with Navayana (New Vehicle), the Dalit Buddhist movement initiated by the late Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. Their opinion is based on two counts: public appearances of the Dalai Lama are predominantly with members of the Indian Brahmin political elites and not with the socially marginalized, and the fact that Indian state funding for relief projects and support from international aid programs directed to the Dalai Lama is used preferentially to assist Tibetan refugee communities and, therefore, overlooks India’s depressed classes. When the Tibet card is discussed on the level of India’s geopolitical interests, most of my Indian interlocutors say that their opinions do not affect how the Indian state would make the decision on how to play it. From my trans-Himalayan perspective, the Tibet card is a Tibetan Buddhist card centered upon the Dalai Lama’s global charisma but is instrumentalized for gaining leverages for the Indian state’s ongoing contentions and negotiations with China on the border disputes in the Himalayas. The secularity of Tibetan Buddhism in this case is not a social condition under which modernists seek intellectual and spiritual fullness in both transcendent and imminent senses in their ‘buffered self’ (Taylor 2007: 16-17, 38). Neither does it conform to Habermas’s notion of ‘the political,’ which emphasizes the complementary relation of the secular and the religious ‘that is constitutive

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for a democratic process springing from the soil of civil society’ (Habermas 2011: 27), nor is the type of secularization through which world religions promote their doctrines in a set of nonreligious languages, such as the Dalai Lama’s ideas of universal responsibilities (Dalai Lama 1999: 161). Instead, the secularity of Tibetan Buddhism evoked from India’s Tibet card with a Buddhist appearance is a product of an extended interstate conflict between India and China. It possesses a multidimensional instrumentalism among statesmen, policy writers, geostrategists, security advisors, and political scientists who are in favor of resolving the bilateral border contentions in the cartographic fronts of the Himalayas, such as Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. This secularity of Tibetan Buddhism furnishing the Tibet card is a consequence of modernity on the global scale. In this front, I share the same view as that of Talal Asad that secularity in this case pertains neither to the traditionally pervasive presence of religion nor to the severance of religion from the state; instead, it is given what Talal Asad calls an ‘agentive complexity’ with which geopolitical strategies and tactics could be materialized in interstate conflicts (Asad 2003: 12, 25). The agentive complexity of India’s Dalai Lama-based Tibet card is not a replay of Nehru’s Buddhist diplomacy in the mid-twentieth century during which Buddhism was projected as a soft power to widen the sphere of India’s influence as the source of Buddhist civilization. The Tibet card in the twenty-first century on the Indian side is more a strategic lever than a source of Asian civilization. It is not geared toward building an India-centered pan-Asian alliance but is border and territory specific. As Chellaney puts it straightforwardly, ‘Tibet is to India against China what Pakistan is to China against India’ (Chellaney 2015). Religion-based territorial conflicts and ethnic identity reclamations are not new in the Himalayas. Not counting the smaller indigenous ethnoreligious communities, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam have been the primary sources of territorial markings, conflicts, and peacebuilding especially since India entered its postcolonial era and Tibet became a part of China’s socialist transformation. Most of the disputed Sino-Indian cartographic borderlines in the Himalayas are drawn through regions with predominantly Tibetan Buddhist populations, for example, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim. Deterritorialization and porosity of national boundaries almost become synonymous with globalization. It may be true in other parts of the world. However, in the case of India and China, borderlines are expected to be rigidly solid. From the perspective of borderland studies, India’s Tibet card is a form of territorial engagement with China. Since their formative eras, both modern nation-states have been exercising what Van Schendel

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calls ‘the spatial strategy of territoriality,’ through which ‘[b]orders need to be constantly maintained and socially reproduced through particular practices and discourses that emphasize the “other”’ (Van Schendel 2005: 46). In essence, the ongoing Sino-Indian cartographical slicing of the Himalayas is mostly a process of reterritorializing the geographical margins of the traditional Tibetan territory. While the legitimacy of the China side is based on its reclaiming the imperial maps of the Mongol and the Manchu empires, India builds its territorial entitlement mostly upon the British colonial cartography of the Himalayas. The agentive complexity of India has evolved from the soft power of Buddhism to a phase of harnessing the strategic power of the Tibet card with the perceived geopolitical value of the Dalai Lama. The overt logic of Chellaney’s Tibet card tautologically answers his own question – ‘Why must India help find the next Dalai Lama?’ (Chellaney 2015). It is not religion that the Tibet card is concerned with, but rather the goal of winning the disputed Tibetan territories in the borderlands between India and China. This trans-Himalayan secularity of religion is a process of instrumentalizing Tibetan Buddhism as a geostrategic asset of the Indian state.

Secularity of Tibetan Buddhism in Diaspora While at JNU, a student gave me a copy of Dagmar Bernstorff’s newly published volume, entitled Tibet: Theocracy to Democracy (2016). The volume includes a range of contributions from prominent scholars and public figures examining the devolution of the Dalai Lama’s political role. Flipping through the pages, I could not find how the word ‘theocracy’ in the volume is understood in the context of Tibet’s political history. The loose use of theocracy appears to be aligned with the popular understanding of kashag, Tibet’s traditional governing system. It suggests the attributes of ‘premodern,’ ‘feudalistic,’ and ‘undemocratic’ as the linguistic and cultural roots of theocracy are associated with the political history of Europe and its Judeo-Christian traditions. The subtitle of the volume could be alleged to be the editor’s culturally reflexive preconception of the undemocratic nature of kashag in the last 369 years since its inception. The idea of the linear progress of modernity apparently thematizes the volume. If I look at the Buddhist nature of kashag, its transition to the current election-based, secular polity is not as simple and linear as the popular conception suggests. It is a question of secularism, secularity, and strategic choices in multiple fronts, which present personal, collective, and geopolitical opportunities and challenges. It is thus not as straightforward as

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the geostrategically oriented Buddhist secularity found in India’s Tibet card. It rather possesses a discernible logic for the continuity of the Tibet cause. Situated in this backdrop I make two interrelated arguments of what Buddhist secularity means among Tibetans in India. One is that the conceptual logic of the Dalai Lama’s political devolution, on one hand, aligns with the secularist thesis concerning the ideal model of secularism, namely the separation of religion and state, and, on the other hand, it demonstrates the power of religion in public sphere in this secular age (Mendieta and VanAntwerpen 2011: 1-14). Second, in practice, the secularist reform initiated by the Dalai Lama is a strategic insurance of the Tibet cause with a long-term, uninterrupted leadership and making all options of the cause open without the constriction of religious interventions regarding the process of selecting and educating the next Dalai Lama; thus, the secularist reform in this regard is another type of agentive complexity that legally rules out the role of the Buddhist leadership in its political sphere but includes it as one of many secular options for future dialogues and negotiations of the Tibetans in diaspora with the Chinese state. When I was preparing my visit to India, most of my self-assigned readings showed me that the secularist reform of the CTA was showcasing a landmark transformation of kashag based on the Dalai Lama’s own initiative for democracy among Tibetans outside Tibet, traced back to the 1960s. The media reports and the CTA publications all point to the political retirement of the Dalai Lama as the birth of the Tibetan secular governing system in exile. Frequently appearing phrases such as ‘the political devolution of the Dalai Lama’ and ‘relinquishing his political power’ indicate a clear ending of his political role; thus the separation of the religious and the political in the new, elected governing body is made possible. In his own public statement on 11 March 2011, the Dalai Lama narrates consistently about his long-awaited wish to democratize the Tibetan governing system (Dalai Lama 2011b: 11-15). It was a project that took over five decades to complete. It is thus expected that the Dalai Lama would eventually sever himself from the political governance of Tibet in exile. To a large extent, the media and the statements by Tibetan leaders have successfully produced a public perception of the Tibetan secularist transformation as a fine example of secularism in principle, that is, the complete separation of religion and state. It particularly fits two of José Casanova’s secularization theses: b) Secularization as the privatization of religion, often understood both as a general modern historical trend and as a normative condition, indeed as a precondition for modern liberal democratic politics.

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c) Secularization as the differentiation of the secular spheres (state, economy, science), usually understood as ‘emancipation’ from religious institutions and norms. (Casanova 2006: 7)

Such perception also coincides with a commonly shared view among scholars that secularism is an inherent part of modern states and, therefore, a marker of modern citizenship, democracy, and progress (Smith 1963: 4-5). This progressive impression that the public receives is found in the Dalai Lama’s landmark statement delivered in March 2011 when he was formally severing himself from the political leadership of the CTA. He succinctly remarked on the obsolescence of kashag in the twenty-first century, ‘One man rule is both anachronistic and undesirable’ (Dalai Lama 2011b: 12). His political successor, Losang Sangay, continued: ‘His Holiness did it in the interests of Tibet and the Tibetan people, because he thought it undemocratic to have one leader with both spiritual and political leadership’ (Sangay 2011/2012: 44). The secularist transition of the CTA was thus completed legally and ceremonially. However, it was met with emotionally charged appeals from both Tibetan leaders and common folks. Samdhong Rinpoche was one of them, beseeching the Dalai Lama to have a second thought in Buddhist terms. He stated, ‘Since the institution of the Dalai Lama, as an emanation of Avalokitesvara, and the inhabitants of the Land of Snows, the spiritual domain of Avalokitesvara are intimately connected by a pure karmic bond, the Tibetan people must make all efforts to ensure that this relationship continues to last forever without change’ (Samdhong 2011: 9). In her documentation, Bernstorff records, ‘On 18 March the Assembly passed almost unanimously a three point resolution calling on the Dalai Lama to continue as spiritual and political leader’ (Bernstorff 2016: 17). To know more of Tibetans’ conception of secularism and secularity, I approached a senior Tibetan monk scholar. To him Buddhism is the civilizational and political foundation of Tibet. It would be unthinkable if Buddhism were missing in the secular politics of Tibetans. He thinks that the Indian model of secularism is more suitable for Tibetans in exile. When I mentioned that the Tibetan lexicon has no existing words and phrases for secularism or secular as a Western concept, he responded without hesitation, ‘Tibet had no Buddhism. When we can’t translate a foreign word properly, we can always transliterate it. Sekula [སེ་ཀ ུ་ལར། secular] sounds crispy and acceptable’! As a monk, he prefers to see the secularization of Tibetan polity as a process of promoting Buddhist social ethics globally but in the context of nonreligious language.

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The secularity of Tibetan Buddhism in this sense is a type of Buddhist modernism that is understood among scholars as a cocreation of Asian, American, and European Buddhists as a product of the modern encounters between Asia and the West in the matters of industrialization, colonialism, modernization, and globalization (McMahan 2008: 6-7; Heine and Prebish 2003: 4). In this process, modern Buddhism emerges as a form of social and spiritual engagement in a democratic, scientific, and rational manner. It often relies on global movements of Buddhist teachers, seekers, and financial support (McMahan 2008: 6; Smyer Yü 2014: 475). The global presence of Tibetan Buddhism is an integral part of this modern Buddhism. The annual travel schedules and numerous publications of the Dalai Lama on secular ethics attest to the fact that the secularity of Tibetan Buddhism is part and parcel of this modern Buddhism. From the perspective of the secularism studies, the Buddhist modernism embodied in the secularity of Tibetan Buddhism is ‘a greater religious engagement with human relationships and other affairs of “this world”’ (Warner, VanAntwerpen, and Calhoun 2010: 14). On one hand, this secular trend is what Casanova calls ‘the privatization of religion’ as it has a strong emphasis on personal spirituality. On the other hand, it contributes to the expansion of the social space for a variety of common concerns (37). The Dalai Lama’s Ethics for the New Millennium (1999) and Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World (2011) inherently belong to the global secularity of this modern Buddhism. The dates of the publications and related public talks demonstrate that the Dalai Lama had prepared for the secular, democratic reform of the CTA for many years. But, the question remains: ‘How could a secularization based on one man’s decision be regarded as a democratic process?’ Everything sounds logical and promising except this transitional point in 2011, which was not election based. If democracy is understood as a modern political practice, the Dalai Lama’s political devolution process was one man’s decision, and therefore, undemocratically accomplished through his charismatic authority. In the Weberian sense, charismatic authority is seen as a type of personality-based, traditional political authority (Weber 1978: 215). The office of the Dalai Lama, in a traditional sense, is commonly perceived as a theocratic polity (Bernstoff 2016; Sautman 2006: 22; Dawa Norbu 1979: 74; Goldstein 2007: 1; Dreyfus 2005: 2). Its premodern, feudalistic, undemocratic rule is discernibly assumed among scholars as previously mentioned. In the social sphere of the modern West, charismatic figures, regardless of their religious and/or ideological orientations, are often lumped together as exemplifying the public good or social evils they promoted such as in the cases of Hitler,

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Stalin, Gandhi, Nehru, and Mao (Schweitzer 1984). In this modern context, as a highly reified concept and a political perception, charismatic authority is kept at bay. The institution of the Dalai Lama is caught in this depreciative understanding of charismatic authority in modern societies. To modernists who understand the practice of democracy as being reliant on the political participation of the wider population of a given nation, there appears to be an absence of democracy in personality-based authority, in this case leading to little social space or intellectual sophistication for understanding the charismatic authority of Tibet’s Buddhist governing system. The Dalai Lama’s decision to secularize the Kashag in 2011 was discernibly what I would call ‘a perceptual leap’ from the modern association of tradition and charismatic authority with feudalism and undemocratic ruling to the birth of a democratic Tibetan polity. In the social reality of Tibetans in and outside Tibet, the majority of people prefer the integrity of OHHDL as a Buddhist governing system. This collective preference has not changed since the advent of Tibet’s modernization whether in the style of socialist China or in the style of the modern West. According to Samdhong Rinpoche’s statement and Bernstorff’s documentation aforementioned, the Dalai Lama’s decision met almost a unanimous opposition from Tibetans. Their preferred governing body is OHHDL as both the political and spiritual leadership or simply as a Buddhist leadership. It is thus legitimate to ask the question – Why all of sudden was the Buddhist governing system ‘anachronistic and undesirable’ to Tibetans while Tibetan Buddhism is widely accepted for its socially engaged, environmentally friendly, and politically democratic character around the world? Based on my reading of the scripts of the Dalai Lama’s speeches, Losang Sangay, and Samdhong Rinpoche, and my conversations with Tibetan students and scholars, and my Indian colleagues, the secularist ending of kashag is a post-Dalai Lama project as an insurance that the leadership of the Tibet cause would not enter a long, unpredictable interim period between the passing of the current Dalai Lama and the political maturity of his future successor, which could last sixteen to eighteen years as shown in the early lifetime of the current Dalai Lama. The politics of the succession of the Dalai Lama presents gravely predictable scenarios, namely two reincarnations of the Dalai Lama or no reincarnation at all. The political power transfer from the Dalai Lama to Sikyong (the leader of the CTA) is supposed to nullify these uncertainties and undesirable projections of the future; therefore, the continuity of the Tibetan leadership in diaspora will be guaranteed. In principle, Sikyong is de jure the political half of the Dalai

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Lama or de facto the whole representation of OHHDL if/when the Tibetan negotiations with the Chinese state will be renewed in the near future. The secularity of Tibetan Buddhism in this case is the strategic engineering of a bet on the fate of Tibetans in diaspora. While it presents democratic opportunities for younger generations in India to participate in the political affairs of the CTA, it invites challenges and predicaments, too, from Tibetans in Tibet and from the Chinese and Indian states as well. In my conversations with my Tibetan students and colleagues in China, the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is unquestionable. In private conversations, many of them confess the unthinkability of a Tibet without the continuous reincarnations of the Dalai Lama in the future. Thus it could be said that the Dalai Lama is the collective psyche of the Tibetan people. In the geopolitical front, the ties of India and China with Tibetans in exile are all centered upon the Dalai Lama. Among the Indian politicians and policy advisors whom I had conversations with, a rising number of them is starting to entertain scenarios to dissolve the CTA on Indian soil as a teaser for China to give India territorial concessions on the disputed borderlands in the Himalayas. Although the Dalai Lama has cordially expressed his wish many times to visit Beijing or meet with Xi Jinping, his legally sanctioned nonpolitical role makes the Chinese state unwilling to invite him since he is no longer the full, legal representation of CTA, which has been the sole ground of Sino-Tibetan dialogues between 1979 and 2010. The secularities of Tibetan Buddhism are caught in the cartographic contentions between India and China as well as in the Tibetans’ own projection of a post-Dalai Lama Tibet. The geopolitical nature of these secularities is becoming more and more pronounced in the trans-Himalayan politics of Sino-Indian territorial engagements.

Ends of Buddhist Secularity in the Multisided Political Frontiers of the Himalayas Since Hodgson initiated Himalayan studies in the fields of anthropology and Buddhology in the late nineteenth century, the Himalayas has been a multisided political frontier from the colonial era to the postcolonial phase and the current globalization of the region. The initial British geopolitical vision of Tibet as a buffer zone between India and China no longer exists as the territorial Tibet’s relation with China is that of a part to the whole. In India the buffer zone is now revisioned as a geopolitical card and a set of actual unsettled physical borders with China. The desired tangibility

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of the solidified borderlines and the intangibility of the leverages and the assets of Tibetan origin are all woven together in India-China relations. During the time when Hodgson was on the Nepal and Darjeeling side of the Himalayas, the boundaries of different ethnolinguistic communities were the high mountains and big rivers, and thus were mostly naturally conceived. It is noteworthy to point out that Hodgson claimed that the linguistic patterns of the ethnic groups were ‘all of Tibetan origin’ (Arnold 2014: 214). This ethnolinguistic reality has not changed much since then, regardless of the fact that modern nation-states like India and China have been reterritorializing the region since the mid-twentieth century. It is thus inevitable for India to play the Tibet card. Indian card players like Chellaney make clear the orientation of the Tibet card geared toward resolving India-China border disputes. The consequences of globalization in the twenty-first century in borderland studies are often emphatically identified as the porosity and fluidity of borders due to the increasing velocity of cross-border movements of people and goods, legal, illegal or illicit. At the same time, globalization in borderlands around the world also means erecting fences, aligning barbed wire with cartographic lines, and legitimizing borderlines of past empires and dynasties. Van Schendel points out: ‘Here fluidity becomes associated with danger’ and ‘In a globalising, reterritorialising world that abounds with images of transnational flows, borders are far from disappearing; they are a crucial measure of continued state control’ (Van Schendel 2005: 40). In the case of India and China, their cartographical object is one and the same, that is, the geographical margins of traditional Tibetan territory in the Himalayas; however, their objectives differ in the manner of how to slice these margins in their respective maximum interests. India thus mostly holds on to the British colonial cartography of the Himalayas, while China those of the Mongol and the Manchu empires. These geographical margins of Tibet are thus a modern cartographical consumption of India and China. The political frontiers of India and China in the Himalayas are being extended into the secular sphere of Tibetan Buddhism and vice versa. The intersection of Tibetan Buddhism and the territoriality of the Himalayas is becoming a high point in India-China relations. To continue on the earlier discussion on the agentive complexity of secularism and secularization from Asad’s viewpoint, my case study of Tibetan Buddhist secularities in the Himalayas shows two trends of the secular appearance of religion. One is the increasing power of religion in the public sphere in the case of the Dalai Lama’s sustained effort to promote secular ethics worldwide. Another is the geopolitical instrumentality of Tibetan Buddhism exercised

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in both the Indian and the Tibetan contexts. The latter is the focal point of this chapter as an integral part of Asian borderland studies framed in my anthropological approach to Buddhist modernism and secularity. In both trends, I see state-sanctioned secularism not only as the prototypical model of separating the state from religion but also as a generative mechanism of modernity, which produces personal, public, and geopolitical meanings. Religious secularity obviously possesses worldly interests, as Calhoun says: ‘They not only pursue goals other than promoting religion, they operate outside the control of specifically religious actors. Much of social life is organized by systems or “steering mechanisms” that are held to operate independently of religious belief, ritual practice, or divine guidance’ (Calhoun 2010: 37). The Dalai Lama’s secularist intent discussed above may sound utilitarian and geostrategic; however, when it is contextualized in terms of the Tibetan diaspora in India and elsewhere, it is conceptually understood with Asad’s idea of agentive complexity for the sake of the continuity of the diasporic Tibetan communities. Such agentive complexity could also be understood as a synergized complexity from the perspective of diaspora studies. Such synergy comes from the diasporic community’s effort to sustain itself in its hostland with the hope for the eventual return to the homeland. It is an outcome from a recognizable reality of diaspora in which ‘the identities of specific individuals and groups of people are negotiated within social worlds that span more than one place’ (Vertovec 2001: 573). In this sense, Tibetans in diaspora have successfully built their new establishment in a new place, that is, India. The geostrategic aspect of Tibetan Buddhist secularity demonstrates Tibetans’ will for self-preservation. It is because they live in ‘in-between spaces’ which provide ‘the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood – singular or communal – that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself’ (Bhabha 1994: 1; emphasis added). To be more precise, the newness that Tibetans experience in India could be understood as their double or multiple consciousness because of their situatedness ‘in a lived tension, the experiences of separation and entanglement, of living here and remembering/desiring another place’ (Clifford 1997: 255). The Himalayas have been religious and political frontiers for centuries; however, in the twenty-first century, these frontiers are becoming survival niches of Tibetans on Indian soil, in which Tibetans mostly choose a Buddhist presence with a long-term strategic goal prepared for a post-Dalai Lama future.

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References Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. Arnold, David. 2004. ‘Hodgson, Hooker and the Himalayan Frontier, 1848-1850.’ In The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858, ed. David M. Waterhouse, 189-205. New York: Routledge. Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bernstorff, Dagmar 2016. ‘Introduction.’ In Tibet: Theocracy to Democracy, ed. Dagmar Bernstorff, 13-27. New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Calhoun, Craig. 2010. ‘Rethinking Secularism.’ The Hedgehog Review (Fall): 35-48. Casanova, José. 2006. ‘Rethinking Secularization: A Global Comparative Perspective.’ The Hedgehog Review (Spring/Summer): 7-22. Chellaney, Brahma. 2015. ‘A Strategic Asset: Why India Must Help Find the Next Dalai Lama.’ Hindustan Times, 6  July. http://www.hindustantimes.com/ analysis/a-strategic-asset-why-india-must-help-f ind-the-next-dalai-lama/ story-y8xn2pA5FUiD5ARljgedZK.html. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dalai Lama. 1999. Ethics for the New Millennium. New York: Riverhead Books. Dalai Lama. 2011a. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. New Delhi: HarperCollins. Dalai Lama. 2011b. ‘Message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the Fourteenth Assembly of the Tibetan People’s Deputies.’ In Collected Statements of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Devolution of Power to the Elected Leaders of Central Tibetan Administration, 11-15. Dharamsala: DIIR [Department of Information and International Relations]. Dawa Norbu. 1979. ‘The 1959 Tibetan Rebellion: An Interpretation.’ China Quarterly 77 (March): 74-93. Dreyfus, Georges. 2005. ‘Are We Prisoners of Shangrila? Orientalism, Nationalism, and the Study of Tibet.’ Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 1 (October): 1-21. Fisher, James F. 1978. ‘Introduction.’ In Himalayan Anthropology: The Indo-Tibetan Interface, ed. James Fisher, 1-3. Paris: Mouton Publishers. Goldstein, Melvyn. 2007. A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm before the Storm, 1951-1955. Berkeley: University of California Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2011. ‘“The Political”: The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology.’ In The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

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by Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West, 15-33. New York: Columbia University Press. Heine, Steven, and Charles S. Prebish. 2003. ‘Introduction: Traditions and Transformations in Modern Buddhism.’ In Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition, ed. Steven Heine and Charles S. Prebish, 3-8. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kohn, Hans. 2008. The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origin and Background. London: Transaction Publishers. Lopez, Donald S. Jr. 2004. ‘The Ambivalent Exegete: Hodgson’s Contributions to the Study of Buddhism.’ In The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858, ed., David M. Waterhouse, 49-76. New York: Routledge. McMahan, David L. 2008. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mendieta, Eduardo, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. 2011. ‘Introduction: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere.’ In The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, by Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Cornel West, 1-14. New York: Columbia University Press. Samdhong Rinpoche. 2011. ‘The Statement of Kashag on the 52nd Anniversary of the Tibetan People’s National Uprising Day.’ In Collected Statements of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Devolution of Power to the Elected Leaders of Central Tibetan Administration, 6-10. Dharamsala: DIIR [Department of Information and International Relations]. Sangay, Lobsang. 2011/2012. ‘Getting Back the High Ground: A Conversation with Lobsang Sangay, the Kalon Tripa of the Tibetan Government-in-exile.’ World Policy Journal 28.4 (Winter): 43-48. Sautman, Barry. 2006. ‘Cultural Genocide in International Context.’ In Cultural Genocide and Asian State Peripheries, ed. B. Sautman, 1-38. New York: Palgrave. Schweitzer, Arthur. 1984. The Age of Charisma. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Smith, Donald E. 1963. India as a Secular State. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2014. ‘Buddhist Conversions in the Contemporary World.’ In Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian, 465-487. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Charles. 2002. ‘Modern Social Imaginaries.’ Public Culture 14 (1 November): 91-124. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20: 647-668.

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Van Schendel, Willem. 2005. ‘Spaces of Engagement: How Borderlands, Illicit Flows, and Territorial States Interlock.’ In States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization, ed. Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham, 38-68. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2001. ‘Transnationalism and Identity.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27.4: 573-582. Warner, Michael, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun. 2010. ‘Editors’ Introduction.’ In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun, 1-31. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Waterhouse, David. 2004. ‘Brian Hodgson: A Biographical Note.’ In The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling, 1820-1858, ed. David M. Waterhouse, 10-24. New York: Routledge. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, Vol. I: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

About the author Dan Smyer Yü is Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University. Prior to his current faculty appointment, he was a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and a core member of the Transregional Research Network (CETREN) at the University of Göttingen in Göttingen, Germany, and a New Millennium Scholar at Minzu University of China, Beijing. He is the author of The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment (Routledge, 2011), Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Ecoaesthetics (De Gruyter, 2015), and numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles. His current research interests are religion and ecology, environmental humanities, transboundary state effects, hydraulic politics, climate change and heritage preservation, Buddhism and peacebuilding, and comparative studies of Eurasian secularisms. He is also a documentary filmmaker.

4

Buddhist Books on Trans-Himalayan Pathways Materials and Technologies Connecting People and Ecological Environments in a Transnational Landscape Hildegard Diemberger

Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH4 Abstract Buddhist book culture has been historically associated with traveling texts that spread Buddha’s teachings across Asia. Literary artifacts emerged over time as nodes in networks that connected many people, technologies, and materials as well as different forms of engagement with the written word. Paper, wood, inks, and pigments have connected different ecological niches, linking a ‘galaxy’ of communities with different histories and different perspectives on what constitutes center and margins and their mutual relationships. While the consolidation of nation-state borders has often challenged flows across these ‘borderlands,’ new technologies have opened up avenues of communication with ‘digital dharma’ becoming an iconic form of ‘vernacularized modernity.’ Scriptures in digital form have thus expanded in new directions the web of trails that crisscrosses Himalayan transnational landscapes. Keywords: Himalaya, Buddhism, books, literary artifacts, digital technologies, transnational landscapes.

Introduction: Trans-Himalayan Routes as a Web of Cultural, Social, and Economic Connections In different forms and at different scales, roads and pathways have shaped the existence of a multitude of different communities inhabiting

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different ecological niches in the Himalaya. The steep and lush southern Himalayan slopes, home to a wide range of ethnic communities with different characteristics and livelihoods, have thus been connected to the dry Tibetan plateau inhabited by high-altitude farmers and pastoralists. Trade has historically been the way in which these different communities have related to each other in multiple forms. However, relations were not only about exchanges of goods, they were also about kinship, religious ties, and the transfer of knowledge and technologies and well as literary artifacts. The emphasis currently given to ‘roads’ in the development of these regions echoes much older pathways and ancient connections while pointing to their radical transformation. Cultural production on the Tibetan plateau and in the Himalayan regions would not have been possible without a web of relations enacted over the centuries through mountain trails and trading routes. Manuscripts and prints, both as texts and as material artifacts, tell stories not only of books carried along these pathways, passed on, copied, and translated but also of palm leaves, paper plants and paper, wood, ink, gold, pigments, and dyes which were processed, traded and often presented as merit-making offerings. Literary artifacts can reveal many untold stories if we look at the information given in colophons about the conditions of their production together with the analysis of the materials they are made of and the mapping of their places and routes. In this chapter I set out from the exploration of a historic gateway of trans-Himalayan relations to show how Tibetan scriptures can tell a story of materials and technologies that connect different ecological environments inhabited by very different groups of people. I also show that the social life of literary artifacts has shaped the Himalayan region for centuries by linking a ‘galaxy’ of communities with different histories and different perspectives on what constitutes center and borders and the relationship to each other. While the consolidation of nation-state boundaries through geopolitical processes meant that the flows across these ‘borderlands’ have been increasingly challenged and sometimes completely blocked, new technologies have recently opened up avenues of communication with ‘digital dharma’ becoming one of the most iconic forms of ‘vernacularized modernity.’ Scriptures in digital form have thus become part of new imagined and virtual geographies that have added further layers to Himalayan landscapes and expanded in new directions the web of trails that crisscrosses this transnational space.

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Exploring a Historic Gateway Mangyul Gungthang and the Kyirong Route between Tibet and Nepal Over the centuries, the area known as Mangyul Gungthang (currently Jilong Xian in Shigatse Prefecture, TAR) has been an important gateway between the north and the south of the Himalayas, traversed by the main route between Tibet and Nepal, which passed through the Kyirong Valley and connected Central Tibet to Kathmandu. This was the route taken by the Nepalese wife of Emperor Songtsen Gampo (d. 649) on her way to Tibet. This was, at times, also an important route between the Chinese Empire and India as witnessed by a Chinese inscription on an overhanging rock not far from the ruins of the royal palace left in 658 by Wang Xuance, a diplomat of the Tang imperial court who passed through on his way to and from Buddhist India (Diemberger 2007: 34; Pasang Wangdu 1996). He was on a political and religious mission for Emperor Gaozong (628-683) whose wife became famous (and infamous) as Empresses Wu Zetian (624-705), a keen promoter of Buddhism and Buddhist book production (see below). According to the dBa’ bzhed (folios 5-10) and many other sources, the Kyirong Route was also the itinerary taken by Padmasambhava and Śāntaraksita in the eighth century on their way from India to Tibet. A Nepalese temple constructor traveled with them to build what eventually became famous as Samye monastery, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. This was the most celebrated of a wide range of cultural borrowings and cross-fertilizations that took place along this route, which included the beautiful dynastic temples of the Kyirong Valley in Nepalese style: the Chamdrin Lhakhang and the Phagpa Wati Sangpo traditionally attributed to Emperor Songtsen Gampo (and regularly restored by his descendants ruling this region; see Everding 2000; Erhard 2004). Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts preserved in Tibet (especially Lhasa and Sakya) are also witness to the journey of the material supports of Buddhist teachings from the south to the north of the Himalaya and the way in which they inspired Tibetan book production. What was traveling along this route was not only the doctrine of the Buddha but also the technologies of Buddhist material culture and architecture. During the imperial period this area was considered part of the kingdom of Shangshung and subsequently of Ngari, as western Tibet later became known. In the thirteenth century, under Sakya rule, the kingdom of Mangyul Gungthang was founded by Bumdegon (1253-1280) (Everding 2000: 391ff.), who, like the kings who had founded Guge and Purang in western Tibet some 200 years earlier (see Petech 1988: 369-394), was a descendant of the ancient Tibetan royal house. Under Sakya rule, following the territorial

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Figure 1 Kyirong Valley and ancient trans-Himalayan pathway

reorganization of Tibet into administrative units known as myriarchies (thrikhor), it became a regional power and part of a complex network of local political domains with varying degree of autonomy. The relationships among these powers alternated between collaboration and hostility, independence and subordination in a setting in which marriage alliances and religious patronage were important integrating factors. The capital of the Mangyul Gungthang kingdom was the center of its own mandala, protected by the ancestral mountain god and focused on the imperial ancestry of its rulers while being strategically positioned on a key route of communication between other centers. This state of affairs lasted until the Mangyul Gungthang kingdom was destroyed in 1620 by the king of Tsang. After this latter was defeated by the Hoshuud Mongols, in 1642 the area came under the authority of the Lhasa-based Ganden Phodrang administration and eventually the overlordship of the Qing Empire. Following the Gorkha incursion into Tibet at the end of the eighteenth century, this area became increasingly controlled as a borderland. While the route via Kyirong following the Zarong Tsangpo/Trisuli River was the most ancient and famous of the historic trans-Himalayan corridors, there are many parallel ones that became more or less significant

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at different points in history. With the establishment of the TAR/Nepal border this ancient route became marginalized by the opening of other passages (especially the route via Nyalam/Kodari) until recently when it was rediscovered in new guise, with the construction of a tarmac road and the opening of a modern border post in 2015 in the location where the ancient Gorkha border post Rasuwagadhi was located. South of this border the area is currently inhabited by a wide range of communities, most notably Sherpa and Tamang but also Newari and others. The ethnonyms that are currently used often lump together people with complex histories, which came to be identified as discreet communities through tortuous processes and their integration into the Nepalese state. Their history, however, goes far back and is in many ways connected to the trade route and to their specializations and livelihoods; in some cases craftsman such as the Newari migrating northward, bringing labor and skills to the Tibetan plateau, and people migrating southward from the Tibetan plateau to inhabit the so-called Hidden Valleys or Hidden Lands (beyul). In fact, both east and west of the main trade route there are areas such as Helambu, Langtang, and Kyimolung that are considered to be sacred sites hidden by Padmasambhava to be revealed at the appropriate time as a place of refuge and mystical realization.

Books as Texts, Literary Artifacts, and Ritual Objects Traveling on Trans-Himalayan Routes Written by hand or block printed on paper made from the bark or the roots of plants that grow on the Himalayan slopes and on the Tibetan plateau (see below), Tibetan sacred books reflect a long and rich textual tradition. Most are constituted of loose sheets of paper that mimic the palm leaves on which Buddhist texts were written in Sanskrit and were taken from India to Tibet by Buddhist scholars and pilgrims (a format called pothi, from the Sanskrit pustaka). Some of them are richly illuminated and written with precious inks made of gold, silver, or precious stones on dark paper, others are more ordinary, written in black ink made of soot on whitish paper, which usually gets darkened with age. Usually wrapped in a particular cloth that is often called the same name as the monastic robe (namza), tied with strings that are often called ‘belts’ (kura), and invited (chendren) from one place to another as if they were honorific persons, Tibetan books are closely connected to the Buddhist cult of relics. As ‘symbols/supports of the speech’ (sungten), they embody the speech of the Buddha and of the masters who

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continued his deeds; alongside statues and paintings, the ‘symbols/supports of the body’ (kuten), and actual relics enshrined in stupas, the symbols/ supports of the mind’ (thugten). Through reading aloud they are activated and they are therefore part of ritual practices that harness the blessing power of Buddha’s and Buddhist masters’ ‘speech.’ As ritual objects, they are endowed with the power of blessing people and fields, they demand handling according to specific protocols, and can express a strong moral message to the people who come in touch with them: producing or restoring books are as much merit-making activities as destroying or neglecting them are moral downfalls. According to Buddhist narratives, the idea that books embodying the Buddha’s speech are sacred items leads back to the very moment of his demise and is related to a conflation of the cult of relics and the cult of the book. Texts could be considered as relics, worshipped like the bodily remains of the Buddha (or of those who enacted his vision), and put into stupas. The relevant ritual acts could be multiplied and, in the case of rulers, they also meant a reenactment of Ashoka’s model of the Buddhist sovereign, the cakravartin, distributing relics. The understanding of text as a relic together with Buddhist merit-making practices was thus also linked to the development of early printing in China, Figure 2 Local lama reading a book

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Korea, and Japan (cf. Schopen 2005: 309-311; see also Strong 2004). In his book The Woman Who Discovered Printing, the Sinologist Tim Barrett (2008) describes how the controversial Chinese Empress Wu Zetian (624-705) ordered innumerable copies of a ritual text to be printed and distributed. Thus, through her way of making merit and enacting the Buddhist cakravartin ideal to establish her own dynasty (Zhou), she probably led to the ‘discovery’ of printing as early as the end of the seventh century. An understanding of the book as relic, artifact, and ritual object as well as medium for the communication of Buddha’s message underpinned both the production of manuscript editions of Buddhist scriptures as well as Tibetan prints. The Royal Genealogy of Gungthang (Gung thang rgyal rabs) lists the rulers of the Gungthang kingdom in chronological order and describes their deeds. The production of Buddhist volumes as ‘symbols of the speech’ (sungten) appears often alongside statues, paintings, temples, and shrines as merit-making activities, especially after the passing of a family member. Until the reign of Thri Lhawang Gyaltsen (r. 1419-1464) these were Figure 3 Local lama copying a book

Photo by Christian Schicklgruber

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manuscript copies, sometimes lavishly illuminated editions written in gold on deep blue or black paper. From then on, the printing of Buddhist texts appears in the narrative as a crucial merit-making activity. This was the beginning of a period in which more popular, grassroots forms of religious practice developed, propelled by the increased access to printed texts (Erhard 2004: 149) and the involvement of larger parts of the population in the support of printing projects which were not the prerogative of rulers (see Diemberger and Clemente 2013). Thri Lhawang Gyaltsen’s printing operations were followed by those of his son and his further descendants on the Mangyul Gungthang throne, leading to the production of a whole host of print editions that included great classics such as the biography and songs of Milarepa by Tsangnyon Heruka (see Erhard 2000; Schaeffer 2009; Sernesi 2011). In the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries a multitude of printing houses were built in palaces and monasteries, including Trakar Taso in the Kyirong Valley, which became famous across the entire region (see Quintman in this volume). It is during this time that the Mani bka’ ‘bum, a text traditionally attributed to the first Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo (d. 649), was printed at the royal palace of the Mangyul Gungthang kings. Its narrative contributed to the spreading of the Tibetan imperial legacy and the cult of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, protector of Tibet, of whom Emperor Songtsen Gampo and later the Dalai Lama are considered emanations.1 The mention in this text of a famous scheme of thirteen Buddhist temples that pin down the territory of Tibet, imagined as the body of a demoness, was also crucial in linking one of the ancient local temples attributed to Songtsen Gampo (the Chamdrin Lhakhang) to the pan-Tibetan narrative centered in Lhasa that shaped what George Dreyfus (1994) defines as ‘protonationalism.’ The Mangyul Gungthang editions of this text traveled across Tibetan areas and one of them became the basis for the seventeenth-century print edition produced in Bhutan (see Kapstein 2000: 260), where another of the ‘temples taming the further border’ (yangdul) is located. Both manuscript and printed versions of the Mani bka’ ‘bum can currently be often found in the Mangyul Gungthan region and in the adjacent areas in Nepal and are witness to the importance and the popularity of this text. From the biography of Kuntu Sangmo, we learn that it was not only important for people who directly 1 The kings of Mangyul Gungthang sponsored several print editions of this work; for a discussion of these early prints, see Ehrhard 2000: 15; Ehrhard 2013. A remarkable early-sixteenthcentury version produced by the Mangyul Gungthang royal house is preserved at the Cambridge University Library.

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read it but also for the illiterate as households used to invite monks and nuns to read it for them, spreading a narrative that eulogized the Tibetan imperial legacy (see Diemberger 2016). What was happening in Mangyul Gungthang in the fifteenth century was not unique. In other areas of Tibet, the Phagmodrupa rulers, the lords of Gyangtse, Yasang, Yamdrog and other local polities engaged in similar operations creating print editions of texts that became established as classics of monastic curricula most notably Tsongkhapa’s Lam rim (see, for example, Jackson 1990) and Tibetan historiography and by the turn of the sixteenth century Tibet was buzzing with printing houses. Manuscript production on the Tibetan plateau did not necessarily involve the importation of paper, paper plants, and wood from the lower area. Paper could be produced locally from roots of a plant called stellera and ink could be derived from common soot. However, deluxe manuscript editions needed gold, silver, pigments, and dyes that had to be sourced from different areas on the plateau and from the lower valleys, in ways that were parallel and comparable to thankha paintings (see Jackson and Jackson 2006). Similarly printing was dependent on trade as printing paper needed at least a portion of bark of Daphne/Edgeworthia species (see Helman-Ważny 2016). It is likely, therefore, that the increased reliance on paper plants and wood involved in printing tightened and enhanced the trading links between the north and the south of the Himalaya, with paper production and its trade becoming essential for communities such as the Tamang, who specialized in this craft.

A 1441 Print of the dPal de kho nan yid ‘dus pa snying po: The Example of a Literary Artifact as a Node in a Trans-Himalayan Network In the British Library there is a printed copy of a text considered to be the ‘essence’ of the work of the great polymath Bodong Chogle Namgyal, a text written in 1441 in a hermitage in Mangyul Gungthang by him. This volume in pothi format printed with black ink on beige Tibetan paper arrived in the UK in the wake of the British invasion of Tibet in 1903/1904. Retrieved in Ngonga Chode monastery near the Nakartse fortress in Yamdrog, it was one of the numerous items that the British brought back to satisfy their desire for treasures from Tibet as a mysterious land that had captured their imagination.2 A careful inspection of the volume in pothi format reveals 2

This is suggested by the seal mark of the monastery on many of the folios.

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that its folios actually belong to two different print editions. One produced in Zurtsho (an area between Mangyul Gungthang and southern Lato) in 1442 and the other much further to the east in Yamdrog in 1443 (see Tsering Dawa 2016). The colophons of both these print editions celebrate them as deeds instigated by the respective rulers and celebrate their domain as the center of the world, highlighting the local mountain god and its sacred territory and without any reference to higher levels of authority despite the fact that they were nominally part of larger political entities (Tibet was at that time under the loose control of the Ringpungpa rulers). The first of these two prints was produced with the patronage of the female ruler of Zurtsho, whose domain had shifted between being loosely under the kings of Mangyul Gungtang to being under the rulers of southern Lato with a great deal of autonomy.3 The second was produced with the patronage of the ruler of Yamdrog, who had ancestral connections to Sakya and controlled a region southwest of Lhasa.4 Both rulers had been disciples of Bodong Chogle Namgyal and were part of a network of followers of the same tradition. The reason why folios from two separate print editions ended up within a single volume is unclear but is certainly associated with the close religious links between these areas that are geographically relatively distant. The transregional network within which the two print editions were produced is also reflected in the names of the scholars mentioned in the colophon as involved in the editing of the text and its preparation for printing (see Tsering Dawa 2016). A wide range of scribes and carvers ensured that the text was adequately copied onto sheets to be glued on the wooden blocks to leave the letter marks in reverse and eventually carved. Little is known about the craftsmen beyond some of their names, the most skilled and prominent are celebrated as embodiment of Viswakarma, the Indian god of craftsmanship – which reminds us of the transnational character of a skill that originated in China but reflected the Indian roots of Buddhism. The paper on which the text is printed is made of Daphne, which implies direct or indirect trading links with a region where this plant grows. The Zurtsho community generally sourced its paper or papermaking materials from the Himalayan slopes south of the Nyalam and Mangyul areas, in places that now belong to Nepal; the Yamdrog community probably sourced 3 Zurtsho was one of the entities making up the nomadic and seminomadic polity of Porong under the command of the Porong Jebon. This latter was connected to the rulers of southern Lato, one of the myriarchies under the Sakya rule, but in an extremely loose way (Everding 2000). 4 Yamdrog was one of the myriarchies under the Sakya rule and retained its territorial identity through later administrative reforms.

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its paper from the area currently known as Bhutan. The birch wood for the printing block was equally sourced from these regions as was the ink imported from soot made from burning pine tree. Caravans would take these goods to trading places called tshongdu (meaning ‘market,’ a very common place name along the entire Himalayan range) or to specific people and institutions that needed them to which they were connected by ties of allegiance, ritual friendship, or kinship.

Books Connecting People to the North and the South of the Himalayas While there was some availability of local wood and paper on the Tibetan plateau, most of the materials used to produce books were sourced from communities inhabiting the southern Himalayan slopes (Sherpas, Tamangs, various Bhutanese groups, etc.). They lived along trading routes or in the so-called Hidden Valleys (beyul or belung), sacred landscapes in relatively secluded places rich in herbs and forest products as well as ‘spiritual treasures’ (terma). They harvested the bark of Daphne or Edgeworthia species from the forest and processed it into paper, which could then be traded northward over the high passes (see Trier 1972; Helman-Ważny 2016). In a similar way they traded wood planks for the printing blocks obtained from the Himalayan birches and soot for ink production produced by burning the wood of resinous pine trees (Pinus wallichiana). Many of the people inhabiting the area where these materials were sourced were not only exporters, they were also keen recipients of sacred texts that reached them from the holy sites on the Tibetan plateau with the blessing of the relevant spiritual masters and were worshipped as sacred objects even if only a few members of the community were in the position to read them. In some cases these texts were hand-copied or even reprinted and passed on generating local teaching lineages and traditions. The social organization of the communities on each side of the Himalaya varied as did eating habits, kinship practices, and languages. In fact both historical sources and current oral traditions are rich in comments about relative difference among the various communities inhabiting the Himalayan slopes and reflect different perspectives on marginality and centeredness. Subordination and the self-understanding of one community as marginal in relation to a center or a heartland was not necessarily a given and often communities could have multiple external political and spiritual centers in relation to which they positioned themselves. At times tensions

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developed among these different entities and there is indeed a long history of local conflicts; however, more often peaceful coexistence and trade were to mutual advantage and worth trying to preserve and restore – kinship and religious ties played an important part in this. When overarching state structures emerged or took control they often integrated and built on preexisting arrangements in ways that preserved a lot of their features and allowed for fluidity and strategic ambiguities – Geoffrey Samuel (1993: 61-62) has productively adapted the notion of a ‘galactic polity’ developed by Tambiah to this Himalayan creative and dynamic messiness. It is this heterogeneous web of relationships that we find reflected in books, through their production, their journeys and their uses. While books clearly offer a perspective that is skewed toward those who can read them, they can provide insight into their wider social and cultural context in ways that include illiterate and partially literate communities. In addition to the north-south routes connecting the southern and the northern slopes of the Himalaya, there were myriads of east-west routes connecting different groups inhabiting the valleys at various altitudes. Local temples and monasteries as well as the houses of tantric priests contain texts that have traveled on these pathways. Sometimes these books traveled; more often they were hand copied within teacher-disciple lineages. When in the 1980s and 1990s I studied the Hidden Valley of Khenbalung to the east of Mount Everest I found manuscripts that contained prayers to the transmission line mapping the routes that the texts had traveled, having arrived either from the west via Kyirong and Helambu or from the north via southern Lato and Karta. Many showed a range of immediate connections to the Sherpa-inhabited Solu. A few had been printed in Tibetan monastic printing houses, such as that of Rongbuk monastery, on Daphne paper that had traveled northward in paper bundles and returned southward as sacred scripture. While the particular books and links are specific, most of the local textual collections that can be found in the Himalayan valleys have a similar nature. The hidden valley of Khenbalung, a true hub of religious and trading links, is divided into two parts by the current state boundary and encompasses places that traditionally had very different social and political structures but were tightly connected: the communities to the north were stratified and integrated into Tibetan state structures; the communities to the south much less so despite their formal integration in the Gorkha/ Nepal state since the eighteenth century (see Diemberger 1996). This state of affairs was perceived and commented upon by the Tibetan Lama of Rongbuk monastery, Ngawang Tendzin Norbu, who traveled to the region

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in the early twentieth century and observed that Khenbalung as a holy land of Padmasambhava did not experience taxes and corvée services and he regretted that the arrival of the Gorkha affected its status and the integrity of its honor. The different people inhabiting the Beyul Khenbalung region (Tibetans, Shingsawa, Sherpa, Rai, Tamang, etc.) participated in the perception that this particular geographical space was a sacred hidden valley, even though they had different perspectives about it. Some of the narratives were oral, others were written. Some were framed in clear Buddhist terms, others focused on the local mountain gods. Manuscripts made of Daphne bark paper preserved in several of the local village temples and private houses describe the way to reach the hidden valley from different cardinal directions. This ‘guide’ (neyig) to the Hidden Valley of Khenbalung was revealed by the ‘treasure revealer’ Rigdzin Godem (1337-1408), who had been active at the court of the kings of Mangyul Gungthang in the fourteenth century and has become famous for having opened many hidden valleys in the Himalaya (see Everding 2000: 481ff.). As nodes in networks books tied a great variety of people together, including many who were not literate, in a web of routes used to source the materials, produce manuscripts and prints, and circulate them. There were plenty of borders between different communities but these were porous and locally negotiable. Things have been transformed by the consolidation of modern state boundaries – border management was somewhat looser (but certainly an important area of negotiation) between the Qing Empire and the Gorkha state as well as British India; it became much tighter and increasingly controlled by modern border control practices between the PRC and India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The long-distance trans-Himalayan trade is now a phenomenon of the past despite a certain amount of border trade. The tsongdu, the traditional big market places, have stopped being at the center of transnational networks where traders from all directions gathered at particular times of celebration and commerce. Only very few monasteries have functioning printing houses; paper is no longer sourced from the Himalayan valleys for manuscript and print production and where the craft has been revived it is mainly for the benefit of a tourist and art market (in addition to a modest amount for the traditionalist local Buddhist revival); industrially produced ink is readily available so that only few people know how to prepare it from soot (although many have memories of the process). For technological, economic, and political reasons, books seem to have stopped being nodes in these extensive webs of people, materials, and technologies. Or have they?

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The Himalayan Region as a Transnational Virtual Space for the Preservation and Circulation of Books as Spiritual and Cultural Heritage With the destruction of many books during the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent revival of Buddhist traditions on the Himalayan plateau a new kind of endeavor has emerged: the rescue, restoration, and distribution of scriptures. In many cases, books that have left the Tibetan plateau during or before the Cultural Revolution as well as those that have survived thanks to the endeavor of people who hid them (or sheer luck), are at the center of this effort. They are the drivers of synergies informed by both a Buddhist morality of protection and distribution of sacred scriptures and a secular morality of cultural heritage. In recent years digital technologies have assisted this effort in significant ways: sometimes enabling the digital reproduction, storage, and distribution of texts; sometimes as an aid in the processing of new print editions that are then brought back to their places of origin. In Mangyul Gungthang, now Jilong Xian, the monastery of Trakar Taso, famous as a Milarepa sacred site and as a printing house, used to host a substantial collection of manuscripts and prints – including the writings of the master Trakar Chokyi Wangchuk (see Quintman, in this volume). The monastery was completely abandoned and partially destroyed in the 1960s but part of its collection was hidden in a cave above the monastery and a more substantial part had been taken earlier by Lopon Gyurme to his monastery in the adjacent area within Nepalese territory. When Trakar Taso monastery was restored in the late 1980s the nuns managed to rescue printing blocks and the part of the collection that had been hidden in a cave – but the manuscripts and prints had been badly damaged by water and dampness.5 In 2015 Lama Shedrub a disciple of Lopon Gyurme was able to get hold of the microfilms of Lopon Gyurme’s collection produced in the 1980s by the NGMPP (these were deposited in Nepal in the National Archives and in Germany). With computer technology he produced a modern reprint of the text in Kathmandu and this is currently being brought back to Trakar Taso by one of the Tibetans who initiated and supported the restoration of the place. The text of the essence of Bodong Chogle Namgyal’s teachings preserved at the British Library was brought back to Yamdrog and delivered to Samding monastery by the British Library Tibetan curator Burkhard Quessel in 5

A detailed account of the process is given in Diemberger 2010: 113-125.

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Figure 4 Monk taking a photograph of an illumination with a mobile phone

Photo by Bruce Huett

digital form in 2007. When I revisited Samding in 2015 I found a new computer laboratory in the monastery, with a group of young monks preparing textual materials for a session of spiritual teachings. These textual materials were based on a painstaking research work that had gathered what was available from monasteries belonging to the same tradition in Tibet and abroad. This was just one of the many networks that has emerged in recent years, incorporating ancient Himalayan geography but having a global span and connecting people in the name of particular Buddhist traditions. Websites, mobile phones, USB flash drives, hard drives, CDs, and other supports have been expanding the space of trans-Himalayan communication in unimaginable ways. At the same time, ancient craftsmanship has been revived under the rubric of tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the Himalaya within a globalized perspective involving multiple forms of agency at different levels.

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Conclusion Exploring the social life of books, the Himalayas emerge as transnational space where for centuries flows of ideas, people, and materials have connected places that are both relative centers and peripheries. This included a wide range of people that had different relationships to the written word and were not necessarily literate. Anthropologists such as Anna Tsing (1993, 2005) have shown that remote or ‘marginal’ and ‘out-of-the-way’ places are not all they appear, and that such places are also cocreations of their inhabitants in dialogue with global narratives, linked by transitive relationships that flow between community, nation-state, and the global politics of ‘modernization.’ While Van Spengen’s notion of Zomia may be used productively in the trans-Himalayan context to understand the transnational character of this space and its cross-boundary flows, Geoffrey Samuel’s adaptation of Tambiah’s concept of ‘galactic polity’ might be more effective in capturing its political dynamics, its multicenteredness, and its complexity through history. Relationships among places and people have been shaped by religious, cosmological, kinship, and economic flows in ways that a narrow focus on ‘political formations’ and the relationship of communities to ‘the state’ might obscure. A close observation of books, not only as texts but also as artifacts, offers a different perspective and a unique opportunity to explore multiple relationships and their transformations as well as their trajectories in geographical, imagined, and virtual spaces.

References Tibetan Sources Biography of Bodong Chogle Namgyal = Amoghasiddhi ‘Jigs med ‘bangs. Bo dong pan chen gyi rnam thar. Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990. Biography of Chokyi Dronma = dPal ‘chi med grub pa (?). Ye shes mkha’ ‘gro bsod nams ‘dren gyi sku skyes gsum pa rje btsun ma chos kyi sgron ma’i rnam thar. Incomplete manuscript (144 fols.). Bod kyi shing spar lag rtsal gyi byung rim mdor bsdus bzhugs so. By Porong Dawa on behalf of dPal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib ‘jug khang published by Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrung khang. Lhasa, 2013. Collected Works of Bo dong Phyogs las rnam rgyal = dPal de kho na nyid ‘dus pa. Edition of the collected works of Bodong Chogle Namgyal. 119 vols. New Delhi:

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Tibet House Library, 1973. Also manuscript edition produced at Yar ‘brog in 1478 and preserved in the Potala Palace. dBa’ bzhed = dBa’ bzhed. Facsimile and translation of the Tibetan text by Pasang Wangdu and Hildegard Diemberger. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, 2000. Royal Genealogy of Gungthang = Rig ‘dzin Tshe dbang nor bu. Gung thang rgyal rabs. In Bod kyi lo rgyus deb ther khag lnga. Lhasa: Bod ljongs bod yig dpe rnying dpe skrun khang, 1990. [For a German translation, see Everding 2000.] Shel dkar chos ‘byung = Pasang Wangdu and H. Diemberger. The History of the White Crystal. Facsimile edition with annotated translation of the Tibetan text. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1996.

Sources in Other Languages Barrett, T. 2008. The Woman Who Discovered Printing. New Haven: Yale University Press. Diemberger, H. 1996. ‘Political and Religious Aspects of Mountain Cults in the Hidden Valley of Khenbalung: Tradition, Decline and Revitalization.’ In Reflections of the Mountain, ed. A.M. Blondeau and E. Steinkellner, 219-232. Vienna: Verlag der OeAW. Diemberger, H. 2007. When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet. New York: Columbia University Press Diemberger, H. 2010. ‘Life Histories of Forgotten Heroes? Transgression of Boundaries and the Reconstruction of Tibet in the Post-Mao Era.’ Inner Asia 12.1: 113-125. Diemberger, H. 2016. ‘Tibetan Women as Patrons of Printing and Innovation.’ In Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change, ed. H. Diemberger, F.-K. Ehrhard, and P. Kornicki, 267-308. Leiden: Brill. Diemberger, H., and M. Clemente. 2013. ‘Royal Kinship, Patronage and the Introduction of Printing in Gung thang: From Chos kyi sgron ma to lHa btsun Rin chen rnam rgyal.’ In Nepalica-Tibetica: Festgabe for Christoph Cüppers, ed. F.-K. Ehrhard and P. Maurer, 119-142. Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. Dreyfus, G. 1994. ‘Proto-Nationalism in Tibet.’ In Tibetan Studies, ed. P. Kvaerne, 205-218. Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Research. Ehrhard, F.K. 2000. Early Buddhist Block Prints from Mang-yul Gung-thang. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute. Ehrhard, F.K. 2004 Die Statue und der Tempel des Arya Va-ti bzang po. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag. Ehrhard, F.K. 2013. ‘The Royal Print of the Maṇi bka’ ‘bum: Its Catalogue and Colophon.’ In Nepalica-Tibetica: Festgabe für Christoph Cüppers, ed. Franz-Karl

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Ehrhard and Petra Maurer, 143-171. Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. Everding, K.H. 2000. Das Königreich Mang yul Gung Thang. Bonn: Wissenschaftsverlag. Helman-Ważny, A. 2016 ‘The Choice of Materials in Early Tibetan Printed Books.’ In Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change, ed. H. Diemberger, F.-K. Ehrhard, and P. Kornicki, 532-554. Leiden: Brill. Jackson D. 1990. ‘The Earliest Printing of Tsong-kha-pa’s Works: The Old dGa’-ldan Editions. In Reflections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrel V. Wylie, ed. L. Epstein and R.F. Sherburne, 107-116. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press. Jackson, D., and Jackson, J. 2006. Tibetan Thankha Painting. Snow Lion Publications. Kapstein, Matthew T. 2000. The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism. Conversion, Contestation, and Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pasang Wangdu. 1996. ‘A Chinese Inscription from the Tang Dynasty in Northern Kyirong.’ Tibetan Studies 3: 56-63. Petech, L. 1988. ‘Ya-ts’e, Gu-ge, Pu-rang: A new study.’ In Selected Papers on Asian History, L. PetechRoma: IsMEO. Samuel, G. 1993. Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Schaeffer K. 2009. The Culture of the Book in Tibet. New York: Columbia University Press Schopen G. 2005. Figments and Fragments of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press Sernesi, M. 2011. ‘A Continuous Stream of Merit: The Early Reprints of gTsang smyon Heruka’s Hagiographical Works.’ Zentralasiatische Studien 40: 170-237 Strong, J.S. 2004. Relics of the Buddha. Princeton: Princeton University Press Trier, Jesper. 1972. Ancient Paper of Nepal. Result of Ethno-Technological Field Work on its Manufacture, Uses and History – With Technical Analyses of Bast, Paper and Manuscripts. Copenhagen: Jutland Archaeological Society Publications Tsering Dawa. 2016. ‘Continuity and New Developments in 15th Century Tibetan Book Production: Bo dong Phyogs las rnam rgyal (1376-1451) and His Disciples as Producers of Manuscript and Print Editions.’ In Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change, ed. H. Diemberger, F.-K. Ehrhard, and P. Kornicki, 237-266. Leiden: Brill Tsing, A. 1993. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tsing, A. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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About the author Hildegard Diemberger is the Research Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. Trained as a social anthropologist and Tibetologist at Vienna University, she has published numerous books and articles on the anthropology and the history of Tibet and the Himalaya as well as on the Tibetan-Mongolian interface, including the monograph When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty: The Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2007), the edited volume Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Brill, 2016), and the English translation of two important Tibetan historical texts (Austrian Academy of Science, 1996 and 2000). She has designed and coordinated a number of research projects funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, and the Austrian Science Fund. She is currently the general secretary of the International Association for Tibetan Studies.

5

Seeking China’s Back Door On English Handkerchiefs and Global Local Markets in the Early Nineteenth Century Gunnel Cederlöf Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH5 Abstract This chapter focuses on the early nineteenth century, when European mercantile commerce and British colonial military forces simultaneously began to make inroads east of the Brahmaputra River, into Assam and the Surma-Barak lowlands toward Burma and Yunnan. From early on, the purpose was to secure the overland routes to the markets of the Chinese Middle Empire. The study is explorative in its endeavor to establish the movement of mercantile commercial interests and capital into the territories that were part of the old southwest Silk Road network. It focuses on how British officers, as they explored the natural resources and markets of these territories, observed and handled the day-to-day transactions that made up the region’s social, political, and economic relations. It also discusses how the British East India Company introduced new boundaries into complex sociopolitical and ecological environments for the purpose of securing and mapping imperial visions. Keywords: British Empire, Indian colonial history, transregional South Asia, colonial trade, Burma, Northeast India

In 1836, an English off icer on a mission to explore the markets along the Irrawaddy River in Burma made notes on valuable goods. One item in particular drew his attention: an English cotton handkerchief. As he traveled north on the river, he found the economy in poor shape. Most of the towns that he passed were hit by the postwar economy and by a conflict within the royal court, which was just about to erupt into civil

126 Gunnel Cederlöf Figure 1 Overview of eastern Bengal, Burma, and part of Yunnan, including the British East India Company’s North-Eastern Frontier

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Drawn by Ian Faulkner, from Cederlöf 2014: facing page ix

war. The large war indemnity imposed after the war against the British East India Company (EIC) ten years earlier now threatened to empty the country’s coffers. Nevertheless, the larger markets and key points on the arteries of commerce still served visitors with just about any commodity they could wish for. But the officer does not seem to have expected to find handkerchiefs from home. J.G. Bayf ield of the medical establishment of Madras headed one of the first of the EIC’s expeditions in Burma. The final destination of his journey was the Patkai Pass in the far northwest, where the Hukawng Valley met upper Assam. Before returning to Rangoon, he had been ordered to determine the exact place of a boundary between Burma and the British territories. His report was largely dedicated, however, to the valuable trade along the routes from Yunnan in China to Assam and Bengal in India and it described an intricate web of connected routes, settlements, and market places. His information about events and places beyond those he passed was mainly based on hearsay and conversations along the way with fishermen, merchants, soldiers, governors, shopkeepers, and workers at mines and markets. At one point, he made a longer detour to find out the scale and value of work and production at a ruby mine; but he was soon back on his main path toward the Patkai Pass. His narrative of traveling along a main

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commercial vein across Burma makes one think of a corridor with its many connecting points, crossroads, and openings. He noticed meetings and transactions, negotiations and hierarchies. Even when his party had to cut its way through dense forest, closer to the pass – a form of travel that otherwise often resulted in reports on exotic, ‘jungly,’ and impenetrable lands, they followed well-established routes where forest recently had covered the trails of troops and merchants routed for Assam. In a larger perspective, these routes connected overland trade from the coastal ports of the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. Bayfield’s report reflected the economic instabilities of Burma, showing how Chinese merchandise overshadowed Burmese goods and Chinese merchants dominated both street life and commerce. It also made patently clear that Burmese control reached no further north than the town of Mogoung. The northern territories were largely under the control of the diverse Singpho/Jinghpaw society that stretched from uppermost Assam to Yunnan.1 What Bayfield encountered was a microcosm of commercial and imperial networks, spanning South and East Asia and the Indian Ocean. There is a rich corpus of historical research in the general field of overland longdistance trade between India and China. Earlier scholarship has made important contributions to our understanding of these millennium-old transregional connections from the perspective of the Chinese markets or their Indian counterparts. It has highlighted either medieval and early modern politics and commerce, or British colonial conquest and modern imperial trade. This study is concerned with one of the connecting points and crossroads. It focuses on the early nineteenth century, when European mercantile commerce and British colonial military force simultaneously began to make inroads into upper Assam, easternmost Bengal, and the neighboring kingdoms. British expeditions into north Burma had the added purpose of finding the overland routes to the markets of the Chinese Middle Empire. The study is explorative in its endeavor to establish the movement of mercantile commercial interests and capital into the territories that were part of the old southwest Silk Road network. It focuses on how, as British officers explored the natural resources and markets of these territories, they observed and handled the day-to-day transactions that made up social, political, and economic relations. It also discusses how the EIC introduced new boundaries into complex sociopolitical and ecological environments for the purpose of securing and mapping imperial visions. 1 National Archives of India, Survey of India, Memoirs, No. 111, Narrative of a journey from Ava.

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With its emphasis on British colonial intentions and actions, the study is a contribution to our understanding of early contacts between mercantile and British colonial forces and indigenous polities and trade. It may be noted here how the temporal and spatial divides between the pre- to early modern polities and colonial and modern forms of rule were not clear-cut. It is evident that the transformation of transregional interactions across time had few sharp edges; that one governing form did not simply replace another with the coming of British soldiers and merchants. As the European presence in the region increased, the different interests that drove mercantile commerce, colonial territorial politics, and imperial ambitions coincided and competed. The study argues that regional, colonial, and imperial politics were acted out in integrated and asymmetrical ways, in alliances and through military and fiscal policies, with one reinforcing the other. Bayfield was far from the imperial centers as he traveled along the Irrawaddy in the 1830s. At every market place along the way, he made long lists of the goods on the stalls. Burmese goods were far outnumbered and generally outclassed by Chinese imports. The Chinese streets and houses were in much better shape than the Burmese, and a great deal of wealth flowed through the arteries of commerce. Most of the merchants from Yunnan and Sichuan, however, traveled on a small budget. They stayed in the country for a few months. In northern Mogoung, some 500 to 600 Chinese and Shan merchants stayed for two to three months a year to barter needles, tinderboxes, and coarse jackets for the few necessities they needed to maintain themselves. Others traveled in parties of 50-60 men with valuable goods along a stretch of the route from Yunnan to Bengal. These merchants came from the fair at Bhamo near the Yunnan border to the Ningthee (now the Chindwin), near the foothills of Manipur. They sold velvet, woollens, gongs, and cooking pots, and returned with beeswax, elephant tusks, and cloth.2 In Bayf ield’s notes, however, English handkerchiefs and their price receive particular mention. For him, the price of handkerchiefs seems to have served as an indication of the exchange rate of the place. English piece goods were luxury items in the markets, and the price increased the further north he went. At Tagoung, adjacent to the ancient city of Pagan, English handkerchiefs cost 1¾ rupees per pair. At Bhamo, the most important market town, next only to Ava and Rangoon, they sold for two rupees per pair. Even further from the seaports, where two rivers joined the Irrawaddy and 2 Manipur State Archives, Misc. correspondence 1827, letter to C. Tucker Esquire, Commissioner, Sylhet, from I. Grant, Captain, Gumbheer Singh’s levy, Mare, Kubbo Valley, 5.2.1827.

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Bayfield was to turn northwest toward the border area – at Mogoung – the price reached three rupees per pair.3 These were old trade routes. Merchants had traded along the southwestern branch of the Silk Road network for a millennium. Bayfield was traveling at a time of major political and economic transitions across the lands from Assam and Bengal to Yunnan. Global capital and British and Chinese imperial pressures were causing social and political divisions and upheavals in inner Burma. Here, the imperial politics of tea, jadeite, and opium were disrupting the fluid social landscape among Singpho/ Jinghpaw communities, eventually, in 1843, provoking a united revolt. These transformations also saw European mercantile commerce crumble in the face of increasingly centralized state interventions. Private merchants for whom nationhood had mattered less than their own private enterprise in Asia, which was carried on within the security of a corporation, came up against European national interests and commercial priorities. However, global transitions also made their presence felt in subtle ways, as with the English handkerchiefs in the markets. When these cotton handkerchiefs appeared alongside silk gowns, rubies, quicksilver, and ivory, it was a sign of British imperial expansion that was far from smooth, linear, or unchallenged (Sadan 2013: 43, 75, 79-84).

Colonial Greed Assessing Age-Old Routes Three years prior to Bayfield’s journey, the EIC faced the beginning of the end of the corporation. Ever since it began expanding on Indian territory, from the mid-eighteenth century onward, the British Parliament and Crown had experienced a challenge from within. An early modern corporation such as the British East India Company had its mandate from the Crown and Parliament and its existence depended on the passing of Charter Acts. However, in 1765, when the Great Mughal granted revenue rights in Bengal to the EIC – the Diwani grant – the corporation acquired political immunities in Indian territories that were larger than the British Isles. A sovereign sphere of such magnitude was unprecedented, and Parliament began to restrict the Company’s operations. The most effective way was to remove the corporation’s sovereign spheres, its monopolies. In 1813, most of these monopolies were annulled when the Charter Act was 3 National Archives of India, Survey of India, Memoirs, No. 111, Narrative of a journey from Ava, Diary, 28.12.1836, 8.1.1837 19.1.1837.

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renewed, and in 1833 the last two sovereign spheres were done away with. These two were the most profitable and expansive global Asian trades of the time: the trade in tea and trade with China. We may conclude, then, that three years ahead of Bayfield’s journey, the EIC had ceased to exist except in name and in bank papers, the British Crown having taken over the working of the Company and increased its hold on affairs in Asia. In the early 1830s, India was the stronghold from which the British put pressure on the Chinese Empire and its markets (Mukherjee 2011: 134, 446-447; Cederlöf 2014: 215-216). But for the merchants who traded within the EIC, it came as a blow when the Company lost control of the sea route to China. The timing here is important. This was precisely when the first tea plants from Assam were registered and acknowledged in England and mercantile-generated trade began to give way to the global capital of the early joint-stock tea companies. It was also when the EIC sent officers like Bayfield to explore the natural resources, markets, and goods along the Irrawaddy. When heavy-handed colonial commercial and security policies were enforced in chaotic postwar upper Assam, they played a part in reversing westward migration flows in Burma and stalling economic development in Singpho/Jinghpaw society, as they were insensitive to complex social dynamics. The time when the sea routes were threatened was when the British first tried to secure the overland route to China. We should not infer a narrow causation, but we should acknowledge the correlation and the larger contexts (Guha 1977: 7; Sharma 2011: 30; Sadan 2013: 33-34, 73-77). The overland routes are of old date and can be traced in various ways. One is to identify commercial networks via the means of payment, the coinage. The common currency used for smaller transactions was cowrie shells. They dominated from as early as the Chinese Tang period in the seventh century and were used from southwest and northwest China, across South and Southeast Asia, to the Indian Ocean. Not until the eighteenth century did they begin to disappear from commercial use, and East Bengal was one of the regions where they persisted the longest. Cowries had been used on the maritime Silk Road since the Tang dynasty, and they were employed in Yunnan from the ninth century onward. It might be thought that they entered Yunnan from the commercial centers of the Chinese Empire. However, the historian Bin Yang concludes that the source of cowrie shells in Yunnan was most likely Bengal. And the route by which they entered into circulation was via the southwest Silk Road. Little wonder, then, that there was such great interest among merchants in trading along the Brahmaputra and the Surma-Barak in East Bengal, and in the markets

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along the Irrawaddy. These were age-old highways for globally valued goods (Yang 2012: 131-135; Deyell 1990; Cederlöf 2009: 518). The historian David Ludden has brought the analysis of global networks into the perspective of regional historical change, especially in East Bengal and the Sylhet region on the Surma River. Taking in a wide range of factors, he identifies how mobility and territoriality interacted: ecological, religious, demographic, economic, and political. In his analysis, the natural environment of Sylhet defines more than general preconditions for human activity. His view is not deterministic, but he allows for dramatic natural events to have a significant impact on our understanding of social and economic life across centuries. He shows, for example, how severe floods in the late eighteenth century influenced migration patterns, land control, and violent conflict. Until the early nineteenth century, there were no large markets or significant European investments in the Surma basin. Yet markets thrived through innumerable small transactions in specialized trades. As early as 1790, the Sylhet district had more than 600 place names indicating a market – a hat, ganj, or bazaar. Goods were traded from Burma to Dhaka, and from Tibet and Bhutan via Rangpur to the port cities in the delta. Large numbers of products were sold at markets in the small polities of the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo Hills. These goods, along with those from the kingdoms of Tripura, Cachar, and Manipur, were sold on to markets in the lowlands (Ludden 2003b: 5082-5083). These were the markets that drew the European merchants deep into East Bengal, along the Surma and Barak rivers. In 1762, when Harry Verelst, the chief officer of the EIC at Chittagong, formed an alliance with the raja of Manipur, two factors convinced him of the benefits of the agreement. Manipur was primarily a strong ally against Burma, which had begun to expand its realms. In addition, though, the Manipur raja, Jai Singh, convinced Verelst of the advantages of the alliance by pointing out the commercial rewards. Manipur was located in the mountain range separating the lowlands of Burma from those of Cachar and Bengal. One of the most important routes between India and China went via this kingdom. Jai Singh explained that Chinese merchants arrived at Manipur’s eastern borders with valuable goods from China. As a result, in the agreement of 1762, the EIC secured a factory and free trade in Manipur, with the aim of gaining a stronghold on this trade route (Anonymous 1862: 121). However, the agreement came to naught when Burmese troops invaded Manipur the following year without British troops coming to Manipur’s aid. The kingdom remained under Burmese occupation until 1782, and when

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Burma was finally defeated by the EIC in 1826, Manipur had been invaded by Burmese troops five times. Needless to say, the branch of the southwest Silk Road that passed through the bottleneck of Manipur was severely affected (Cederlöf 2014: 62; Sinha 1987: 213, 223n3). In Bengal, east of the Brahmaputra River, territorial expansion was limited until late in the eighteenth century. The British, just like the Mughals before them, had great difficulty mastering the ecological and climatic conditions. It was hard and costly to move an army across wetlands and flooding rivers, and the EIC high command left further expansion to the company’s merchants. From the 1790s onward, the situation changed when the territories were brought under general land revenue. This was an attempt to gain a more systematic grip on East Bengal. The Diwani grant was conditional on land revenues being collected and justice administered according to Mughal law. The solution was a revenue settlement, which three years later was made part of the larger Permanent Settlement of Bengal (1793). As it turned out, it was a bureaucratic setup that was out of sync with the climate and socioeconomic organization of the region. Whereas European merchant capital and investment remained profitable, the revenue administration was largely unsuccessful (Cederlöf 2014: chapter 5). To better understand such an uneven advance of the corporation and its merchants into a region over which they could claim authority by virtue of the Mughal grant, we may refer to a report by Francis Hamilton Buchanan. He was an experienced surveyor who was ordered to survey Bengal in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Buchanan concluded that East Bengal was ‘naturally the most convenient for trade within itself of any country in the world; for its rivers divide into just a number of branches that the people have the convenience of water carriage to and from every principal [place].’ The monsoon and the swelling rivers were good for business. They were commercial highways. However, the same water was disastrous for the administration of land revenue. Erosion, siltation, and seasonal lakes did not go well with the fixed revenue classes that were introduced. When the five months of the annual monsoon had passed, during which time the lands were inundated, land that had been classified as ‘cultivated’ could have turned into a lake or ‘waste’ could have been brought under cultivation. But since the settlement was now permanent it was no longer possible to reclassify the land. Moreover, as we shall see, ecology and topography collided with colonial control (Ludden 2003a: 10n564; Cederlöf 2009: 516-517). 4 Ludden cites ‘An Unpublished Letter of Mr. Rennell,’ Bengal Past and Present (September 1933), quoted in Chaudhuri (92: 36).

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Until crushed by EIC troops in what became known as the first AngloBurmese war, Burmese aggression was seen as a real threat to Bengal. Most of all, though, Burma blocked the China overland trade for the EIC. In 1817, with Burmese troops advancing into Assam, Felix Carey in service of the raja of Cachar, west of Manipur, wrote: Since the Burmese have become a formidable nation, the principal part of the trade in Ivory, Wax, Lac, Silk, Cotton, Cutch, Mules, Horses, Copper, Tin, Lead, Zinc, Silver, Gold, Sapphire, and Rubies have been completely drained by that country and exported through that channel to Bengal and other parts of India whereas were a free trade opened through Kachar, in the course of a few years, the greatest part of it, if not the whole of this immense traffic rate, would be imported immediately into Bengal, certainly then it must follow that these important articles of commerce, might be procured at a much cheaper rate than what we now get them from the Burmans who dispose of these articles to our merchants from their different sea ports, at a very enormous profit. During the Muhamedan Government trade appears to have been carried on through these ports.5

The outcome of the war came as a shock to the Burmese monarchy. Decades of successful expansion by which Burmese troops had conquered territories toward Ayutthaya to the south, Yunnan to the east, and Assam and Manipur to the west were suddenly disrupted, and the Burmese economy was crushed. And within a few years of the Treaty of Yandabo being signed between Burma and the EIC in 1826, British surveyors and explorers were sent into Burma. Before the war, the EIC armies had been engaged elsewhere on the Indian subcontinent, leaving the British northeastern frontiers in Asia to merchants and administrators with limited armed support. The war years changed the scene, as larger numbers of soldiers were brought into East Bengal, Assam, and Cachar. It was an empire that was seeking to close the gap between India and China. Inner borders were secured and officers were sent on missions to map the natural resources of Burma.

Making and Unmaking Boundaries As has often been stated: a map is not a depiction of reality, but an image of what someone wants to say about reality. It is the result of selection. 5

National Archives of India, FPP, 14.5.1832, No. 81, in Bhattacharjee (2000: 34-35).

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Based on ‘Map of the Eastern Frontier of British India with the Adjacent Countries Extending to Yunan in China by capt. R. Boileau Pemberton, 1838’. Original in watercolour kept in the National Archives of India, lithograph copy in the British Library. Drawn by Ian Faulkner, from Cederlöf 2014: facing page i

After close to two decades of surveys of the eastern parts of the old Diwani territories and mapping routes external to these lands, a cartographic masterpiece was produced in 1838. Within it we can find the many small maps produced in each individual survey of a limited area. These surveys had by no means covered the entire area of the 1838 map. But with the many maps placed side by side, and the gaps between them colored in, the cartographic image appeared all-inclusive, extending from Calcutta to Sichuan and Tibet to Laos. The central part of this image was Burma. The map is impressive in its detail. Rivers meander and survey routes stretch across the sheet like ants’ trails made up of place names. Bottlenecks on the trade routes, as in Manipur in the mountains, are densely covered by place-name trails. In this way, to borrow from Willem van Schendel, it shows a geography of flows – but of course only the flows that were

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known to the British and those in which they took a particular interest (Van Schendel 2002: 662-664). Scale and detail vary in the image. Most of the routes had been mapped with the exactness of sextant observations, but the topographic details of the hill ranges were at best estimates and mostly a mere illustration of mountains. In 1838, the map expressed ambition and anticipation. Many copies of it were made. The one that is kept in the National Archives of India was done in watercolor. It was produced in one piece, but cut in two because of its large size. The copies kept in the British Library and the Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, have been made to fit into the pages of an atlas. As a cartographic image, the map was an imperial vision. It encompassed the territories that were intended to become part of the empire and were within its reach. It was a grand view, titled ‘Map of the Eastern Frontier of British India, with the Adjacent Countries Extending to Yunnan in China.’6 Being an idea of imperial geographies, it was inclusive. For the sake of security and trade, the borders that were drawn between political formations – kingdoms or other polities – were intended to harden if need be. Resident officers were placed next to rulers, to influence decisions. Administrative practices such as systems and forms for collecting taxes and fees were to have far reaching influences, which as a consequence could reshape a polity. But there was no immediate intention of meddling with state formations as such. This was an asymmetrical political space where many different political forms and polities operated. It resembles the multiple political centers and histories in Sara Shneiderman’s work on the Himalayan massif (Shneiderman 2010; also discussed in the introduction to this volume). The 1838 map encompassed a great variety of polities, and borders that were drawn on maps as this one must not be assumed to reflect hard realities. Some of these boundaries are exact and can be traced to survey reports, whereas others are indications of places where a border ought to be. By looking in detail at how maps were drawn and boundaries laid out on them, we can see the empire claiming territory and fixing the conquered terrain. 6 National Archives of India, Survey of India, Historical Maps, ‘Map of the Eastern Frontier of British India with the Adjacent Countries Extending to Yunnan in China.’ Sterling Memorial Library, Map Department, Yale University, ‘Map of the Eastern Frontier of British India with the Adjacent Countries extending to Yunnan in China. By Robert Boileau Pemberton, 44th Regt. N.I. British Library, Charts and Maps, Eastern Frontier of British India, by Capt. Pemberton, and India Office Records and Private Papers, Oct. 1838-Oct. 1839, Payments made to Jean-Baptiste Tassin for preparing 100 copies of Captain Robert Boileau Pemberton’s ‘Map of the Eastern Frontier of British India’ as well as 50 copies of his own ‘Map of Afghanistan and the North Western Frontier’.

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In 1821, the Survey of India ordered Captain Thomas Fisher to survey the areas between the British Sylhet district and the kingdom of Tripura. This landscape is made up of a number of hill ranges running from south to north, like fingers pointing north, from the Tripura plateau to the lowlands of the Sylhet district. The survey was to result in a geographically defined border between the two territories, presented in the form of a contract and a boundary line on a map. However, notions of such borders were vague in this region. Territorial affinity and identification differed between polities and communities, and territoriality was constantly renegotiated. When EIC troops entered into the equation and claimed control of places that were of strategic importance, constant clashes followed. People who lived and worked on the fringes of such claims often ended up as the collateral damage of skirmishes and raids. While the Company sent soldiers into the lower hills to fight for customs points, the raja of Tripura invoked old agreements and drew attention to offences against his kingdom going back to when the Mughal governor infringed on its lands.7 Fisher had been ordered to identify a border with reference to ‘natural markers’ in the landscape. These could consist of a river or a hill range; they should be unchallenged and easy to defend. The border was expected to be ‘out there’ in nature, as an empirical fact to be found. But what Fisher considered ‘natural’ hardly coincided with notions of the natural among the people in the area surveyed. The survey’s most important result was a map. It is detailed and shows two lines. One of them indicates the route Fisher and his party followed and the other the boundary line, clearly colored in red ink in the document which he drew up. He began his journey in Sylhet and followed the Surma River eastward to the point where the Barak River bifurcates into the Surma and Kushiara. Here he turned southwest and continued downstream until he reached the westernmost valley of the hill ranges. From this point he began to walk into the valley toward the southern hills. And when he could go no further, he returned to the Kushiara and continued to zigzag into valley after valley until he got back to the Surma. Fisher never went into the densely forested parts of the valleys and never climbed a hill: ‘The hills as usual in India are covered with super abundant vegetation’ (Cederlöf 2014: 56-57). The claims of the raja of Tripura and the EIC collided dramatically. Both of them referred to law in support of their claims. Tripura wanted access to 7 National Archives of India, Survey of India, Memoirs, Sylhet Frontier Survey, Thomas Fisher, 1821-25, 1. Memoir, south Sylhet and disputed areas between Sylhet and Tipperah, 1821-22.

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the Kushiara and its vital markets. The route by which they were reached followed the watercourses flowing from the hills. To align his claim with the idea of an outer border that encircled the kingdom, he therefore claimed the entire territory south of the Kushiara. He also argued that the land had been unlawfully taken by the Mughal ruler, a crime that should now be rectified. The EIC wanted to control all the cultivated land in the valleys and therefore pushed the boundary as far south as possible. They argued that these lands were within their contract as part of the Mughal Diwani grant. Squeezed between the two were people who cut across such territorial claims, like the cotton growers who moved seasonally between the plains and the foothills, and the salt miners whose access to the sources of salt was now lost. However, for a cartographer, nature did not volunteer the distinct boundary markers that were required. Fisher complained: ‘[Tripura] unfortunately does not afford any continued natural boundary […] all the principal rivers and chains of hills running in a direction perpendicular to the line of frontier’ (Cederlöf 2014: 57-58).8 Yet his map does show a boundary line. As can be seen from the map, the two lines meet in only two places. With these two exceptions, Fisher and his party never set foot in the actual location of the boundary. The boundary is a fiction. Fisher explained how he solved the problem of unbending nature. He searched for watercourses. Once he reached the point where he could go no further, he aimed at random up the hillside to find a stream running into the valley. Then he found a stream coming down the other side of the valley and connected the two with a line on the map. And when he reached the top of the next valley, he searched for a watercourse which could be connected on the map by a boundary line following the top of the hill range to the stream in the first valley. Watercourses counted as natural markers and, according to Fisher, they were the ‘most suitable for forming a nearly complete natural line of frontier.’ This explains the jagged shape of the boundary. Fisher was convinced that the whole mission was futile. He doubted that this boundary would ever be respected or that there would be peace in the region until it was controlled by either Tripura or the EIC.9 The year before Fisher set off to survey the Tripura border area, the magistrate of Sylhet, J. Ewing, was ordered to survey the eastern limits of EIC territories in the lands bordering on the kingdom of Cachar. The matter was of urgency to the EIC. Burma had invaded Manipur and controlled the royal 8 National Archives of India, Survey of India, Memoirs, Sylhet Frontier Survey, Thomas Fisher, 1821-25, 1. Memoir, south Sylhet and disputed areas between Sylhet and Tipperah, 1821-22, App. 1. 9 Ibid.

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court. Four princes of the expelled royal family were competing with each other for lands west of Manipur, in Cachar, while the raja of Cachar had taken refuge in British territory. The Company’s assessment was that a distinct boundary between British territories and Cachar, one that could easily be fortified, would secure the Company’s possessions (Cederlöf 2014: 62-63).10 Ewing too was ordered to find a distinct natural marker and he chose the most strategic location on the large Barak River as his point of departure, the fortified hillock at Badarpur. The boundary was to continue from Badarpur south along the Daleshwari River, upstream into the valley. It was a broad, flat, and densely forested valley, and the river was a principal route for trade. However, Ewing needed to find clear evidence of a Mughal presence on the western side of the river, so that the land could be claimed as part of the Diwani grant. He was immediately opposed by people living in the valley and by the several rajas who claimed authority over Cachar. They argued that the river was not the outer limit of Cachar, but in fact the very center of the southern part of the kingdom. The correct boundary should be drawn in the hills west of the valley. But for Ewing, military strategic considerations were more important than the socioeconomic life of south Cachar. And he pressed ahead in search of evidence to prove his point. He carefully noted the details of cultivation and land control as he made his way south, recording a mix of Cachari and EIC revenue settlement holdings. However, when he finally found a Mughal sanad, a land grant from 1732, this was enough for him to claim the territories west of the Daleshwari for the Company. The fact that the family who had held the grant had left the land as a result of poverty as early as the 1770s and that the forest had reclaimed it all was treated as irrelevant. The sanad was a legally valid document and Ewing immediately placed flags along the western bank of the river to confirm British authority.11 The borders that resulted from the Tripura and Cachar surveys reflect a situation in which the EIC was simultaneously trying to meet immediate and long-term needs. Both borders were put in place to solve an imminent crisis. Both emerged as equally temporary in nature, perhaps even accidental. Within four years of the border between the Sylhet district and Cachar being determined, Cachar became the seat of war and, a few years later, it 10 West Bengal State Archives, Board of Judicial Criminal Proceedings, 10.2.1821, No. 7, to W.B. Bayley, Chief Secretary to Government, Fort William, from J. Ewing, Magistrate, 18.12.1820. 11 West Bengal State Archives, Board of Judicial Criminal Proceedings, 10.2.1821, No. 7, to W.B. Bayley, Chief Secretary to Government, Fort William, from J. Ewing, Magistrate, 18.12.1820, paras. 9-12.

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was annexed to the British territories. The boundary line now separated districts within the EIC polity. Once the war was over, the border was no longer important. It never separated Cacharis from other communities, as if they were different nations or ethnic groups. Empires are rarely disturbed by difference. Soon it was found to be altogether impractical. The British Empire, like any other, swallowed up diversity. The border between the Sylhet district and Tripura met with another fate, one that reinforced the border rather than weakened it. Seventeen years had passed since Fisher’s survey of the border region of Tripura, without much attention having been given to the dispute over it, when Pemberton drafted his grand map of the Eastern Frontier. However, looking carefully at one of the drafts we can see a boundary line – Fisher’s boundary – that has been sketched onto the map. This was the boundary that had been drawn with no knowledge of the terrain, right across the lands and livelihoods of communities and the many trades. Nobody agreed to it at the time it was determined, and Fisher did not even believe it would survive the submission of his own report. But in this draft, the boundary has become a fact, and it was transferred to the final imperial map of 1838. In this way, it left a mark in a larger imperial imagination. The claim had turned into reality and, via the map, it remained the boundary between Tripura and the EIC Sylhet district.12

An Empire Closing In The European-authored reports from the travel routes and market places between Bengal and Yunnan reflected a large and interconnected region. The officers reported on diverse societies and on people who were constantly on the move. The authors specifically had eyes for the craftsmen, the workers, the miners, the salesmen, the moneylenders, the merchants, the royal representatives, and the many trades that served commerce at each individual place. They had a selective view which forms a bias in their reports. However, each of the men involved in a particular trade represented the social and communal life of which they were part. We may see also this in their texts. As Hildegard Diemberger discusses in detail in this volume, the network of a particular trade – books, in Diemberger’s study – tied a great variety of people and places together who were part of the production 12 Sterling Memorial Library Map department, Yale University, Manuscript map of Burma, by surveyors of the British Army, c. 1830.

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of books, from the source of paper and ink to the knowledge that went into the script. The European officers in our case also kept a note of communities and societies on the fringes of the trade routes, and especially of members of the many Singpho/Jinghpaw kinship groups who were seen as powerful and as potential allies. In the 1830s, however, the surveyors focused on commercial trade. Places were interconnected and mobility was high. As in a spider’s web, with its many points at which radial and spiral threads cross, individual places and peoples were connected in larger networks. There was not one, but many interconnected and overlapping webs. Some had a shorter range, while still involving a large number of crafts, like the links between sites of production and the ghats where goods were reloaded onto larger boats and shipped downstream toward the coastal ports. Others were global, like the old Armenian merchant network, tying London to Canton via India and the center at New Julfa in Isfahan. Flows of people, goods, and skills were occasionally interrupted, diverted or, as in Manipur and at the Patkai Pass, blocked by violent conflict, occupation, and war. In the 1830s, the Company tried to tailor these pathways in their own favor by treaties and contracts. Borders were made and unmade; they hardened, softened, and shifted (Cederlöf 2014: 86, 165-168; Aslanian 2011: 1-2, 48-52. See also Chatterjee 2013; Yang 2004). In that decade, when the officers of the EIC were reassessing the Company’s relative strength and planning its further advance, they anticipated an empire with a complete hold on the Asian trade. To achieve this, they aimed to control the switches and governing points in the commercial networks: the market places, the customs posts, and the elevated places for fortifications. Officers went in search of suitable hill paths, heights, and fording and landing places in the riverine system. Just as a spider controls its web, not by patrolling its outermost thread, but by controlling the points where the spiral threads cross the radials, the EIC aimed to command strategic points in the communication networks. The British Empire in Asia was never a single force. Colonial expansion on the EIC’s Northeastern Frontier grew out of innumerable competing interests and depended on equally uncountable daily transactions. Certainly, merchants in the mercantile corporations operating in Asia aggressively sought to fill their own coffers, with little concern for the human suffering they caused. But they were not of a single ‘colonial’ mind. They often allied themselves with local producers and governors for mutual benefit. They bent the law in their own favor, but were also badly cheated and put out of business. As a consequence, we need to rethink binary assumptions of agency and response. Regional polities, it is true, were heavily affected by

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external forces far beyond their control. Mandy Sadan’s study of Singpho/ Jinghpaw society shows in great detail how it was under pressure on all sides from Chinese, Burmese, and British colonial aggression (Sadan 2013). But the actions of these polities were no mere response to exogenous agency. Prior to European encroachment and throughout the conflicts of the early nineteenth century, there were cross-boundary alliances and regional tensions. Regional competition and conflicts found new arenas. This perspective does not reduce the asymmetries between global capital and regional economies or between the colonizer and the colonized. It is intended, rather, to help us better understand the complex workings of such unequal relations in the formation of the British Empire in Asia. When Bayfield visited the markets of Burma in 1836 and observed English cotton handkerchiefs, he saw the signs of larger change that had also begun to have an effect on Burma. Cotton handkerchiefs may seem like innocent luxuries in a world of rubies and jade. But, more than most other items in the markets, they were an indication of global transformations. In the late eighteenth century, colonial politics in India ‘poleaxed’ the textile centers, the weavers’ economies, and the production of cloth. By monopolistic means, market competition was replaced by a system in which Indian weavers were obliged to produce only for the British EIC. Simultaneously, they were squeezed out of the market by coercive economic methods. The age-old production of high-quality silk and cotton cloth, for which the European merchants had competed, was being replaced by exports of yarn, feeding the English textile industry. And by the time Bayfield traveled up the Irrawaddy, in the 1830s, the highly priced English cotton handkerchiefs had already reached the inland markets of Burma (Prakash 2002: 139, 148152; Parathasarathi 2002: 203, 214-215; Bayly 2004: 58). Yet linking Bengal to Yunnan was far more difficult than first anticipated. Felix Carey dreamed in 1817 of diverting the Chinese trade away from the Burmese rulers and into Cachar and Bengal. But even after the war, trade continued along the old routes, as Bayfield carefully observed. When war broke out again between British and Burmese forces in the 1850s, it effectively closed the trade routes to Yunnan and Sichuan. In 1868, long after the war, British officers still argued the benefits of an overland route to China. A. Bowers repeated old arguments in his report from an expedition to investigate the prospects of reopening the route from Bhamo to Yunnan: When it is considered that of the 30 millions of people of the Yunan and Szechuen provinces, who have to send their goods some 1,200 to 1,500 miles before they reach any of our ports on the east, and that here in

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Bhamo the distance between the Irrawadi and the Yang tsee kiang is only 480 miles, and the actual distance between the Provincial Capital of Yunan and Bhamo, is only 230 miles, the advantages of having the route opened, must be apparent to everyone. (Bowers 1869: 8)

References Archives Manipur State Archives, Imphal, India. National Archives of India, New Delhi, India. Sterling Memorial Library, New Haven, CT, USA. West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata, India.

Works Anonymous. 1862. A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnuds, Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, Vol. 1: Containing the Treaties, &c., Relating to Bengal, Burmah, and the Eastern Archipelago. Calcutta: Savielle and Cranenburgh. Aslanian, Sebouh David. 2011. From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bhattacharjee, J. B. 2000. Trade and Colony: The British Colonisation of North East India. Shillong: North East India History Association. Bayly, C.A. 2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden: Blackwell Publications. Bowers, A. 1869. Bhamo Expedition: Report on the Practicability of Re-Opening the Trade Route, between Burma and Western China. Rangoon: American Mission Press. Cederlöf, Gunnel. 2009. ‘Fixed Boundaries, Fluid Landscapes: British Expansion into Northern East Bengal in the 1820s.’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 46.4: 513-540. Cederlöf, Gunnel. 2014. Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840: Climate, Commerce, Polity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chatterjee, Indrani. 2013. Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of Northeast India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Deyell, John. 1990. Living without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Guha, Amalendu. 1977. Planter-Raj to Swaraj: Freedom Struggle and Electoral Politics in Assam, 1826-1947. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research, People’s Pub. House. Ludden, David. 2003a. ‘The First Boundary of Bangladesh on Sylhet’s Northern Frontiers.’ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 48.1: 1-54. Ludden, David. 2003b. ‘Investing in Nature around Sylhet: An Excursion into Geographical History.’ Economic and Political Weekly 38.48: 5080-5088. Mukherjee, Rila. 2011. Pelagic Passageways: The Northern Bay of Bengal before Colonialism. New Delhi: Primus Books. Parathasarathi, Prasannan. 2002. ‘Merchants and the Rise of Colonialism.’ In The Eighteenth Century in India, ed. Seema Alavi, 199-224. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Prakash, Om. 2002. ‘Trade and Politics in Eighteenth-century Bengal.’ In The Eighteenth Century in India, ed. Seema Alavi, 136-164. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sadan, Mandy. 2013. Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Jayeeta. 2011. Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India. Durham: Duke University Press. Shneiderman, Sara. 2010. ‘Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia? Some Scholarly and Political Considerations across Time and Space.’ Journal of Global History 5: 289-312. Sinha, Surjit. 1987. Tribal Politics and State Systems in Pre-colonial Eastern and North-eastern India. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20.6: 647-688. Yang, Bin. 2004. ‘Horses, Silver, and Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective.’ Journal of World History 15.3: 281-322. Yang, Bin. 2012. ‘The Bengal Connections in Yunnan.’ China Report 48.1/2: 125-145.

About the author Gunnel Cederlöf is a Professor of History at the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Linnaeus University, Sweden. She is also a Visiting Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University in India. Her research interests span two intersecting fields: environmental and legal history in early modern India and in the British Empire. Over the years, her research has specifically focused on the transformation of agrarian bondage in modern

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south India and social mobilization among landless ‘dalit’ laborers, the formation of land law in conflicts over territory under early colonial rule, and the clash between nature, commerce, and sovereign rights during colonial conquest of Bengal and NE India. Among her publications are Founding and Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790-1840 (2014), Landscapes and the Law (2008), Ecological Nationalisms (2006), and Bonds Lost: Subordination, Conflict and Mobilisation in Rural South India c. 1900-1970 (1997).

II Livelihood Reconstructions, Flows, and TransHimalayan Modernities

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Contested Modernities Place, Subjectivity, and Himalayan Dam Infrastructures Georgina Drew Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH6 Abstract The Himalaya are a final frontier for much of the world’s dam infrastructure. When set within seemingly remote border areas, these projects intersect with sociocultural landscapes in ways that reveal nuance in how the development agenda is accepted, adapted, resisted, or rejected. Focusing on a contested dam built along the Ganges – a river sacred to Hindus – in the Indian Himalaya, this chapter explores a diversity of responses to hydroelectric development alongside the mixed evaluations that interlocutors expressed about the projects of modernization and modernity. Analyzing these complexities, the chapter considers if the selective concession to dams in the Himalaya enable a better appreciation of the contested modernities that may be evident in the mountains that serve as Asia’s ‘water tower.’ Keywords: Ganges/Ganga River, Tehri Dam, Hinduism, Himalaya, subjectivity, modernity

The proliferation of hydroelectric projects across the Himalaya leads to the transformation of a wide range of mountain landscapes. While the displacement concerns and environmental impacts involved in the creation of these projects are often recognized (Dharmadhikary 2008), the developmental gains they offer to governments frequently take priority. Amid the environment-versus-development debates that emerge in public and governmental realms, seemingly marginal arguments about the effect such projects have on personal, cultural, and religious terrains have a tendency to be overlooked. In this chapter, I argue that attention to these latter terrains

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reveal the subjective implications of dam building. I also argue that when such projects are implemented in seemingly ‘remote’ (Hussain 2015; Tsing 2005) sections of the Himalaya, attention to these subjectivities reveals competing desires for and against the wider project of modernity. The case study that orients this discussion revolves around a suite of subjective domains ignited by a hydroelectric project known as the Tehri Dam in the Garhwal Himalaya of India’s Uttarakhand State. Tehri was a mammoth dam that took decades to construct. It resulted in a final product that, depending on the eyes of the beholder, is viewed as an engineering triumph, an environmental monstrosity, or an affront to regionally important lifeways. In my examination of the dam’s implementation, I first focus on the controversies that arose as it was being developed. This is followed by an examination of how people adapt in the aftermath of the dam’s completion. The data from which this discussion draws combines engagement with published literature and the insights obtained while doing ethnographic research in the Garhwal Himalaya. The bulk of fieldwork, constituting roughly fifteen months of time spent in the region, was conducted in 20082009. Preliminary and follow up visits additionally inform a good portion of the observations that are featured in this text. The arguments presented are also influenced by a suite of established conversations in Himalayan studies, along with points of inquiry developed and fostered through investigations of the Trans-Himalayas that are featured throughout the edited volume in which this text is situated. Of particular relevance are debates over the role and scope of modernity for understanding how, and why, the changes taking place in diverse mountain regions can be usefully seen through the lens of trans-Himalayan investigations. The theme of modernity is evident across the contributions of this edited volume, and they emerge as especially prominent in the work of Cheng, Diemberger, Galipeau, Michaud, Turner, Li Yunxia, and others.

Thinking with Trans-Himalayan Modernities Modernity is significant to the particularities of the discussion that follows because dam building is often presented as a practice that epitomizes some of modernity’s foundational mentalities (Murphy 2011; Kaika 2005). Following the logic of select scholars (Esteva 1992; Sachs 1992; Escobar 1995), modernity has links to European Enlightenment thinking that positions humankind’s progressive material and intellectual advancement in a forward trajectory that leaves behind an inferior past. In this approach

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to modernity, the values of individuality, rationality, and the domination of nature were and are emphasized. With this drive to harness nature’s erstwhile ‘wildness’ through human ingenuity (and for human benefit), hydroelectric projects have served as highly potent symbols of modernity’s reach – and this is especially true for countries like India (Gadgil and Guha 1992). Across the globe, efforts to realize the goal of managing and manipulating nature were eventually given labels such as ‘development.’ Once this word took root, and its manifestations were felt in Europe and North America, it facilitated a mandate to bring development to the ‘underdeveloped’ (Escobar 1995). What is more, the birth of such powerful discourses produced subjects in need of the type of development exemplified by industrialized countries. It is for such reasons that modernity is often brought into discussions of development, which is sometimes called modernization. These seemingly similar words – modernity and modernization – are related yet distinct. Whereas modernity is ‘a programmatic vision for social change and progress’ that is linked to industrialization and capitalism, modernization can be understood as an ongoing process that occurs ‘only after industrialization and the expansion of the capitalist world market’ (Kaika 2005: 4). In what follows, I refer to modernity when modernist ‘visions for social change and progress’ come into play (4). The interlocutors from whom I draw are more likely to speak of modernization, which refers to the manifestation of such visions. Scholars have offered rebuttals, challenges, and modifications in response to the critique of development as a project of modernity. Some, for instance, question the perception that the West has a monopoly on individuality, rationality, and the dominance of nature. Gidwani (2002) is among those that criticize what he considers the Orientalist logic of poststructuralist scholarship by arguing that, despite their attacks on Eurocentrism and modernization theory, such scholars remain trapped within the ‘straightjacket’ of Eurocentric, modernist thinking (12). In so saying, he points to archival evidence to demonstrate that ‘modern’ rationalizing processes within economy and society have arisen at different times, over different scales, and in different cultural forms in various regions of the world autonomously of European influence (12). Others complicate the monolithic portrayal of modernist thinking by asserting that India provides examples of ‘regional modernities’ because diverse ethnic, religious, social, and geopolitical variations interact with development projects across distinct topographical regions (Sivaramakrishnan and Agarwal 2003). Similarly, Arce and Long (2000) call for modernity to be understood as a ‘heterogeneous dynamism’

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(3). This notion flags how the ideas and actions associated with modernity can be appropriated and reembedded in situated practices. The resulting fragmentation and dispersal of modernity, they argue, enables ‘constantly proliferating modernities’ (1) that merit close examination. These assertions set a persuasive basis in which we can argue for recognition of a trans-Himalayan modernity (or modernities). Quite simply, a transHimalayan approach to modernity considers how the logics, discourses, and practices associated with modernity are adopted and modified across diverse regions of the Himalaya. In this trans-Himalayan zone, modernity is likely to be questioned and tested via everyday practice, as well as through wider spheres of social and political contestations. It is within this context of contested trans-Himalayan modernities that I now present the struggle over dams in the Garhwal Himalaya.1 As I discuss when examining the case of the Tehri Dam, the controversy was made complex by a suite of environmental, cultural, and religious concerns for damming the Ganga (Ganges) River on the one hand, and by the desires for development that some people expressed on the other. My approach focuses on the ways in which residents – compelled by diverse subjectivities and differing enactments of agency – navigate development projects, the project of development and modernization, and contested ideologies of modernity. Scholars such as Campbell (2011) argue that a focus on subjectivities, as opposed to culture, ‘offers better possibilities for observing agency, knowledge, social interaction (including domination and resistance), experience[s] of change, and the deliberate negotiation of relationships that have environmental effects (188). While I do not discuss the relevance of Zomia thinking that Van Schendel (2002), Scott (2009), Shneiderman (2010), Michaud (this volume), and Smyer Yü (this volume) examine, readers might consider the ways in which the arguments I make link back to the notions (and terrains) of protected alterity that is often invoked with the term Zomia.

1 Garhwal was once a ‘princely state’ run out of the township of Tehri and governed by a series of Shah kings from the early 1800s until roughly two years after the date of Indian independence. Although the British did not have an overt presence in Tehri Garhwal during their reign of India, they briefly acquired administrative rule over the region, a feat that resulted in increased resource extraction from the hills for use in the development of colonial infrastructure (Agrawal 2004).

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Conflicting Development Logics and Resource Perspectives Hydroelectric development, as an engineering feat and a symbol of progress, is tightly wound up in fervent debates about Indian approaches to development and modernization. India’s development trajectory is well documented, with ample discussion of the rationales behind the paths taken (Baviskar 1995; Harriss 1998). Early on after independence in 1947, the leadership decided that they could most expediently overcome the years of subjugation under British rule by becoming a world power (Nayar 2001). It was for this reason that, in the aftermath of World War II, industrialization was on the mind of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his staff. Such leaders argued that it was necessary to emulate the West intellectually through the infusion of modern science as well as through the material practices of development (Gadgil and Guha 1992: 183). And so, beginning first with a socialist pattern of economic development, the government emphasized building economic self-sufficiency through state investment in social services, infrastructure, industry, and commerce. Influenced by the perception that industrialization would lift all proverbial boats, including those of India’s poor, Nehru encouraged the construction of dams across the country and famously equated them with modern temples. Over time, the signs of growing wealth in urban India influenced the desires of India’s rural inhabitants, including residents of the Himalaya. For such people, the hope is that the secondary or tertiary benefits of development and industrialization will make them ‘developed.’2 It is in this context that the Tehri Dam controversies must be situated. While the debate over the Tehri Dam earned substantial media coverage in India, it has not received as much attention from international scholars as have dam-related controversies such as the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River in western India. Even when the opposition to the Tehri Dam attracted scholarly attention, concerns over population displacement and environmental impact were often the focus (Jayal 1998; Singh 1992). Less commented upon were the cultural and religious concerns related to the dam’s implementation. For this reason, I discuss how and why devotees worried that the project would alter connections with the sacred waters on which the dam was to be situated: the Bhagirathi tributary of the Ganga, a river revered by millions of Hindus.

2 Nanda Shrestha (1995) discusses the significance this term has on development in Nepal (which is translated as bikasi in Nepali or vikasi in Hindi).

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The Ganga, honored as a living Goddess with purifying and healing powers, has inspired millions over the millennia to sing its praises and worship at its banks (Darian 1978). In one account from the Hindu classic The Ramayana by Valmiki (Sattar 1996), the origin of the Goddess Ganga is associated with her concession to descend from the heavens in liquid form to purify the ashes of King Sagara’s 60,000 sons who perished at the hands of a powerful sage. After practicing great austerities and deep meditation, Bhagiratha, a descendant of King Sagara, convinced the Ganga to come down to earth and carve out a path leading across the country. Eventually, the Ganga’s flow through India took with it the ashes of Bhagiratha’s ancestors. Recognizing the river as a bridge to heaven, Hindus offer the ashes of their deceased to the Ganga in the belief that she (the Goddess) will take their souls to a celestial resting place. The Ganga also plays a vital role in Hindu ceremonies marking everyday ritual as well as lifecycle events. Perceptions of the Ganga’s cultural and religious significance are important to engage in development debates. Many anthropologists are involved in efforts to understand the value of human relationships to natural entities with a growing focus on water (Alley 2002). A reminder of such scholarship is that social scientists should pay more attention to the lives of nonhuman entities. ‘We tap into literatures on symbols and meanings, on class and colonialism, on commodification and the penetration of capitalism,’ writes Anna Tsing (2005), ‘but these literatures do little to help us understand nature: its diversity, its power and constraints, or its multifaceted way of entering human histories’ (173). A better approach, she argues, is to look at the historical and cultural variety of relations between people, plants, animals, and natural entities.

The Tehri Dam in the Context of Development Despite the river’s symbolism and significance to Hindus, the implementation of the Tehri Dam on the Ganga’s Himalayan flow was positioned as part of a nationalist project of development. The dam, standing at 260.5 meters (855 feet) was designed to be the highest in Asia and the fifth tallest in the world. Its designers and proponents boasted that the dam could generate upward of 1000 MW, enough to annually generate 6,532 million units of energy while providing water to irrigate 270,000 hectares of land. The dam was also designed to provide 270 million gallons of water to industrializing

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locations downstream with 162 million gallons going to New Delhi to service the city’s residents.3 Before and during the dam’s construction, feasibility assessments were conducted. Several of the reports that assessed the viability of the dam cautioned that it should be abandoned (Rao 1992). Among the major concerns was the Tehri Dam’s location in a seismic zone (Jayal 1998). If the dam were to break, critics claimed, the resulting flood would inundate the two downstream cities of Rishikesh and Haridwar within an hour’s time. Another fear was that the reservoir created by the dam would induce seismic activity, a phenomenon ostensibly observed in 30 percent of dams within the height range of 150-200 meters (Dogra 1992: 82). Others pointed out that the dam’s implementation alone would be akin to disaster, as it would destroy the habitations and livelihoods of some 100,000 people living in Tehri and in 112 adjacent villages. In response to these concerns, environmentalists voiced opposition. Many of those who participated in the debate over Tehri Dam accepted the need for development projects in order to provide forest resources, roads, minerals, and other items to meet the demands of a growing country. Their vision of development was one that was methodically phased, small scale, and based on precautionary principles. The suggestions for development ‘alternatives’ included prescriptions for reforestation; soil and water conservation; the strengthening of agriculture and animal husbandry; and the implementation of measures to reduce landslides in the mountainous area. A prominent feature of the environmentalist approach argued that development projects should be pursued with the intention of promoting ‘sustainable ecologies.’ Such positions emphasized the Ganga as a vital resource needed to support a healthy ecosystem (Bahuguna 1998). Environmentalists saw the Tehri Dam as counter to the sustainability goal as the reservoir would potentially result in the loss of fertile soil and the phenomena of increased landslides due to added moisture in the adjacent land and air. Biodiversity, it was argued, would also suffer with a corresponding impact on social justice because, ‘Biodiversity and social justice are closely linked to each other. Sustainability becomes meaningless unless it is laden with the value of justice, not only for human society, but, indeed, for all living beings’ (Singh 1992: 62). Despite these environmental critiques, the Planning Commission approved the project. The need for the dam was set within a

3 For more information, please visit the THDC’s website at http://thdc.nic.in/ and also the International Rivers Network at http://www.irn.org/.

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mandate to provide drinking water, irrigation, and electricity to fuel the country’s growth. The decision to move forward with the Tehri Dam prompted protests. Dogra (1992) presents the early campaigns as organized and effective. The movement began officially in 1978 with the creation of a dam opposition organization known the Tehri Dam Opposition Struggle Committee (Tehri Bandh Virodhi Sangarsh Samiti or TBVSS). Virendra Dutt Saklani was the first chairman of the committee. Under his leadership, the initial years of protest saw the collection of substantial amounts of dam-related information by TBVSS from which education campaigns, petitions, and ‘massive’ demonstrations arose (Dogra 1992: 60-63). Over the years, however, support dwindled as the movement failed to make headway and the dam came to be increasingly regarded as a fait accompli. A few individuals, however, opposed the dam to the very end. Among the most notable figures involved was Sunderlal Bahuguna. It is his speeches and writings that are readily accessible and from which I draw some of my observations about the dam’s symbolic and subjective implications. Bahuguna is one of India’s leading environmental activists. He was greatly influenced by Vinod Bhave and Mirabehn, two of the most prominent followers of Gandhi (James 2014). Bahuguna adopted the Gandhian way of life as a youth by emphasizing spirituality above the acquisition and consumption of material goods. His approach supported small-scale industries and the promotion of rural and ‘traditional’ Indian livelihoods. Due to his involvement with the Chipko movement, 4 Bahuguna was already a visible character on the national scene by the time construction on the Tehri Dam began in 1978. This made him a target of praise as well as critique. Some claim that he was a part of a ‘rural elite’ whose protests gained audiences through ‘simple, populist narratives that pitted peasants against the state and markets’ without adequately addressing the range of opinions about development in the mountains (Rangan 2004: 382). While I recognize these critiques, I cite Bahuguna’s narratives because they are still relevant; they speak to the subjectivity and agency of a highly influential individual. In his opposition to the dam, Bahuguna combined political experience and a Gandhian approach of nonviolent dissent to write articles, meet with prominent political figures, hold town meetings, embark on long padyatras 4 A pivotal moment in India’s environmental history, the Chipko movement, began in 1973. It was the result of efforts by mountain residents, many of them women, to prevent deforestation. To understand the mythic proportions that Chipko took on after blocking the destruction of forested areas, see Ramachandra Guha’s 1989 publication, The Unquiet Woods.

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(walking journeys that go from village to village to raise awareness about issues), and endure extended fasts.5 Reminding others of the project’s aim to provide water and electricity for the urban residents of New Delhi hundreds of kilometers away, Bahuguna and other members of the opposition framed the dam as taking away from rather than adding to the Himalayan region. As Bahuguna himself explained of his efforts, ‘I am sitting with a red danger signal like a railway watchman near the Tehri Dam site and am crying at the top of my voice, “Beware! Danger, danger!”’ He continued by qualifying, ‘This danger has come under the attractive robe of development’ (Bahuguna 1997: 192). Differing from the singularity of the environmentalist arguments, Bahuguna and his peers opposed the dam for reasons of ecology as well as religion. One of the central reasons for opposing the Tehri Dam was the threat it posed to the river’s deity. The Goddess-centric arguments dominated in the speeches and writings of people like Bahuguna. The defense of the river as a Goddess recognizes that, in the Hindu tradition, God takes multiple forms. Some of these, like rivers, are observable in nature. Importantly, the Goddess Ganga is also equated as a motherly figure that gives to her children unconditionally and with unending love (Bahuguna 1997; Alley 2002; Haberman 2006). In one interview, Bahuguna described the Ganga by saying, ‘Ganga is a Goddess because like a mother she feeds everyone. She is always prepared to come for her children, but when you dam a river and change its course, you deny people and other beings access to their mother’ (Haberman 2006: 71). According to such a perspective, the Tehri Dam threatened to break this connection between humans and the Goddess/Mother. In one description, Bahuguna positioned the Tehri Dam as a manifestation of evil: ‘The dam is a battleground between the gods and demons. Dams are the expression of demonic power. The dam will kill the goddess because the water will not be flowing. Only flowing water is alive; dammed water is not. The dam will take the energy out of the water. The dam will kill the shakti [divine life force] of the river.’ (72). The strong language used by Bahuguna shows how significant he perceived the battle against the dam to be. Arguing on behalf of the Goddess, the fight was presented as one between her and the ‘demons,’ which he saw as forces of ‘materialistic civilization.’ Despite the strong language, people like Bahuguna were not ‘anti’ development. In arguing for the implementation of small hydro-electric 5 Records indicate that Bahuguna engaged in several fasts lasting more than 40 days in duration over the two and a half decades of resistance to the dam.

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schemes, Bahuguna himself once wrote, ‘Not a single source from which power can be generated should be left untapped’ (1997: 23). The issue was thus over the scale of development that should be pursued. When emphasizing his concern for the Himalaya, Bahuguna equated the success of the Tehri Dam opposition to the very survival of the region. Others agreed. Pritish Nandy (1997), echoing Bahuguna’s sentiments, wrote that a country willing to destroy its rivers, mountains, and forests has nothing left to live for. ‘If the Tehri Dam is indeed built,’ he elaborated, ‘if these two rivers are strangulated by the neck till they choke into a godless and dead reservoir, we shall have one reason less to have children, one reason less to hope. If the murder of the two rivers and the wonderful green valley through which they now pass is development, what remains thereafter?’ (11). Another writer similarly argued that, ‘the river worshipped as “the holy mother Ganga” represents an apex of human experience through times immemorial based on the symbiosis between mankind and life support systems’ (Bahadur 1998: xx). At stake in such sentiments is the ‘creative destruction’ (Kaika 2005: 5) caused by the modernization that the dam promised to usher into the Garhwal Himalaya. The modernization-driven efforts to control ‘nature’ through technology, human labor, and capital investment, were contested on the grounds that they would disrupt and even destroy a precious entity far more important than what the dam promised to offer in return.

Postdevelopment Encounters in Garhwal: Bahuguna’s Perspective The Tehri Dam was completed in 2006 despite the opposition campaigns. Around that time, on 10 June 2006, I met with Sunderlal Bahuguna near the project site. In the aftermath of the dam’s completion, as Tehri succumbed to the water, Bahuguna and his wife, Vimala, moved into a house on the side of the hill that overlooks the reservoir. A large building with wide verandas, the house was transformed into an ashram – an abode for rest, work, and spiritual growth. From the veranda, the hillside view takes in the girth of the reservoir’s first few kilometers. At the time of my visit, the vista included abandoned buildings, junkyards of scrap metal, mounds of soil, and the idle earth-moving machines that were used to turn the river basin into a cratered wasteland that supplied the ‘rock and earth fill’ structure of the Tehri Dam. Although the day was warm and sunny, the house felt gloomy in its perch on the mountainside. In contrast to the sound of heavy machinery

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and rushing waters that I heard in my visit of eighteen months prior (in late 2004), a conspicuous silence weighed upon the scene. The only distinguishable noises were the occasional chirping of a passing bird and the sounds of distant cars moving along the road above that passes through the government-built town of New Tehri, which is a concrete settlement created to house a portion of the resettled. Contemplating the transformation from Bahuguna’s veranda, the lack of noise punctuated the sense of change. The river no longer flowed freely and the dam’s turbines were scheduled to start the following month. I exchanged pleasantries with Bahuguna before asking him what he was doing to pass the time. He responded in Hindi: ‘Nothing... I sit here. I watch the river.’ The statement of inaction was perhaps an exaggeration coming from a man who continued to argue on behalf of the displaced for compensation and for the importance of reforestation. In light of this, his emphasis on immobility seemed to underline defeat. While saying that he watched the river, he pointed to the waters of the filling reservoir. After this, Bahuguna added a comment I had to later reply dozens of times on my recording device to convince myself that he uttered. ‘Ganga,’ he declared, ‘has died.’ After he spoke, he took another look out onto the reservoir in front of us and shrugged his shoulders. Supporting the idea that he thought the Goddess was affected by the project, Bahuguna had earlier performed a shradda ritual along the Ganga after the dam was completed (Haberman 2006; Bose 1992: 235). The ritual is a funeral rite that a dutiful son performs on the occasion of his mother’s death. For people like Bahuguna, what was lost was not only access to a freeflowing and vibrant Ganga, it was also a sense of connection to place (Bahuguna 1998). Bahuguna’s statements of connection to the Ganga, and of the need to protect culturally significant locations such as Tehri, may seem idealized to critics but they echo commentary in some of the existing scholarship. Expanding on Basso’s (1996) argument that wisdom sits in places, Escobar (2001) posits that culture sits in places as ‘the experience of, and from, a particular location with some sense of boundaries, grounds, and links to everyday practices’ (152). For some, entities like rivers and mountains are seen as ‘natural’ boundaries that help demarcate particular places in ways that are nonetheless dynamic. Raffles (2002), in his work in Igarapé Guariba in Brazil, points out that rivers, which help constitute borders, are also places, albeit ones that are, ‘as mobile as can be’ (182). These comments point to the fluidity of place and the possibility that rivers are mutable places. They also indicate how place-disrupting development projects can transform patterns of

158 Georgina Drew Figure 1 A downstream view of Tehri reservoir, 25 November 2009

Photo by the author

interaction with rivers in ways that impact cultural and religious ways of recognizing their value. Even as important as the acknowledgement of place-based connection and loss can be, it is also critical to note that development projects are also place-based and involved in the process of place-making and placealtering (Gidwani 2002). This is a point I discovered to have resonance when I moved up the river to study the conflict over three new dams from 2008 to 2010. As I asked about the impact of Tehri Dam and of the Tehri reservoir, I found that not everyone felt the same sense of loss as Bahuguna. The issue, I came to realize, was one of divergent place-based knowledge and experiences with the Ganga. Sitting at the base of the dam and the start of the reservoir, Bahuguna had immediate knowledge of the project’s impacts and of the loss of place as the historic town of Tehri slipped from sight under the rising waters. Upstream, however, the impact of the reservoir was slow in manifesting. The reservoir grew from 2006 to 2007 and it wasn’t until 2008-2009 that the full extent of the damage was realized.

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Postdevelopment Encounters in Garhwal: Additional Perspectives As I went about fieldwork upstream from the Tehri Dam, I documented how the region’s residents slowly came to know and experience the place-altering impacts of the reservoir. At first, several of my upstream interlocutors expressed enthusiasm for the Tehri project as a vital contributor to India’s development and economic growth. This sentiment was expressed to me by lay residents as well as by Hindu-identified spiritualists such as sadhus and swamis. One particular person, a prominent Swami, even confessed to me in 2009 that at first he had been against the completion and imposition of the Tehri Dam but that he ultimately changed his mind because a ‘little sacrifice’ has to be made for the betterment of the nation. On this point, he reflected on his experience with a much smaller project that was implemented on the same river in the 1980s. There was an initial uproar when it was completed, he explained, and people complained that their access to the river would be blocked. That was 20 years ago, the Swami noted. In the years since, he came to believe that Hindu ‘culture’ was ultimately unaffected. Everyone still has the same faith in Ganga, he argued, and they continue to worship it as before. This qualified exception to the imposition of development illustrates how certain groups can be ‘tactically selective about modernity’ (Michaud 2012: 1854) rather than demonstrating the unequivocal resistance to modernity (and its products) that some might expect (Sivaramakrishnan 2005). I documented similarly resigned arguments and subjective opinions on the value of Himalayan dams closer to the rising waters of the reservoir. Tellingly, these changed over time as the landscape began to transform. In a village at the far end of the reservoir known as Chinyalisaur, the waters engulfed huge swaths of land and destroyed agricultural fields, homes, and Hindu temples. As a result, livelihoods were jeopardized and there was an uptick of outmigration as young and middle-aged men migrated to urban areas in the Indian plains and abroad in search of income opportunities that were lost to the rising waters. As a commentator indicated when discussing the situation, Chinyalisaur residents equated the encroaching waters with a refashioning of place. When asked about the location in which they reside, some quipped that what was once Chinyalisaur no longer existed. Instead, they contended that they were now ‘residents of Tehri reservoir.’ This discursive turn reflects changing subjectivities of not only place but of the value of development projects such as Tehri. It also shows the evolution of perspectives as initial reactions met development/modernity with

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‘reluctant compliance’ (Michaud 2012: 1861) before morphing into discursive acts of everyday resistance. In one exchange in Chinyalisaur, the owner of a roadside restaurant listed the fields and nearby villages that were subsumed by the reservoir when queried about the impact of the Tehri Dam. He pointed out toward different spots along the river’s flow as he itemized the locations disturbed, not looking up from the pot of chai he was making. I asked the obvious question: And how do people in Chinyalisaur feel about the change? ‘Who could be happy with it?’ he retorted. ‘It is all for the government – they are the ones who benefited. The poor got nothing.’ When I pressed for him to explain what the government stood to gain, he described the ways in which the energy production operates in the mountains, equating the system with a ‘circus.’ The description was meant to criticize not only how the dam building reshaped the mountains, but also the intricate system of energy distribution which determines that those closest to the sites of energy creation benefit last from its production. Whatever electricity is made, he explained, it is immediately sent down the mountain to Rishikesh or Roorkee, cities in the Indian plains. It is only after the energy has been accounted for in the plains that a little of it comes back up for use in the mountains. The vast majority of the electricity made within Garhwal is sent throughout India. Referring to the frequent blackouts in the mountains, he declared that, most of the time, the people of Chinyalisaur are ‘left in the dark.’ In discussions along the Tehri reservoir during follow up visits in 2010, 2012, and 2014 people continued to express the ways in which the reservoir had reshaped and rezoned the landscape. This process was not definitive or final. As the waters rose and retreated with the passing seasons, the reservoir continually refashioned the land. Sometimes previously untouched fields, homes, and temples were subsumed. At other times, the reservoir rose only to claim the remnants of dead trees and dilapidated buildings that, on the second or third time of being swallowed by the waters, disappeared when the level went back down. It was not only the borders of villages and towns that were remade; People also expressed sentiments in which they positioned themselves to be on the very borders of development. In the way some interlocutors explained it, the signs and symbols of development were everywhere around them and yet they had personally realized very little of the promise that was erstwhile associated with the projects. This borderland sentiment is now part and parcel of the emerging subjectivities shaped by life along the Tehri reservoir. This locationally specific way of life is part of the in-between spaces created in the postdevelopment present wherein the past ways of engaging with the landscape are no longer

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Figure 2 Chinyalisaur, facing upstream, 19 January 2014

fully viable while at the same time the hoped-for results of development have not yet materialized. This does not mean that an ‘erasure of place’ has occurred, as that would be a phrase untrue to the always-in-production nature of place and places (Massey 1994). Indeed, what is remarkable about such postdevelopment landscapes is the ways in which people maintain continuity with past practices while adjusting to the restrictions and opportunities that are continually arising.

Concluding Remarks: Multiple Subjectivities and Contested Modernities Rather than reifying the oppositional stance of a high-profile figure such as Sunderlal Bahuguna, I have drawn from his example to show both what was perceived to be at stake as well as the modernist rationales that led to the Tehri Dam’s completion. I combined this with observations of postdevelopment encounters to demonstrate that dams are capable of reshaping landscapes in ways that influence subjectivities. The call in making this assertion is to avoid the inclination to essentialize predevelopment landscapes or to unduly denigrate or romanticize postdevelopment landscapes. As dams and other development projects creep evermore into otherwise

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remote locations in the Himalaya, the need is to illuminate how these projects are contested as well as how, and why, they are embraced (albeit with reservations and qualifications). As Gardner and Lewis (1996) argue, the social scientists studying development should continually question why development manifests the way it does, as well as how it could be designed and implemented otherwise (156). This position is grounded in the fact that many people do desire the life improvements promised by development but that their relation to it is not static. In other parts of the Himalaya, such as in Nepal, the driving rationales can include imaginaries of the ‘hydropower futures’ that produce compliance and acquiesce with development projects while people simultaneously work to turn the implementation of dams toward their personal benefit (Lord 2014). The complex terrains of subjectivity and agency that manifest in relation to dam building in the Himalaya is not an embrace of an unquestioned development project within a hegemonic notion of modernity. While some of the perspectives and subjectivities documented in relation to dam building on the Ganga were seemingly at odds, commonalities in the diverse positions discussed point toward a striving for regionally appropriate means of development and modernization in what we might call the trans-Himalayas. My interlocutors did this while upholding the value of past sociocultural practices while also recognizing the technological improvements born of science (even if this was an argument in favor of small rather than large dams). Such assertions extend from the arguments of Arce and Long (2000), who believe that the ideas and practices of modernity are appropriated and reembedded in place, combined with calls that we include in our analyses the regional specificities, multiscalar processes, and diverse degrees of agency that lead to particular outcomes (Gidwani 2002; Shivramakrishnan and Agrawal 2003; Sinha 2008). Given the dynamism of the subjectivities and agencies that manifest in relation to Himalayan dams, the challenge for scholars and development proponents is to continue the work of understanding how development intersects with the diverse ways of engaging in the world made evident at project implementation sites. Social scientists can contribute by examining the ecological cultural, social, and religious implications of development while also documenting and helping to amplify other, and perhaps ‘alternative,’ visions of development and modernity. Examples of entry points for such analyses might include Blaser’s (2004) approach, which looks at the ‘life projects’ that disrupt assumptions regarding the universality of development while highlighting the unique experiences that ‘thread’ together connections between self and place (26). Other avenues of exploration

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include Michaud’s (2012) suggestion that we look for the ways that people meet modernity, and potentially push back against it, in the ‘small acts of everyday life’ as opposed to the ‘grand schemes’ they are thought to pursue (1861). As for the impacts of development projects past, one may recall the adage, ‘What goes up must come down.’ With the Tehri dam’s potential lifespan of 30 to 100 years, and in the perspective of time’s expanse, the river that once flowed freely may do so again. In the interim, the need is to continue examining modernity’s influence alongside the distinct ways of being and behaving in the world that persist. By highlighting the diverse voices that alternatingly embrace or criticize development, we keep open multiple approaches to imagine the ways forward. As a final frontier for hydroelectric development in Asia, the Himalaya are a site of especially robust debates that can be usefully explored to understand how former ways of engaging with the region’s varied landscapes are changing and, as a result, how subjectivities are continually reshaped.

References Agrawal, Arun. 2004. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press. Alley, Kelly. 2002. On the Banks of the Ganga: When Wastewater Meets a Sacred River. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Arce, Alberto, and Norman Long. 2000. ‘Reconfiguring Modernity and Development from an Anthropological Perspective.’ In Anthropology, Development, and Modernities: Exploring Discourses, Counter Tendencies, and Violence, ed. Alberto Arce and Norman Long, 1-3. New York: Routledge. Bahadur, Jagdish. 1998. Tehri Hydro-Electric Project, Narmada Valley Project. New Delhi: Vigyan Prasar. Bahuguna, Sunderlal. 1997. ‘Development and Environment.’ In Fire in the Heart, Firewood on the Back, ed. Tenzin Rigzen, 185-193. New Delhi: Nilum Printing Press. Bahuguna, Sunderlal. 1998. ‘The Survival of the Himalaya.’ In Mountain Ecosystems: A Scenario of Unsustainability, ed. Vir Singh and M.L. Sharma, 19-24. New Delhi: Indus Publishing. Basso, Keith H. 1996. ‘Wisdom Sits in Places.’ In Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso, 53-90. Santa Fe: School of American Research. Blaser, Mario. 2004. ‘Life Projects: Indigenous People’s Agency and Development.’ In In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects, and Globalization,

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ed. Mario Blaser, Harvey A. Feit, and Glenn McRae, 26-44. New York: Zed Books in Association with the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa. Bose, Ashish. 1997. ‘The Tehri Dam Project and Issues of Population, Development, and Environment.’ In Population, Environment, and Development, ed. R.K. Pachauri and Lubina F. Qureshy, 229-248. New Delhi: Tata Energy Resource Group. Campbell, Ben. 2011. ‘Beyond Cultural Models of the Environment: Linking Subjectivities of Dwelling and Power.’ In Culture and Environment in the Himalaya, ed. Arjun Guneratne, 188-203. New Delhi: Routledge. Darian, Steven G. 1978. The Ganges in Myth and History. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Dharmadhikary, Shripad. 2008. Mountains of Concrete: Dam Building in the Himalayas. Berkeley: International Rivers. Dogra, Bharat. 1992. Forests, Dams, and Survival in Tehri Garhwal. New Delhi: Avon Printofast. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Escobar, Arturo. 2001. ‘Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization.’ Political Geography 20: 139-174. Esteva, Gustavo. ‘Development,’ In The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, ed. Wolfgang Sachs, 2-26. London: Zed books. Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. 1992. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gardner, Katy, and David Lewis. 1996. Anthropology, Development, and the PostModern Challenge. London: Pluto Press. Gidwani, Vinay. 2002. ‘The Unbearable Modernity of “Development”? Canal Irrigation and Development Planning in Western India.’ Planning in Progress 58.1: 1-80. Guha, Ramachandra. 1989. The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya. New York: Oxford University Press. Haberman, David L. 2006. River of Love in an Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harriss, John. 1998. ‘Development Studies and the Development of India: An Awkward Case?’ Oxford Development Studies 26.3: 287-309. Hussain, Shafqat. 2015. Remoteness and Modernity: Transformation and Continuity in Northern Pakistan. New Haven: Yale University Press. James, George Alfred. 2014. Ecology Is Permanent Economy: The Activism and Environmental Philosophy of Sunderlal Bahuguna. Albany: State University of New York.

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Jayal, N.D. 1998. ‘Tehri Dam Safety Questioned by Top Seismologists.’ In Mountain Ecosystems: A Scenario of Unsustainability, ed. Vir Singh and M.L. Sharma, 226-232. New Delhi: Indus Publishing. Kaika, Maria. 2005. City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City. New York: Routledge. Lord, Austin. 2014. ‘Making a “Hydropower Nation”: Subjectivity, Mobility, and Work in the Hydroscapes of Nepal.’ Himalaya: A Journal of Nepal and Himalayan Studies 34.2: 111-117. Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Michaud, Jean. 2012. ‘Hmong Infrapolitics: A View from Vietnam.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 35.11: 1853-1873. Murphy, Patrick D. 2011. ‘Damning Damming Modernity: The Destructive Role of Megadams.’ Tamkang Review 42.1: 27-40. Nandy, Pritish. 1997. ‘The Old Man and the River.’ In Fire in the Heart, Firewood on the Back, ed. Tenzin Rigzen, 9-13. New Delhi: Nilum Printing Press. Nayar, Baldev Raj. 2001. Globalization and Nationalism: The Changing Balance in India’s Economic Policy, 1950-2000. New Delhi: Sage. Raffles, Hugh. 2002. In Amazonia: A Natural History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rangan, Haripriya. 2004. ‘From Chipko to Uttaranchal: The Environment of Protest and Development in the Indian Himalaya.’ In Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, and Social Movements, ed. Richard Peet and Michael Watts, 338357. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Rao, Shivaji T. 1992. Tehri Dam Is a Time Bomb. New Delhi: Vani Printers. Sachs, Wolfgang. 1992. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books. Sattar, Arshia. 1996. The Ramayana: Valmiki. Abridged and translated from the Valmiki text by Arshia Sattar. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shneiderman, Sara. 2010. ‘Are the Central Himalaya in Zomia? Some Scholarly and Political Considerations across Time and Space.’ Journal of Global History 5: 289-312. Shrestha, Nanda. 1995. ‘Becoming a Development Category.’ In Power of Development, ed. Jonathan Crush, 266-277. New York: Routledge. Singh, Mridula. 1992. Displacement by Sardar Sarovar and Tehri: A Comparative Study of Two Dams. New Delhi: Multiple Action Research Group (MARG). Sinha, Subir. 2008. ‘Lineages of the Developmentalist State: Transnationality and Village India, 1900-1965.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 50.1: 57-90.

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Sivaramakrishnan, Kalyanakrishnan. 2005. ‘Some Intellectual Genealogies for the Concept of Everyday Resistance.’ American Ethnologist 107.3: 346-355. Sivaramakrishnan, Krishna, and Arun Agrawal. 2003. ‘Regional Modernities: An Introduction.’ In Regional Modernities: The Cultural Politics of Development in India, ed. Krishna Sivaramakrishnan and Arun Agrawal, 1-62. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Tsing, Anna. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Southeast Asia from the Fringes.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20.6: 647-648.

About the author Georgina Drew is a Senior Lecturer of Anthropology and Development Studies in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her research interests include the anthropology of water, religion and ecology, the cultural politics of development and climate change, and feminist political ecology. She is the author of River Dialogues: Hindu Faith and the Political Ecology of Dams on the Sacred Ganga (2017, University of Arizona Press). Her work, funded by organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright-Hays Program, is also featured in American Anthropologist (2012), the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (2012, 2015), Himalaya (2014, 2016), South Asia (2014, 2017), The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2014), and many more. In 2015, Drew was awarded a prestigious three-year Discovery Early Career Researcher Award through the Australian Research Council to study sustainable urban water transitions in South Asia.

7

Plurality and Plasticity of Everyday Humanitarianism in the Karen Conflict1 Alexander Horstmann

Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH7 Abstract The chapter is based on nine years (on and off) of ethnographic fieldwork in Karen State, in eastern Myanmar, and examines the grassroots efforts of Karen community-based organizations to alleviate suffering of displaced civil Karen villagers who are caught in the protracted, decades-long brutal conflict. Decades of civil war and repression in southeast Myanmar have created a particular sort of humanitarianism in the borderlands that is characterized by the dense presence of local and international humanitarian organizations. How do humanitarian regimes work on the ground? How are humanitarian regimes in the Southeast Asian Massif influenced by larger geopolitical factors? And most significantly: How did the majority of Karen villagers benefit from humanitarian assistance and how were their livelihoods influenced? Keywords: Karen conflict, Myanmar, humanitarian assistance, grassroots initiatives, everyday humanitarianism 1 This chapter incorporates recent observations from my project funded by the Thailand Research Fund entitled ‘Humanitarianism from Below: Community-Based Organisations of the Karen and the Role of the International Community.’ Fieldwork for the project was done in conjunction with the project group Streams of Knowledge along the Thai-Burmese Border Zones: Multiple Dimensions of People, Capital and Culture, co-ordinated by Decha Tangseefa (Bangkok). All data collected are my own and based on observations gained from ethnographic fieldwork. I would like to thank Sirijit Sunanta, Decha Tangseefa, and Su-Ann Oh for their warm and friendly support and for inspiring this chapter. Note that I use the designation of Karen and Karenni, which I prefer, to the official designation Kayin and Kayah.

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People in Karen State, in eastern Myanmar, are slowly recovering from posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression, following a decade of brutal warfare targeting the villagers in an attempt to cut the support base of the Karen rebels (Karen Human Rights Group 2013, 2014). In this chapter, I shall describe the humanitarian agencies and their work as a transformative project in which local humanitarians were trying to transform crisis into some form of normality. My hypothesis is that humanitarian assistance – organized locally and from below – played a key role in this effort. Hence, I focus on the politics of humanitarian assistance to the Karen to showcase their ‘humanitarian ecology.’ With the resettlement of a Karen refugee elite to the West in the 1990s, the humanitarian economy expanded to the global level as resettled families sent remittances and donated to civil society, the nationalist movement, and missionary churches back home. While ‘humanitarianism’ is defined as a culture of humanitarian assistance, compassion, and relief, I use a broader definition that includes agency, which encompasses a broad range of services – from emergency health care to advocacy work and human rights documentation. Decades of civil war and repression in southeast Myanmar have created a particular sort of humanitarianism in the borderlands that is characterized by the heavy presence of local and international humanitarian organizations. These are taking over state functions of governance in the absence of crucial service sectors, such as the economy and the health and education sectors in southeast Myanmar, which either collapsed or were never installed in the first place (South 2012; Tangseefa 2006). I see this case study as part of a larger picture on the mobility of persons in the emerging humanitarian government (Agier 2010). Worldwide, we observe a dramatic increase of refugee flows in which people in the global South flee from war, political persecution, and natural disaster. While the emergence of refugee regimes seems to be one of the conditions of our time, we still lack strong ethnographic investigation into how they come about. Questions taken up in this chapter are: How do humanitarian regimes work on the ground? How are humanitarian regimes in the Southeast Asian Massif influenced by larger geopolitical factors? And, most significantly, how did the majority of Karen villagers benefit from humanitarian assistance and how were their livelihoods influenced? Interesting work on refugee governance has been published recently on the Karen case (McConnachie 2014; Oh 2016; Oh forthcoming) and that work also connects to a larger academic debate on the political and moral dilemmas of humanitarian intervention (Fassin and Pandolfi 2010). For this, I suggest that a concept of plurality and plasticity is appropriate. Plurality in the context of everyday

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humanitarianism describes not only ethnic and religious diversity, but also the plurality of the humanitarian field and the multiple agendas, aspirations, and strategies of humanitarian/political actors. Plasticity on the other hand describes the fact that landscapes are, according to Janet C. Sturgeon, ‘more than just physical topography and land cover, but sites for manoeuvre and struggle’ (Sturgeon 2005: 3ff.). Humanitarian work, in its informal and underground nature (as in southeast Myanmar) or formal and engineered (as in camps of northwest Thailand), can be seen as what Sturgeon calls ‘landscape plasticity,’ that is, a contribution to negotiated landscapes. In this sense, the presence of humanitarian organizations and citylike camps contribute to shaping the materiality of the borderland. Plurality and plasticity together are the foundation of everyday humanitarianism, which, in contrast to spectacular humanitarianism, describes a normality of everyday practices, in which the political character of humanitarian aid and the roots of the violence gets lost in the mundane management of everyday life. Sara Shneiderman, in her contribution to this volume, adopts a similar approach when she writes that she finds multiple, contesting vocabularies and visions for the ways in which territories in Nepal are imagined and restructured. Looking closer at the dynamics of humanitarianism from the grassroots level in the Thai-Burmese borderland, humanitarianism is not neutral or impartial, but constitutes an arena in which geopolitical and local political strategies are played out. In accordance with work on everyday resistance of Southeast Asian peasants to modernization and political suppression (Kerkvliet 2009), I like to call this process of political community making on a local and global level the everyday politics of humanitarianism. This understanding of plural and plastic humanitarianism differs from the use of general humanitarianism in the singular. Case studies of different humanitarian organizations clearly showed that the impartial ethos of the Red Cross is an illusion and that organizations such as Doctors without Borders (Redfield 2013) or Amnesty International (Hopgood 2006) are forced to take political position and adopt critical political positions in negotiation with perpetrators. Organizations are also conscious that they are embedded in the political field and that they are often taken hostage by different actors and political players, state and nonstate actors. We can go as far as thinking beyond the humanitarian field and call Doctors without Borders or Amnesty International political organizations. These organizations also critically reflect about their own work and performance and design political strategies to alleviate suffering more efficiently. Increasingly, these organizations also reflect the failure of international organizations to protect the most vulnerable people displaced by violence, their position

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in an increasingly geopolitical game of power and interests, and their being taken hostage and extorted by powerful armies and governments. Nonetheless, these international humanitarian organizations become global players and are involved in fact finding missions (witnessing) and in the making of secular truth for an international audience (Redfield 2013). For efficient performance, these organizations depend on the cooperation of local NGOs who are equipped with a better knowledge and access to the most vulnerable ethnic minorities. I think this makes the study of grassroots initiatives on the ground and their alliances with international humanitarians worthwhile and interesting. While James C. Scott writes on hidden transcripts, I am more interested in the development and mobilization of public transcripts and, with Michel Foucault, the way that humanitarian aid is not only used for liberating and charity purposes, but for disciplinary purposes as well (see Michaud’s critique on Scott’s Zomia, in this volume). As I illustrate, religion is very much entangled with politics and some of the antagonisms leading to armed violence can be traced back to British colonial history and its polarizing impact on ethnic relations in the area. Various actors are thus appropriating humanitarianism both as culture and resource and the sharing of the humanitarian cake can lead to distribution conflicts. The everyday humanitarian field that I describe reflects well how local actors are entangled with global political fields. Together, they continue to shape the political communities in the Southeast Asian Massif. It would be very interesting to compare this study with the social history of humanitarian assistance to and resettlement of the Hmong from northern Vietnam and northern Laos, the Khmer from Cambodia and the so-called Montagnards from the Central Highlands of Vietnam in the context of the Vietnam War (Salemink 2015). This chapter is based on findings and insights gained from a research project on Thai-Burma border communities carried out with my colleagues Decha Tangseefa (Bangkok) and Kwanchewan Buadaeng (Chiang Mai) and focusing on religion and politics in the Karen conflict. Subsequently, I directed my own project on the politics of everyday humanitarianism. The Thailand Research Fund funded both initiatives during my tenure at Mahidol University in Salaya. I had local Thai as well as Karen assistants in my fieldwork on the Thai border as well as in eastern Myanmar around Hpa-An. The research started in the refugee camp of Maela not far from Maesot in northwestern Thailand, and continued in migrant villages of Mae Sariang and Tak provinces, before I was able to do meaningful ethnographic fieldwork with human rights groups, local Christian missionaries and Buddhist monasteries in Kare State. I traveled with and benefitted

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greatly from assistance from Karen peasants, a Karen Jesuit priest, Karen missionaries, Karen Buddhist monks, and local rights activists. During my research, I faced severe limitations of access to the rural communities in the conflict zone of Myanmar. I was very lucky to travel with local activists and local missionaries, but I still faced limitations to study traditional security networks of the villagers and their everyday interaction with the humanitarians, medics, nurses, teachers, nonstate armed groups, etc. I am afraid that my approach to study the social organization of aid from below is thus compromised in one way or the other. I was extra careful not to endanger my informants by publishing sensitive information.

Outline of a Humanitarian Economy The culture of humanitarian assistance enabled the Karen and Karenni people to establish a niche and the financial and material support to run a whole underground system of alternative, mobile health-care, education, and social support networks. It began to shape the borderland and its people in the early 1980s. The military assault of the Burmese army drove the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) over the border and its scorched earth assault produced massive refugee flows within southeast Myanmar and across the border to Thailand. Humanitarian assistance became firmly established in the 1980s after the installation of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium that replaced the antecedent consortium of Christian orientation. The Karen, Mon, and Shan people with the help of Western missionary networks that quickly identified the situation as a humanitarian crisis and moved from the Thai-Cambodian and Thai-Laotian border to the ThaiBurmese border in the early 1980s established the first shelters. Unlike the Khmer and Hmong refugees, or the Vietnamese boat people, the first wave of overwhelmingly Baptist Karen refugees had a very high degree of cohesion and organization. Organized Christians in the Baptist, Catholic, and Seventh-day Adventist churches worked smoothly with Western churches, brought their pastors and community leaders with them, and immediately built churches in the emerging refugee camps. Buddhist refugees tended to settle in migrant villages where they became tenant farmers of Karen peasants with Thai citizenship as they felt increasingly uncomfortable with the Christian environment in the refugee camps. The presence of humanitarian organizations quickly changed the face of the border town of Mae Sot. Once a sleepy market in the interstitial spaces of the Thai-Myanmar border, the entrepreneurial segment of Mae

172 Alexander Horstmann Figure 1 Baptism in Mae Ra Ma Luang refugee camp

Sot benefitted greatly from the emerging markets across the border. The quick establishment of international humanitarian agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Mae Sot also shaped the town and substantially contributed to its expansion. Humanitarian workers worked and slept in the offices around the town and accessed the camps from there in their jeeps. One could meet this group of expatriates with their laptops and smartphones in the cafés and restaurants of downtown Maesot. The nine shelters housed no less than 150,000 people at a time. The refugee camps thus became part of the humanitarian landscape; a form of dwelling that resembles urban informal settlements – bidonvilles – with their own cultural geography, architecture, markets, infrastructure, social services, schools, facilities, and resettlement programs (Agier 2002). Looking at the emergence and installation of this specific humanitarian and advocacy sector, I am interested in resource mobilization and symbolic communication. My understanding is that this situation has produced a certain ‘culture of suffering’ and subsequent help that binds certain people and organizations together in a specific place and geography. The humanitarian sector, financed by the international community, has been running for decades and has produced a specific humanitarian culture in the border landscape. Unfortunately, and not in the interest of the villagers affected, the discourse on suffering is sometimes used for ethnopolitical

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mobilizations and aspirations. At stake is a specific defensive Karen nationalism that has been fueled by decades of violence and oppression and has been indirectly boosted by humanitarian resources and remittances from the Karen diaspora in the West. The situation has changed lately, as the growing openness of Myanmar has created more breathing space for a local civil society in eastern Myanmar, but remains framed using the discourse of healing the wounds. It is these atrocities committed by the Burmese army in the Karen conflict that have motivated different types of organizations to mitigate the suffering endured by villagers. The humanitarian economy thus contrasts with the advocacy economy – development organizations that provide services and with the more activist NGOs carrying out more political work organizing villagers to document human rights violations and claim their rights. In a context where international organizations are severely limited in movement and activities by a repressive political environment, grassroots organizations seem to fill a crucial vacuum as mediators between social support networks of Karen villagers and international humanitarian organizations, organized as the Border Consortium (TBC).2 Much activism on the Thai border was closely associated with Karen nationalism and the Karen National Union (KNU) in particular, although the new community organizations emancipated themselves and quickly developed their own agenda. Much of the humanitarian assistance was also politicized and local-global alliances of Christianity play a particularly pertinent role in many initiatives. Now, after decades of political oppression, civil society in eastern Myanmar is picking up and interesting new initiatives and civil society networks are emerging. Again, many initiatives in eastern Myanmar are related to the idea that the Karen are a chosen race and a nation with several of the new initiatives focus on the revitalization of Karen culture and literature. Humanitarianism from the ground is thus tied not only to expanding rights regimes, but also to the consciousness of Karen national identity and a unified construction of Karen ‘culture.’ It is also possible and realistic that the impact of some organizations is minimal and that the organizations are struggling increasingly for their own survival by justifying their existence vis-à-vis international sponsors. 2 The Border Consortium, the former Thailand Burma Border Consortium, consists of voluntary humanitarian organizations that oversee and manage humanitarian assistance and rations to the camp and support voluntary groups working with the Karen on all aspects of livelihood in the camps. See the excellent report of the consortium’s experiences and moving engagement in Thailand Burma Border Consortium (2010). I would like to thank the board of the Border Consortium for answering to all of my questions relating to their wonderful work.

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This leads me to the impact of humanitarian projects from the ground and the question of how the presence of so many, indeed hundreds, of very different initiatives on the border, are perceived and connected or not connected and the provocative question of whether some organizations actually ‘impose’ themselves on the Karen villagers. Another crucial question is the relationship of the organizations to the state and nonstate ethnic armed movements. Political environments crucially condition humanitarian organizations and many organizations on the Thai border moved under the radar of the state and crossed the border illegally. At the same time, the same organizations have operated under the protection and in the shadow of nonstate-armed movements and can be seen as the ‘humanitarian arm’ of that movement. The current rapprochement of many organizations, such as the Back Pack Health Worker Team (https://bphwt.wordpress.com/), with the Burmese government illustrates the dilemmas of cooperation and noncooperation and the compromises that organizations have to make if they decide to legalize or make their engagement in society an official part of their formal work. On the other hand, the nonstate ‘enemy’ spaces that humanitarian organizations carve out may endanger villagers who are identified as working with the enemy. The current peace process may not only empower new civil society networks or facilitate ownership, but may also lead to a takeover of human rights advocacy by more powerful organizations, quickly marginalizing subaltern groups within that population (Horstmann 2012: 257). The Karen conflict has been politically charged and associated in the international media with persecuted Christians, more so than with Buddhists, despite the fact that Mon/Karen Theravada Buddhism is the dominant culture and religion among the Karen. Southeast Myanmar and the Thai-Burmese border zones provide a very interesting case study for the power workings of religion, as northwest Thailand has become a hub of Christian outreach, and faith-based humanitarianism delivers the structure for the mobilization of people and the circulation of money. In the next section, I make a theoretical contribution by focusing on humanitarian assistance as reconstruction after civil war and utopian thinking in the form of ethnonationalisms and religious utopias, driving development in Karen State. This utopian thinking comprises patriotic, ethnonationalistic ideas about the reconstruction and future of Karen State, neo-Buddhist ideas about liberation from suffering, Christian ideas about progress and development, and, recently, quasi-fascist ideas about the ethnic cleansing of Muslims (Gravers 2007; Hayami 2004). Against my earlier position that Karen nationalism and the KNU in particular have developed in tandem with Christianity (Baptist, Seventh-day

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Adventist) (Horstmann 2011: 522), my more recent research with secular organizations has convinced me that a broad nationalist feeling exists among human rights NGO activists, whatever their religion. This sentiment, which defends Karen cultural rights in a general sense, has been very visible in the recent Karen Unity meetings in eastern Myanmar, where many different political and cultural organizations and factions came together to symbolize Karen Unity. Moreover, Karen Buddhism has developed staunchly nationalist positions, whereby the competition for power, resources, and influence have crossed and blurred religious boundaries. I believe that it is valuable to analyze the interplay of nonreligious and religious dynamics because a focus on either alone would be reductive and because the human rights activism of some NGOs can be explicitly evangelical as in the case of the Rangers or become, in Oscar Salemink’s words, ‘a quasi-religion.’ Many secular human rights NGOs working on the Thai border are sponsored by churches and many of their personnel are young, educated Christians. Moreover, many churches that are engaged in humanitarian assistance have also built a wide-reaching ecumenical alliance of missionary societies and local missionaries who double as teachers, medical doctors, and development workers. Take the example of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Myanmar. While ADRA separates humanitarian assistance from development and religion, it is an openly Christian evangelical organization that follows the tenet of Christ caring for the poor. ADRA benefits greatly from the local embeddedness of the Seventh-day Adventist movement throughout southeast Myanmar. The area has been a missionary focal point of the Seventh-day Adventist church for at least a hundred years, established by way of proselytizing an extensive web of local schools and clinics in the area. ADRA Myanmar acquires funds from international donors (Caritas, Johanniter, International Red Cross, governments, etc.) for diverse projects on health, livelihoods, water supply, and education and, more recently, on political training. ADRA remains one of the few international NGO’s which only employ locals for managing day-to-day operations in the project sites and is thus a sought-after partner for organizations that are unable to carry out their projects in situ.3 This initiative can be juxtaposed with a political initiative of a charismatic monk in Hpa-An. Just like U Thuzana (see below), the Taunggalay monk is a politically engaged monk who writes columns on democracy for a Burmese magazine, supports education and philanthropic 3 I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, who generously accepted me as a guest researcher and opened many doors for me in eastern Myanmar that would otherwise have been closed for me.

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foundations, is looking after 150 volunteer teachers, buys land and offers this land to displaced villagers who become servants of his monastery. The monk has many followers even among the military and is thus protected.

The History of Humanitarian Engagement While the humanitarian economy and advocacy sector is now f irmly entrenched in the Thai-Myanmar borderscape, a map of humanitarianism reveals a complex picture in which humanitarian agencies of very different types operate side by side. The humanitarian landscape has been divided by the border and has developed differently on both sides of the border, creating a specific spatial order of plurality and plasticity. Humanitarian engagement in eastern Myanmar has been, for a variety of reasons, notoriously difficult. The most important hurdle remains the surveillance and repression by the military regime, which regards NGOs as potential allies of the insurgents and civil society as a political force. The territory in eastern Myanmar is a highly contested one and many military factions share pockets of the same area and are eager to impose themselves and exercise control. While the border guard force receives salaries from the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar Armed Forces), the KNU units still tax the populations under their control. Every humanitarian project has to be negotiated with local militia and their bosses. The area is highly militarized and full of military checkpoints. Nobody knows how many landmines are still active or being planted so much so that villagers sometimes step on their own mines. These factors limit the movement and operation of the NGOs that either work close to the Thai border or close to Hpa-An or Dawai. The military assault on the Karen civilian population in the early 1980s worsened rapidly when it was no longer possible for the villagers to return to their homes in the rainy season and the KNLA had to retreat to the border area. International organizations responded to this humanitarian crisis by mounting a comprehensive effort to provide shelter and food to no less than 140,000 people in nine refugee camps. A border consortium (the Thailand Burma Border Consortium) emerged, succeeding in sheltering and feeding all the families in the camps. This is a feat that they have managed for over 30 years now. A Christian consortium in the beginning, it eventually transformed into a nonfaith institution and incorporated numerous organizations, both secular and faith-based. Taking into account the long time frame, young people in the camp may have lived in the camp throughout their lives and have had little or no contact with Myanmar. The

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camps were governed and guarded with barbed wire by the Thai border guard force, but administered on a day-to-day level by the internal Karen refugee committee. Basic decisions and administration of the distribution of aid and basic law decisions were left to the internal refugee committee and thus largely bypassed the Thai courts. This new geopolitical situation framed the next few decades and placed international humanitarian organizations in a huge dilemma. The Border Consortium received the mandate from the Thai government to provide relief in the emerging camps, but international organizations were generally barred from crossing the border to help desperate people caught in the forests and hills. Yet, while many displaced people from the immediate border area moved to the Thai border, many more remained inside Myanmar, suffering from food crises, taxes, military assaults, human rights violations, relocations, and forced labor. These people could only be reached by local organizations that came from the Karen organizations themselves. The church was the community center in the camp and Mae La refugee camp had 54 churches, Bible schools, and Christian community centers. The pioneer Christian consortium identified in the beginning with persecuted fellow Christians and made a strategic choice to collaborate closely with the internal refugee camp committees to distribute rations as fair and effectively as possible. The ‘refugee warriors’ working with the KNU emerged as a ‘natural partner’ for the Border Consortium and many international organizations in the Consortium that were eager to gain access to the families. While the alliance and identification with the KNU and KNU proxies was strong in the beginning (to the benefit of the families in the shelters), the relationship of the Consortium and the Karen refugee administration gradually became more democratic and transparent (cf. McConnachie 2012; South 2012). By far, the best space to provide rations, trainings, workshops, etc. was the controlled space of the refugee camp in which social welfare services were also provided, especially education and health care. In addition to basic relief, the people in the camps also organized themselves in networks and community-based organizations, covering many domains. However, while the Border Consortium, the international organizations, and community organizations did an admirable job, many families resented the controlled space and the depressing livelihood conditions in the camps and eventually left to self-settle in migrant enclaves in the countryside of the Thai hills if they could find a place with a Thai Karen patron (Prasert 2012). In addition, later waves of refugees were more scattered and much less organized and belonged to different ethnic groups, spoke distinct languages, and observed different religions. The majority of this group

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practiced Buddhism and animism, and a minority practiced Islam. As a consequence, the camps became much more diverse, with considerable tension and competition developing among the different segments of the refugee population, and between the old and new residents. There were multiple reasons for the tension. The new residents were not Christian and often felt discriminated against and excluded from decisions taken by the camp administration. In response, the Consortium reformed the administration, introduced more democratic and transparent decision-making, and also included Buddhists in the refugee committees (Thailand Burma Border Consortium 2010). Without that assistance, the reconstruction of the nationalist movement on the Thai border and its humanitarian engagement inside Myanmar would not have been possible. However, humanitarian assistance in Karen State was largely limited to the KNLA-controlled areas. While I argued that the camps became centers for proselytizing, that does not mean that all incoming refugees became Christians. Far from that, Sandra Dudley has described how animist Karenni villagers persisted in observing major rituals under difficult conditions in the camps and how these rituals and the traditional ways of weaving were central to safeguarding cultural identities (Dudley 2010). Some of the animist groups felt that they had to propagate their animism as a religion and ritual system in order to claim rights and create a niche in camp society. However, it is true that the camp elite mobilized resources to evangelize the newcomers and that young people were exposed to Christianity in the orphanages and schools. It is no secret that Karen pastors and personnel of the Kawthoolei Karen Baptist Churches actively aimed to bring ‘the lost’ to Jesus Christ. The ‘soft’ evangelization in the camps belongs to the utopian thinking of the Christian churches to build a heavenly kingdom in the camps.

Humanitarianism in Practice The Thai border has provided refuge and sanctuary for rights- as well as service-oriented groups, and secular as well as religious projects for decades. Karen Burmese nationals have operated in a dense network, organizing mobile schools, alternative schoolbooks, health services, human rights documentation, advocacy work, and constant reports about the situation and condition of Karen villagers inside Myanmar (Horstmann 2012: 10). Local community-based groups have become professional NGOs that recruited from the educated spectrum of Karen migrants (McConnachie 2012).

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Interestingly, all these organizations depend heavily on volunteers and staff in Karen State to do anything meaningful. These networks in Karen State were probably crucial for the survival and training of displaced villagers in Karen State for decades. The Back Pack Health Worker Team and Free Burma Rangers have developed into very efficient local agencies that provide badly needed health care not only in Karen State, but also in many other ethnic minority regions. These teams literally walk with medicine, clothes and money through the rainforest, mountains, and rivers to isolated communities. The Free Burma Rangers also document human rights violations and campaign actively in churches in Chiang Mai and in the West. They finance themselves through donations and are doing well – unlike Burma Issues, which focuses on advocacy and rights training and whose budget is dwindling as donors shift their priorities to other organizations and priorities in Myanmar. Young Karen migrants who volunteer for the Free Burma Rangers are drawn to its spirituality and political nature. In my project on refugees and Christianity, I have followed the life histories and refugee careers of young men who at different times of their life in exile have joined the journeys of the Free Burma Rangers whose teams regularly travel to the conflict areas. These young men saw it as their obligation to serve God and their communities and were quickly entangled into political projects. The situation inside Myanmar in the heart of Karen State looks entirely different. Thanks to the recent partial political opening of Myanmar, the Border Consortium has been invited to open an office in Yangon and to operate from Myanmar as camp closure and repatriation become imminent. This would have been unthinkable even in 2010 before the ceasefire talks began. The NGOs on the Thai border were filled with Karen educated activists and students and hence politicized. However, political organizations were unable to survive censorship, surveillance, and arrest in Myanmar. Karen indigenous intellectuals like pastors or grassroots activists who were associated with the KNU or even provided shelter were sentenced to long jail terms. Organizations that survived the ordeal and constantly provided assistance under extremely difficult circumstances were faith based. Political organization and missionary work were both outlawed and the churches had to keep a low profile. Only recently has partial democratization enabled the mushrooming of many different civil society organizations in Hpa-An that have one common feature: they are all Karen. Many of the new organizations have now taken up projects of community mobilizing and political issues such as land confiscation and legal assistance. Many organizations

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concentrate on pressing problems of community organizing without calling attention to the name of the organization. Different associations working in education, health and development and cultural rights are members of the Karen Affairs Committee in which there is an interesting generational change taking place: young activists, female and male, have transcended the boundaries of potentially antagonistic political Karen organizations. Much of the new engagement is inspired by faith, even though religion is not always in the foreground of humanitarian work. While many of the relief and development projects are coordinated and funded by Protestant churches in coordination with international NGOs (e.g., the Norwegian Refugee Council), Catholic and Protestant churches in southeast Myanmar operate their own missionary societies. Local missionaries are completely integrated into the local communities in which they are embedded. As local missionaries do not want to be a burden on the community since they have to share resources and food with the villagers, they contribute to education, basic health care, and gardening. The missionaries are basically local volunteer teachers who operate on very modest allowances and who are extremely committed to their mission. These missionaries and other project field staff regularly travel to remote villages by motorbike, by boat, and on foot. Relief and development in Karen State are always geared toward the vague idea of the self-determination of the Karen people. The Karen Affairs Committee has been highly involved in the organization of the recent Karen Unity seminars where hundreds of people from different Karen organizations and political factions came together under the ideological umbrella of Karen nationalism. While some observers have emphasized the key role of American Christian missionaries for the emergence and development of Karen nationalism, ethnonationalist thinking is very pronounced in the Buddhist Sangha, the DKBA, and in the NGO/civil society scene as well (see Gravers 2007). Civil society organizations and political parties in Karen State are highly patriotic and word their discourse in terms of Karen blood, Karen suffering in the hands of the Bamar, and the early history of the Karen people (cf. Horstmann 2015). Karen monasteries and churches keep alive spoken Karen and Karen literacy in a country where the Karen language is not taught in primary schools. Sometimes Karen children are punished by their parents for conversing in Burmese at home as Burmese is seen as the language of the oppressor and a threat to the Karen language. Karen traditions, popular religion, and festivals are kept alive in the communities. For example, the very popular don dance has changed from a symbol of social cohesion and

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Figure 2 Stateless Children Day in Mae Sariang, on the Thai border

village solidarity to a symbol of the Karen nation. Competitions in reciting Karen poetry and verse, Karen literacy, don dance, and Karen national drilling skills are held regularly outside of the government framework in locations near the Thai border. There is no doubt that much of Karen humanitarianism is highly defensive. This defensive position is structural, ideological, and practical. It is practical as all humanitarian projects are heavily limited by political constraints. Thammanya used to be a Buddhist pilgrimage center in Karen State (not only for the Karen), which was named after U Thammanya who is a Buddhist saint and ethnic patron who represents the fifth future Buddha (Maitreya) who appears from heaven and liberates the Karen from suffering and brings prosperity. This hugely popular monk was embalmed after his death, but his corpse was stolen mysteriously from the monastery. In his lifetime, U Thammanya’s hilltop monastery was seen as a Karen spiritual center of resistance to the military regime in Yangon. The center of the DKBA is a monastery under the leadership of U Thammanya’s student and successor, U Thuzana. U Thuzana is not only a monk practicing in the forest monk tradition, but also a development monk, a military leader, and a staunch nationalist. For a long time, the KNU insurgency has long been seen as Christian, although this might not be fully accurate. The ethnic character of Karen humanitarianism has partly estranged the Burmese democratic

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movement from the Karen one and the Karen have rarely worked with the more progressive and better-educated Burmese NGOs and professionals than in the center of the country. The organizations in the Karen Affairs Committee are recruited from the Karen ethnic pool and are thus very inward-looking. Due to the huge hurdles in collaborating with Christian organizations abroad, Christian churches in Karen State have not benefitted from international church networks and donations in the way that Karen churches in Thailand – which are supported by missionaries and funding – have been. Christian Karen were perhaps more cosmopolitan and had contacts with the Western world and more opportunity to travel abroad than, for example, Buddhists. Ethnonationalist thinking in Karen State was fueled by resettlement from the refugee camps to the West where resettled communities have donated to churches and the KNU. Thus, the Karen are influenced by symbols in globalizing flows and also feed these flows with symbols of ethnic dress, discourse and funding. Christian churches have organized a yearly seminar in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, on ‘Reading the Bible through Karen Eyes.’ Theravada Buddhism and millenarian utopian thinking can also be seen as a modus to install a new normative order to bring law, security, and stability into a world that is characterized by cultural chaos (e.g., Gravers 2007). As shown above, some monks create small empires in which they propagate development by benefitting from government funds, probably drug laundering and donations from Thai business people. Christians talk about God’s kingdom on earth while the Buddhist monkhood also wants to defend land demarcations in which Buddhist order and rules are prevalent. Christian volunteer missionaries convert villagers and install small chapels in the conflict zone. Humanitarianism thus comes in very different forms and constellations. Local organizations work together or vie with international faith-based NGOs and foreign missionary networks. Pentecostalism is quickly establishing itself in Karen State, building on existing structures of the Assembly of God. Pentecostalism focuses much less on social work or humanitarian assistance and more on worship and proselytizing, to the dismay of the declining Baptist churches and the Buddhist Sangha that denounces Pentecostal churches as a threat to itself. Big international faith-based organizations like World Vision now have come in as powerful partners, but again are still highly limited in their mobility and scope. Both secular and faith-based organizations rely heavily on existing social support networks of villagers, which may be Buddhist or Christian. Without those networks that allow organizations to work effectively with the community, too many hurdles obstruct

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Figure 3 Local missionaries and Buddhist monks in solidarity

efficient humanitarian assistance and entire organizations that criticize the constraints imposed by the government find themselves confined or sanctioned or even more constrained. Others conform to the government’s regulations. Until recently, much of humanitarian assistance in Karen State was faith based, and both Christian and Buddhist local organizations occupied a niche and were able to help effectively, with very modest means. The faith-based local organizations are unable, however, to shoulder the new challenges of a more open Myanmar, with new problems of relocation and land confiscation and resource exploitation. Local faith-based organizations are going into new domains of rights claiming and political rights training which they have difficulty handling. Local secular organizations that were influenced by the Burmese democratic student movement on the Thai border are superbly equipped and have substantial experience, but seem to face a serious decline of international funding for capacity building and advocacy work. Karen organizations mushrooming in civil society are now better integrated into mainstream Burmese civil society networks and social movements and young community leaders are able to overcome at least partly ethnonationalist self-limitations.

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As such, we have a structure of parallel humanitarianism with both secular and faith-based community organizations and international NGOs working with social support networks in the rural areas. The employees in these organizations are sometimes identical, as they tend to move from one organization to another. The culture of humanitarianism developed completely differently in Thailand and in Myanmar because of the political environment and the advocacy work of organizations working in political exile on the Thai border. While humanitarianism in southeast Myanmar has been faith-based, the position of the churches in humanitarian assistance and development is diminishing, although faith-based networks are still active in relief. The reason is that the new issues of advocacy work, human rights training and more political issues of land and environmental conflict cannot be satisfactorily tackled by Christian churches or Buddhist monasteries, although some church leaders and some monks are getting involved. The spatial aspect also remains important as community organizations on the Thai border still cross to work in ceasefire areas, while organizations working from Hpa-An are much more limited and have to undertake long journeys to access remote villages. Community organizations in Thailand on the other hand do not have a wide enough reach into Myanmar and are still uncomfortable working in areas controlled by the Burmese government. Funding constraints may push the politicized organizations on the Thai border to compromise and to move offices to Myanmar’s capitals. Faith-based organizations in eastern Myanmar urgently need international exposure, training and international partners to move ahead in the difficult political transition. Christian and Buddhist actors are crucial in southeastern Myanmar and still provide the frame and infrastructure in which humanitarian and human rights organization may work, but advocacy organizations are becoming more important in the near future. The next step will be cautious collaboration of NGOs with the Myanmar government and this collaboration will attract funding from the international community and has the potential to marginalize humanitarian assistance and human rights work being done in nonstate spaces.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the formation and dynamic development of a humanitarian sector and how this sector has been instrumental in helping people go on with their lives and gather new hope. It is in this space

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that social services were provided to displaced Karen, where resistance to the repression of the state could be enacted and where a parallel form of governance and economy could be established that enabled the Karen to plan for a future. I have argued elsewhere that humanitarianism allowed for the creation of corridors and routes de passages for reentry into the dangerous area of southeast Myanmar (Horstmann 2014: 2-3), although the ceasefire has changed the conditions by greatly facilitating border crossing. Different governments in the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe have accepted Karen refugees on quotas given to the UNHCR. Christian Karen became preferred refugees, as they used to fight an unpopular socialist regime in Myanmar. This chapter has started an ethnographic study of the humanitarian economy, which contrasts starkly with the capitalist economy, and the flow of migrant labor into the migrant enclaves of Mae Sot. Humanitarianism in different shapes will continue to mark the landscape in southeast Myanmar for some time to come and many Karen have used this sector extensively to contribute to a better future for people in Myanmar. The humanitarian intervention provided alternative education and health services in a time when neither was available. Of all the ethnic minority areas, the humanitarian economy, the specific humanitarian milieu, and culture and humanitarian network on the Thai-Myanmar border was the most extensive. Regarding the transformation of Myanmar’s marginal areas, one can say that the partnership that has evolved between humanitarian aid and the Karen is somewhat unique. I hope that the chapter has pointed in some innovative directions in studying the politics of everyday humanitarianism and the conspicuous role that ethnonationalism plays in the shape of the humanitarian intervention and distribution of assistance and in the political game in which humanitarian assistance crucially contributes to the enforcement of a specific type of political community and to the construction of a unified, yet arbitrary, notion of Karen national culture and identity

References Agier, Michel. 2002. ‘Between War and City: Towards an Urban Anthropology of Refugee Camps. Ethnography 3.3: 317-343. Agier, Michel. 2010. ‘Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects: A Note on Camps and Humanitarian Government.’ Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 1.1: 29-45.

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Dudley, Sandra. 2010. Materialising Exile: Material Culture and Embodied Experience Among Karenni Refugees in Thailand. Oxford: Berghahn. Fassin, Didier, and Mariella Pandolfi. 2010. Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gravers, Mikael. 2007. ‘Conversion and Identity: Religion and the Formation of Karen Ethnic Identity in Burma.’ In Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Burma., ed. Mikael Gravers, 227-258. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Hayami, Yoko. 2004. Between Hills and Plains: Power and Practice in Socio-Religious Dynamics among Karen. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press. Hopgood, Stephen. 2006. Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Horstmann, Alexander. 2011. ‘Ethical Dilemmas and Identifications of Faith-Based Humanitarian Organisations in the Karen Refugee Crisis.’ Journal of Refugee Studies 24.3: 513-532. Horstmann, Alexander. 2012. ‘Mediating the Suffering of Karen Refugees and the Representation of their Rights.’ Sangkomsat Chiang Mai Journal of Social Sciences 24.1-2/2555: 243-284. Horstmann, Alexander. 2014. ‘Stretching the Border: Confinement, Mobility and the Refugee Public among Karen Refugees in Thailand and Burma.’ Journal of Borderlands Studies 1: 47-61. Horstmann, Alexander. 2015. ‘Uneasy Pairs: Revitalizations of Karen EthnoNationalism and Civil Society across the Thai-Burmese Border.’ Journal of Maritime and Territorial Studies 2.2: 55-75. Karen Human Rights Group. 2013. ‘Losing Ground. Land conflicts and Collective Action in Eastern Myanmar.’ Mae Sot: KHRG. Karen Human Rights Group. 2014. ‘Truce or Transition? Trends in Human Rights Abuse and Local Response in Southeast Myanmar since the 2012 Ceasefire.’ Mae Sot: KHRG. Kerkvliet, Benedict J. Tria. 2009. ‘Everyday Politics in Peasant Societies (and Ours).’ Journal of Peasant Studies 36.1: 227-243. McConnachie, Kirsten. 2012. ‘Rethinking the “Refugee Warrior”: The Karen National Union and Refugee Protection on the Thai-Burma Border.’ Journal of Human Rights Practice 4.1: 30-56. McConnachie, Kirsten. 2014. Governing Refugees: Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism. London: Routledge. Oh, Su-Ann. 2016. ‘Navigating Learning, Employment and Economies in the Mae Sot-Myawaddy Borderland.’ In Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes: Local Practices, Boundary-Making and Figured Worlds, ed. Su-Ann Oh, 191-214. Singapore: ISEAS.

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Oh, Su-Ann. Forthcoming. ‘The Moral Economy of the Myawaddy-Mae Sot border.’ In Routledge Handbook of Asia’s Borderlands, eds. Alexander Horstmann, Alessandro Rippa, Martin Saxer. London and New York: Routledge Prasert, Rangkla. 2012. ‘Karen Refugees’ Self-Settlement: Refuge in Local Administration and Contingent Relations.’ Sangkomsat Chiang Mai Journal of Social Sciences 24.1-2/2555: 159-195. Redfield, Peter. 2013. Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors without Borders. Berkeley: University of California Press. Salemink, Oscar. 2015. ‘Revolutionary and Christian Ecumenes and Desire for Modernity in the Vietnamese Highlands.’ Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 16.4: 388-409. South, Ashley. 2012. ‘The Politics of Protection in Burma.’ Critical Asian Studies 44.2: 175-204. Sturgeon, Janet C. 2005. Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Tangseefa, Decha. 2006. ‘Taking Flight in Condemned Grounds: Forcibly Displaced Karen and the Thai-Burmese in-Between Spaces. Alternatives 31: 405-429. Thailand Burma Border Consortium. 2010. ‘Nine Thousand Nights: Refugees from Burma: A People’s Scrapbook.’ Bangkok: TBBC.

About the author Alexander Horstmann is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the Estonian School of Humanities at Tallinn University, Estonia. He has published widely on the livelihood and social support networks of displaced Karen in Thailand and Burma and has coedited (with Jin-Heon Jung) Building Noah’s Ark for Migrants, Refugees and Religious Communities (Palgrave, 2015). His current research also includes fieldwork and theoretical thinking on ethnic riots, transitions to violence, hate campaigns, rumors, trust, morality, civility, and questions of everyday multiculturalism. He has launched a new project on a social history of refugees from mainland Southeast Asia, and is doing a study on Shan migrants, power and monastic networks in the Buddhism, Business and Believers project, located at the University of Copenhagen. Contributions on displacement and recovery were published in the Journal of Refugee Studies, MOUSSONS, encounters and Chiang Mai Journal of Social Sciences.

8

Being Modern Livelihood Reconstruction among Land-lost Peasants in Chenggong (Kunming) Yang Cheng Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH8 Abstract Chenggong, a former farming county adjacent to Kunming, China, is undergoing a rapid urbanizing process as the Chinese state redesignates it as the transnational hub of Southwest China connecting to Southeast Asia and South Asia. Urbanization engenders the transformation of farmland into urban space and of farming populations into urban low-wage earners. In this context, this chapter narrates the land-lost peasants’ experiences of the urbanization and their actions to resume their farming livelihood as an entrepreneurial endeavor. While it discusses the meanings of being modern among the former peasants, this chapter proposes two conceptual terms – ‘floating niche’ and ‘circular livelihood’ – to facilitate an argument that ‘floating’ signifies a creative adaptation of the landlost peasants’ agentive responses to uprootedness, dispossession, and deterritorialization. Keywords: urbanization, land-lost peasants, floating niche, circular livelihood

Introduction Chenggong, a former farming county adjacent to Kunming, Yunnan Province, did not attract public attention outside of China until a 2012 British Broadcasting Corporation report that characterized it as one of China’s ‘ghost towns’ (Banerji and Jackson 2012) created in the course of rapid nationwide modernization. Photographs included with the BBC report

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show largely empty concrete high-rises, developed real estate devoid of inhabitants, and Kunming’s new central business district in the making. The newness of Chenggong can be smelled in the air, and is visually striking with construction sites, the vertical and horizontal expansion of modern high-rises, and wide new streets. The new urban cityscape’s asphalt has uncompromisingly replaced the red earth of its former farming landscape. The physical modernization of Chenggong began in 2003, when Yunnan Province initiated the urban expansion of Kunming. Its initial plan was to transform Chenggong into a new real estate development site and a university town for accommodating the growing urban population and alleviating the spatial pressure on the city. Both objectives were meant to speed up Kunming’s modernization process. Like its counterparts, such as Dongguan in Guangdong Province and Yujiapu in Tianjin Province, the speed of Chenggong’s physical modernization exceeded that of its projected incoming population. The city was thus largely empty except when college students were in session. In 2013, however, this ‘ghost town’ was slated to become a new transregional center when President Xi Jinping announced China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ global initiative. Following his subsequent visit to Chenggong in January 2015, he confirmed the global status of Chenggong, marking it as a transregional rail-aerial hub connecting China with Southeast Asia and South Asia. The construction of Chenggong’s high-speed rail station is the epicenter of the city’s economic boom and revitalization from its ghostly recent past. Jeff Wade of the Australian National University has suggested that Chenggong will be the de facto capital of Southeast Asia (Hodal 2014). This chapter concerns the land-lost peasants of Chenggong in the broader context of China’s current global economic expansion and Yunnan’s transregionally strategic role in materializing China’s ambition for a geographical and geoeconomic compression of its southwestern territory and the neighboring countries and regions. It explores how the peasants have undergone a series of what James Scott calls the ‘state effects’ (Scott 2009: 8, 24, 156), such as land loss, the urban transformation of farmland, livelihood rebuilding, and an altered sense of home. The ethnographic content of this chapter is based on my fieldwork and faculty appointment on the new campus of Yunnan Minzu University in Chenggong since 2011. On the theoretical front, I look upon the peasants’ livelihood transformation as a multilayered issue of the urbanization, migration, and deterritorialization of farming populations in China. The experiences of Chenggong’s peasants share some commonalities with China’s migrant population across the board regarding their economic agency and social marginalization;

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Figure 1 Urbanized Chenggong

however, unlike their counterparts in other parts of China, who are seen to have a unidirectional migration pattern from their rural villages to urban destinations (Zhang 2001; Solinger 1999), Chengong’s peasants rarely migrate out of Yunnan Province; their spatial mobility often does not go beyond the 50 to 90 kilometers radius in which their homes and livelihoods are being reconstructed. Based on my ethnographic work, I thus wish to argue that the peasants’ spatial mobility is a short-distanced ‘circular’ and/or ‘straddling’ (Ellis 2000: 19) livelihood reconstruction process due to the factors related to their affective attachment to their ancestral farmland, lived discomfort of being low-wage earners in urbanized Chenggong, social marginalization, reclaiming of their agricultural skills, and the risk-laden but potentially profitable cash crop farming in the neighboring counties that have not been incorporated into this massive urbanization scheme.

New Urban Livelihoods on the Estranged Ancestral Landscape In Southwest China studies, scholars often give ethnographic and analytical attention to ethnic minorities. It is a demographic fact that Yunnan hosts 26 ethnolinguistic groups including Han. This ethnographic gravitation is found in the works of Sandra Hyde (2007), Susan Blum (2001), Stevan Harrell (2013), and others. A common characteristic in their studies is that the dichotomy between the ethnic minorities and the Han majority is

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the assumed basis of their analyses of such bilateral ethnic relations such as Yi-Han (Harrell 2001), Tibetan-Han (Kolas 2007), Pumi-Han (Wellens 2010), Dai-Han (Hansen 1999), and Yao-Han (Litzinger 2000). At this point it is important to note that the ancestors of the Han peasants with whom I work settled in the area mostly during the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries when the Mongols expanded into Yunnan and Southeast Asia and when the Ming Dynasty subsequently reinforced such expansion by sending military personnel to the region. This historical settlement of Han people in Chenggong is retained in the county historical record and is revealed in the naming of villages, especially since the late fourteenth century when Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, dispatched 300,000 troops to Yunnan, stabilizing the frontiers of his newly established dynasty. Many of those troops camped out in the Chenggong area and their legacy is permanently marked on the landscape. Many current farming areas are named after the head or the ethnic origin of each military unit, such as Wangjiaying (Wang Family Camp), Hui-Hui Ying (Muslim Camp), and Wujiangying (Wu Family Camp). The topography of these historical military camps is also what the local Yi people called dian or the flat lands between the hills. Unlike recent migrants to Yunnan, this group of Han people has a longer history in the region and thus possesses deeper ancestral roots and emotional attachment to the land in the region where they were farmers. In my ethnographic work, I recognize that their relationship to the land and the pattern of how they are coping with their changing livelihoods are similar to other ethnic groups in the vicinity as they also claim themselves as natives of Yunnan. For the last five years I have worked with the farmers whose villages and farmland have now been transformed into the new campus of my university. Currently they are janitors, gatekeepers, and security guards on campus. As low-wage earners, they are undergoing a drastic livelihood change and experiencing emotional responses. However, many of them perceive themselves to be luckier than their counterparts in other parts of the country who were relocated to new environments far away from their home regions with fewer employment opportunities (Liu and Murphy 2006; Wilmsen 2011; McDonald, Webber, and Duan 2008). The new college town in Chenggong seems able to offer job opportunities to the land-lost peasants with little formal education, those these service-oriented jobs are at the bottom of the income scale. Although they have been relocated from their farmland, they nevertheless continue to live in Chenggong except that they are urban residents now living in the apartment complexes that were provided by the city

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government as a form of compensation for their land loss. These special complexes are the new dwelling places for the relocated farmers. The city of Kunming systematically assigns one complex to each village. The architectural structure of these complexes bears no difference from any other commercial housing complex; however, each of them has a ketang or a meeting hall. In a natural farming village, the ketang is a village common for festivals, familial events, and administrative meetings. It is the place where one finds the materiality of the villagers’ social relations, social status, kinship ties, and the flows of information via rumors and gossips. The retaining of this custom means that the social and kinship networks of the relocated farmers are intact except that they no longer have land to till. Many of my ethnographic interlocutors commute between these complexes and the university campus – mostly within walking distance. They continue to walk on the same land but it is now covered by concrete buildings and asphalt streets. I sympathize with their affection, nostalgia, and sense of loss toward their ancestral farmland. Their adjustment to the new urban style is a continuing process. Peasants have occupied the bottom strata of Chinese society since ancient times; however, they have been rooted in their ancestral lands for centuries. As many of my interlocutors express, they feel more powerless than ever because they no longer have recourse to their land as the source of basic needs, for example, rice, wheat, vegetables, and meat. Everything is now acquired via cash, and there is unprecedented pressure to accumulate it. In addition to the low monthly income of 1,500-2,000 RMB, their menial jobs are also socially considered low and even stigmatized among the urbanites of Kunming. They are not migrants but feel like migrants in other Chinese cities. This dynamic, contributing to a sense of ‘uprootedness,’ turns them into a ‘floating population’ (Zhang 2001; Solinger 1999) on their own ancestral land. What is worse is that many city officials and urbanites view them as a burden to the city and the institutions that have acquired their land but are who are legally obligated to provide them with new employment opportunities. In this regard, the land-lost peasants in Chenggong share the common experience with rural migrants elsewhere in China, as they are ‘regarded by city officials and many urbanites as a drain on already scarce public resources and are frequently blamed for increased crime and social instability’ (Zhang 2001: 182). When I ask them, ‘What do you do for a living,’ they often reply, ‘Dagong.’ Dagong refers to menial, physical jobs that do not require skills. This type of social prejudice negatively contributes to their adjustment process to the urban lifestyle.

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Contemporary China’s governing system is referred to as late socialism – a combination of one-party rule and a market economy (Zhang 2001: 2). Under this hybrid system, Chinese society is undergoing social and economic stratification. The benchmark of upward and downward mobility is centered on the growing middle class who require a stable income and/or opportunities for joining the nouveau riche. The changing income structure of China affects existing social relationships, with people’s economic status oftentimes determining their social respectability. In this regard, one’s education, occupation, and income contribute more and more to the social (dis)respectability of a person. Thus, it is difficult to move up socially and economically from the dagong class because those in it are perceived as unskilled laborers. Lifeng, one of my middle-aged female interlocutors, and her husband work on campus as a janitor and a security guard. Their low income means that they can hardly make ends meet for themselves and their two children. In a few years they will face having to pay the college expenses of their children. Their anxiety is the primary motivation for keeping their low-paid jobs whose social and emotional tolls are rather high. In her daily routines, Lifeng often feels that students and some faculty members intentionally avoid her when she sweeps the hallways in the instructional buildings. She also overhears students disrespectfully call her ‘the garbage woman’ or ‘the cleaning old hag.’ She and her husband have to accept this social reality as an integral part of their jobs for the sake of sustaining their family. Many of their peers quit their menial jobs due to the obvious social stigmatization and choose instead to live on the meager cash compensation they receive from the city government. This indignation-driven decision does not get them too far. Eventually they have to reconsider returning to the same jobs or finding alternatives as Chenggong continues to become a slick, expensive district of Kunming due to the state’s economic and infrastructural expansion projects that originate here but reach out to Southeast Asia and South Asia. My conversations with Lifeng and many of her peers show that the social manifestations of their indignation are associated with the social stigmatization and their perception of the different policies aimed at Han as opposed to ethnic minority peasants. They often compare their situation with the neighboring Hui community at Hui-Hui Ying (Muslim Camp). Lifeng and her friends complain that the Hui community has not been subject to the city’s relocation policy and they point to the fact that all Han peasant communities in Chenggong have been relocated and urbanized except for Muslim Camp. The Hui community (comprised of Han Muslims)

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has resisted the advancing urban landscaping by not complying with the city’s request for relocation. The resistance lasted until 2015, when the city of Kunming allegedly bought off the community with a large compensation package. According to Lifeng, in the past, the Hui people had demonstrations and blocked the roads, deterring the construction contractors and local government personnel. Han peasants in the vicinity allege that the city was afraid of the Hui as an ethnic minority due to the state’s favorable policy toward ethnic minorities. In Lifeng’s eyes, because the government gives more resources to and has policies favoring ethnic minorities, the Hui took advantage of it by demanding more compensation than surrounding communities received. Since the end of the 1990s when the city of Kunming initiated its urbanization project in Chenggong, and when most farmlands were being transformed into the new urban environment, Hui-Hui Ying Camp was no longer able to economically sustain itself by its traditional trade of making pickled vegetables after their neighboring Han vegetable growers moved away. Hui-Hui Ying Camp soon began a lucrative but illegal tobacco processing and trading place that became well-known in the province. This illegal income stream contributed to the Hui residents’ initial resistance to the relocation plan of the city and subsequently influenced their demand for a bigger compensation package due to the tobacco processing being their primary source of cash revenue. This is where Lifeng and her compatriots feel that the Hui could get away with not being relocated for many years and ultimately received a compensation package bigger than their Han counterparts. To be noted, the ethnic issues in Yunnan are an integral part of the province’s modernization process. The aff irmative action of the state based on its ethnic identification project in the first three decades of the PRC has difficulty meeting the complex changes that ethnic minorities in Yunnan are facing, for example, penetrating market economy, external investments, and the uniformly designed state development projects. These forces add economic and political marginalization to the ethnic minorities’ geographical marginality. This situation puts survival pressures on the ethnic minorities in the province. The available recourse is the state’s initially designed affirmative policies for ethnic minorities. Overreliance on or exploitation of these policies has become a common exercise of the individual agencies and community actions. Being ethnic is synonymous with having social capital for self-protection and interest-advancing (Blum 2001: 58). It is inevitable that Han people like Lifeng feel excluded from the ethnic minorities’ alleged capitalization of the state policies. Bitterness and

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indignation thus grow among the land-lost Han peasants. Their recourse is not to any policy, as there is none to help them, but to their farming skills. Thus, the low income and the instability of their new urban livelihoods often compel them to wish to turn the clock back or to resume their farming livelihood.

Cash Cropping and Circular Livelihoods There is no ancestral land to return to for farming. It is all beneath the asphalt surface of the university town. However, opportunities for farming are available as a part of the regional modernization and economic growth process. This type of farming is a type of urban entrepreneurship, ironically speaking, catering to the urban consumption of vegetables. Therefore, it is a cash-cropping practice rather than the multiple cropping practice that Lifeng and other farmers are familiar with. The remaining farmlands of Chenggong are being converted to fields used to grow cash crops such as vegetables, fruits, and flowers. The buyers of these cash crops are not just from Kunming but also from many other parts of China and the world, for example, Guangdong, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao, and Western Europe. The provincial government is aware of the growing demand for these cash crops. In 2009, the district government of Chenggong launched a policy that provides subsidies to those who wish to engage in this entrepreneurial-style farming. Households that rent land ranging from five mu (1 mu = 0.16 acres) to ten mu and with a tenure of more than five years are entitled to a cash subsidy of 500 RMB per mu per year for five years (Chenggong District 2011). This plan provides a further incentive to those who rent more than ten mu by categorizing their farming effort as entrepreneurship. Households that take up these official incentives therefore manage cash-crop plots that exceed 20 mu. To the peasants of Chenggong, farming plots of this size are significantly larger than the plots they formerly had, indeed almost ten times more. The district’s 2011 statistics indicate that 12,173 land-lost peasants rent 99,496 mu for cash cropping (Chenggong District 2014). Obviously, resuming farming is becoming a profitable alternative livelihood for these people. The incentives are apparently attractive. The actual practice of cash cropping takes the challenges of investment risks and seasonable migration to other counties as family members begin to live apart from each other within the radius of 50 to 90 kilometers. In some cases, it is the middle-aged parents who take the responsibility of the farming and move away from the

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family while the grandparents and extended relatives provide child care. This new farming practice can be conceived of as a ‘circular livelihood’ signifying the bifocal living-working pattern of the land-lost peasants in Chenggong. Resuming farming does not mean that they have the same sense of attachment to land as before when they were rooted in their ancestral villages; instead, it means that they are now tenants as well as investors of their own cash and labor into entrepreneurial farming. In this regard, the circular livelihood also includes a diversion of family earnings and savings toward the profitable venture of cash cropping. Although the local government has cash subsidization available, the cash croppers have to come up with starting capital of at least 200,000 RMB to cover the rent of the land and the preparatory work for monocropping. Such a circular livelihood can be seen as a motion of ‘straddling’ home and the new farming site, inhabiting both the wish for stability and the aspiration for prosperity, and the risk and the social respect that the intended entrepreneurial farming is supposed to bring. In this set of circular motions, the land-lost peasants are rebuilding their farming livelihood with a clear orientation toward making cash. Farming takes place in the new rural landscape; however, it is inextricably part of the peasants’ urbanized process of surviving and thriving. Xingguo, one of Lifeng’s relatives, quit his university janitorial job and summoned the courage to engage in cash cropping. I followed him and his wife to their new farming site in Songming, 76 kilometers away from Chenggong. Songming is one of the counties with abundant farmland available, making land tenancy possible for land-lost peasants. The couple chose to engage in vegetable farming. For a higher yield, vegetable farmers in the area prefer greenhouse farming situated in a chain of production, acquisition, transportation, and distribution. In other words, vegetable growing is now an industrial production that involves farmworkers, truck drivers, refrigerated storage facility owners, greenhouse builders, seedling suppliers, fertilizer providers, and pesticide sellers. The peasant cash croppers are one of the components in this industrial assemblage. All participants gear their specializations toward profit making. Xingguo’s aspiration comes from his desire to have a new livelihood without social stigma as well as to be able to support his two college-bound children in higher education and in their future married lives. He and his wife rented 20 mu to start with for greenhouse vegetable growing. Cash cropping, as a tedious undertaking, requires the presence of the farmer. The couple spend much of their time meticulously tending their crops – for example, fertilizing, watering, and spraying pesticides. They are bound to

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the farming site in Songming for most of the week. They make a weekly one-night trip back home to Chenggong. Even though they spend six days a week in Songming, they don’t rent an apartment; instead, in order to watching over the cash crops, they built a makeshift bungalow with three rooms (bedroom, kitchen, and storage) next to their greenhouses. They literally live next to their vegetables in the field. They cook their own food at times. As a frugal couple, they make full use of the margins of the 20 mu to grow vegetables for their own daily consumption. This saves them from spending money on buying vegetables from the market. In their greenhouse farming, land is treated like a machine that makes products. Through the products, the land brings them profit. Therefore, the well-being of the land is essential for high productivity. They hire workers to fertilize the land in order to maximize the number of harvest cycles throughout year. One cycle is usually 45 days or so. The mild climate of Yunnan means that efficient use of the land can increase the land’s output. Buyers mostly come from coastal areas like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where restaurants create a high demand for vegetables. The shipping destination of the buyer often determines the final price of the vegetables. This means that the selling price for the land-lost peasants can fluctuate dramatically, contingent upon the season, climate, and other factors of the consumptive destination. The unit price of per kilo can range from 30 cents to seven RMB. Therefore, the gross income for a harvest of 20 mu can vary from 9,000 RMB to 210,000 RMB. As suppliers, the entreprenurial efforts of Xingguo and his wife are subject to a number of fluctuating conditions that limit their desired profit goals. For instance, the refrigerated storage owners could refuse to store their poorly grown vegetables or offer them higher prices for good, marketable yields. The potential for successful cash cropping is there; however, it can only be realized with hard and meticulous work. Life on the new farm is physically demanding and monotonous. Xingguo and his wife spend their spare time with the neighboring farmers. They benefit from the friendly relationship with them by sharing information and providing mutual help during harvest time and when looking for buyers. As they were farmers before, it did not take long to become used to the new farming rhythm. At the same time they keep up with social events taking place in the meeting hall of their apartment complex in Chenggong. To them, it is the place that retains their kinship network. So, whenever there are weddings and funerals, both of them, or at least one of them, travel back to Chenggong. Xingguo’s new livelihood reflects a common reality of land-lost peasants in Chenggong. Being modern is equated with being mobile and flexible, and

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Figure 2 Land-lost peasants’ greenhouse farming

living in two or more locations. Modernity thus means a qualitative change of lifestyle and of modes of production. It demands the person’s responsive adaptation to the demands of modernization, globalization, the market economy, and the consumer market (Gaonkar 1999: 15). In the case of the land-lost peasants, being modern means their adaptation to what I call the ‘floating niche,’ which can be understood as a ‘site-specific “creative adaptation”’ (Gaonkar, quoted in Turner et al. 2015: 8), through which people make themselves modern. The floating niche can be seen as a descriptive means of understanding the bilocal place-making and livelihood reconstruction processes of the land-lost peasants in Chenggong. I agree with Hutchinson that a niche reflects all dimensions of species-environment interrelations (Hutchinson, quoted in Broussard and Young 1986: 268). The formation of a niche can also be seen as a complementary relationship between environmental affordances and the needs of the organism (Smyer Yü 2015: 27). James Gibson states: ‘It is in the very process of attending and responding to these affordances, in the course of their engagements with them, that skilled practitioners – human or non-human get to know them’ (Gibson, quoted in Ingold 2011: 11). I, therefore, think that a niche is the interrelationship between the environmental and social affordances and people’s pursuance. In this regard, the floating niche of Xingguo and other land-lost peasants in Chenggong is not isolated but is embodied in multiple systems, for example, the social, the economic, the regulatory, and the natural.

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Niche is no longer merely a biological reality. It is best to understand it as a biosocial reality. Thus, it does not come into being as a natural process but often as an artificial process in the context of global modernity, one in which human agencies and social environment construct new niches of survival. Everything is nested together interdependently. A floating niche is multidimensional, for example, international, national, and local. Local people may not fully understand all the relationships and processes affecting them, but they know that their life and livelihood have been influenced by a bigger world ‘out there’ (Kottak 1999: 31). In my case study, the land-lost peasants experience these connections through the drastic changes to the landscape of their homeland, their sedentary to their floating life style, and the fluctuation of the vegetable prices. They reconstruct and update their local knowledge in order to respond to these connections.

The Consequences of Transregional Modernity in Chenggong The discourse of modernity has generated a plethora of interpretations contextualized in varied lived experiences of being modern. It favors the qualitative and plural understandings of modernity as ‘universalizing’ (Giddens 1990: 175), ‘singular’ (Jameson 2012), ‘liquid’ (Bauman 2000), ‘indigenizing’ (Sahlins 1999: ix-x), and ‘other modernity’ (Rofel 1999: 13), to name a few. Examples of all of these qualitative conceptualizations of modernity are found in contemporary China. Yunnan is, therefore, not an exception. However, I would like to emphasize that being modern on the ground level is more a lived experience of modernization in the physicalaffect sense than it is a conceptualizing process. Yunnan, as part of China’s Great Western Development Drive (xibu dakaifa), is undergoing multiple physical and infrastructural transformations, for example, from the remote to the integrated, from the rural to the urban, from the landed to the dispossessed, and from the subsistent to the commercial. All the physical transformations of Yunnan and elsewhere in China are the consequence of the state’s reemphasized modernization program propagated as ‘China Dream’ and its new global initiative – ‘One Belt, One Road’ – promoted as China’s transregional-transnational development project. In the ideological sense, the new or renewed modernization projects are part and parcel of the state’s strenuous effort to build the nation as a socialist civilization in which ‘material civilization’ (wuzhi wenming) is antecedent to its fulfillment (Jin 1992: 136-137).

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Obviously, modernity in China in this context is largely a state project to begin with, one which relies heavily on the physical modernization of the nation as a prerequisite for its success. Under this condition, being modern, especially among those situated in lower socioeconomic strata, is synonymous with being modernized. At the same time, the seeming passivity of being modern triggers the agentive responses of emotional expressions and rational choices for the sake of surviving that culminate, therefore, in the repositioning one’s livelihood. In other words, being modern is a mode of being combined with the effect of state-implemented modernization and the exercise of individual agency. This is what is happening among many land-lost peasants with whom I work. I would like to dwell on the state effect a bit more as both a sociomaterial reality and a conceptual term originating from Scott’s work. Relevant to the modern historical changes in Southwest China, especially Yunnan, Scott’s discussion of state effect refers to Zomia as a consequence of state-making and state expansion (Scott 2009: 326-327). The modern ethnolinguistic geography of Yunnan fits Scott’s idea of Zomia as a ‘shatter zone,’ which, for those who prefer to retain their traditional livelihoods, is a place of refuge. Since the mid-twentieth century, the shatter zone as a state effect disappeared from within the Chinese border, though not from Southeast Asia. Ethnic minority areas and regions in Yunnan have been incorporated into eight ethnic autonomous prefectures and 29 autonomous counties (Cao 2008: 14). I am not saying that the state-building process has stopped; instead, the process continues with a different magnitude and orientation. In the case of the land-lost peasants in Chenggong, they have no ‘shatter zones’ to which to retreat as a matter of recourse but they certainly feel shattered, having experienced modernization and the urbanization process as a shattering process regarding their relocation and new livelihood construction. In this context, the state effect that is an outcome of China’s modernization and transregional economic development in Yunnan compels me to reemphasize that being modern is not only a personal or a communal experience but is inseparably forged by a range of state modernization projects geared toward a physical, economic, livelihood, and landscape transformation of existing social-cultural communities. As mentioned in the opening paragraphs, I refer to the land-lost peasants as a type of ‘floating population,’ a term borrowed from the studies of migrant workers in urban China. My use of it in this chapter differs from those of Zhang and Solinger, who emphasize the relatively long distance migration experiences of China’s rural populations to cities. ‘Floating’ in my case study does not mean ‘migrating’ but rather signifies uprootedness, relocation,

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dispossession, disintegration, deterritorialization, and repositioning, all of which take place on one’s ancestral land. While the rural migrant workers in other parts of China have their home villages to return to, the former peasants in Chenggong do not have their home villages anymore. In the case of Chenggong’s former peasants, their ancestral land is both familiar and strange. It is familiar because of the culturally, economically, and emotionally invested places of human settlement, which could be traced back to the Yuan and Ming dynasties (600-700 years ago). It is strange because their villages and farmlands have been replaced by urban high-rises and developed with higher education complexes. They continue to live on the land but do not belong to it or no longer build their livelihoods on it as farmers. In every sense, for my peasant interlocutors, this type of floating mode of being is the raw experience of being modern. Their floating lifestyle is not merely a local happening but is a result of state-corporate transregional development. The external forces of change play an overwhelming role in transforming Chenggong’s peasantry to low-wage earners as well as in prompting them to reinvent their farming livelihoods. In this sense, the causal forces of such a floating lifestyle could be understood as what Van Schendel calls the ‘flows’ of capital, goods, and enterprises in the transregional sense (Van Schendel 2002: 661-662). Metaphorically speaking, many former peasants of Chenggong live just above the flood levels of modernization, urbanization, and transregional economic development in Southwest China. The vessels of their survival are their menial jobs or their recreated farming livelihoods. This leads me to further push the earlier discussion of the floating niche and the circular livelihood. As mentioned, a niche is never a one-sided development of an ecologically bound species but relies on the materialization of the affordances of a given place by its dwellers (Smyer Yü 2015: 26). The ancestral land of the former peasants afforded them a habitat and a set of farming skills, both of which engendered a niche or an occupation as farmers. However, under the current state of affairs and due to policy changes, such a niche is no longer supported by their ancestral land and yet it in part continues to exist in the farming skills of the former peasants. In many instances, the farmers’ current urban jobs fail to replace this set of traditional skills and overwrite the recent memory of their farming livelihoods. In addition to the low wages and low social respect they receive from their urban jobs, it is under these conditions that many former peasants choose to reactivate their farming skills but have to look for farmlands elsewhere. This is where I refer to their current farming activities as a floating niche

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simultaneously signifying their uprootedness from their ancestral land and desire to be farmers again but with a commercial orientation. This is their agentive response to the ongoing state-corporate modernization programs in the region. As this floating niche spans the distance between their living locations and farming sites, those who choose to resume their farming are displaced on a weekly or a monthly basis. They commute between the two locations. Their bilocal life style is undoubtedly a kind of straddling between their no-longer-cultivatable ancestral land and their new farming sites. Because of the commutability between the living and working locations, I, therefore, call this floating niche a circular livelihood whose epicenter continues to be the ancestral land but that is sustained by the commercial farming activities within a commutable radius. This is undoubtedly a creative adaptation in response to the external forces of change. To be noted again, the resumed farming livelihood of the former peasants, as their creative adaptation, is not subsistence-based but is a type of entrepreneurship whose productivity caters to the needs of urban consumptions in China and elsewhere. The transition from subsistence farming to commercial farming is a common phenomenon not only in Yunnan but also in neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. As Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud puts it, ‘rural inhabitants undergo an agrarian transition toward wage work and large-scale cashbased agricultural systems designed to support increasingly urbanized and industrialized economies’ (Turner et al. 2015: 4-5). Such transition/ transformation appears, on the surface, to retain the farming skills of the former peasants; however, in substance, it pulls them into the overall urbanization process and also turns them into an integral part of the state-corporate initiated urbanizing forces. Again, many of the renewed farm workers are not passive recipients of urbanization but are actively seeking ways and means to carve out a new niche with their existing farming skills in the growing understanding of market economy of China that is dependent upon transregional chains of investment, production, and consumption. Being modern in this sense is an exercise of one’s agency to negotiate with the state-sanctioned institutional arrangements (Turner et al. 2015: 8) and to identify a greater habitat that could sustain their customary living skills in the transformed environment of their ancestral land. Thus, the qualitative aspect of modernity among the land-lost but niche-regained former peasants in Chenggong demonstrates their power to act and willingness to construct new forms of agency for survival and thriving.

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References Banerji, Robin, and Patrick Jackson. 2012. ‘China’s Ghost Towns and Phantom Malls.’ BBC, 14 August. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19049254. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Malden: Polity Press. Blum, Susan D. 2001. Portraits of ‘Primitives’: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Broussard, Cynthia A., and Gerald L. Young. 1986. ‘A Reorientation of Niche Theory in Human Ecology toward a Better Explanation of the Complex Linkages between Individual and Society.’ Sociological Perspectives 29: 259-283. Cao, Xinfu. 2008. ‘The Successful Practice of the System of Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Yunnan’ [‘Minzu quyu zizhi zhidu zai Yunnan de chenggong shijian’]. Ethnic Today 11: 14-23. Chenggong District. 2011. ‘The Notice on the Issuing of “The Implementation Scheme (for Trial Use) Concerning the Reemployment of Land-Lost Peasants by Further Subsidizing Them to Rent Land to Grow Vegetables and Flowers”’ [‘Guanyu yinfa “guanyu jinyibu fuchi shidi nongmin waichu zudi zhongcai, zhonghua jiejue jiuye de shishi banfa (shixing)”’], 10 November. http://cg.km. gov.cn/zwbd/zfgz/shgl/253500.shtml. Chenggong District. 2014. ‘Information on the Efforts of Chenggong District to Support Peasants Who Have Lost Land to Rent Land and to Find Employment between 2006 and 2013’ [‘Chenggongqu 2006-2013 nian shidi nongmin waichu zudi ji chuangye jiuye fuchi qingkuang’], 8 December. http://cg.km.gov.cn/ zwbd/bmdt/318789.shtml. Ellis, Frank. 2000. Rural Livelihoods and Diversity in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press. Gaonkar, Dilip P., ed. 1999. Alternative Modernities. Durham: Duke University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hansen, Mette H. 1999. Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Harrell, Stevan. 2013. ‘Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reactions to Them.’ In Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Harrell, Stevan, ed. 2001. Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hodal, Kate. 2014. ‘Thailand’s Ruling Junta Approves China Rail Links Worth $23bn.’ The Guardian, 1  August. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ aug/01/thailand-junta-approve-china-rail-link-23bn. Hyde, Sandra T. 2007. Eating Spring Rice: The Cultural Politics of AIDS in Southwest China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Ingold, Tim 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Abington: Routledge. Jameson, Frederic. 2012. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. London: Verso. Jin, Xi. 1992. A Study of Deng Xiaoping’s Strategic Thought on Socialist Modernization [Deng Xiaoping shehuizhuyi xiandaihua zhanlue sixiang yanjiu]. Shengyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe. Kolås, Ashild. 2007. Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition: A Place Called Shangrila. London: Routledge. Kottak, Conrad P. 1999. ‘The New Ecological Anthropology.’ American Anthropologist 101: 23-35. Liu, Liangqun, and Rachel Murphy. 2006. ‘Lineage Networks, Land Conflicts and Rural Migration in Late Socialist China.’ Journal of Peasant Studies 33: 612-645. Litzinger, Ralph A. 2000. Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging. Durham: Duke University Press. McDonald, Brooke, Michael Webber, and Duan Yuefang. 2008. ‘Involuntary Resettlement as an Opportunity for Development: The Case of Urban Resettlers of the Three Gorges Project, China.’ Journal of Refugee Studies 21: 82-102. Rofel, Lisa. 1999. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1999. ‘What Is Anthropological Enlightenment? Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century.’ Annual Review of Anthropology 28: i-xxiii. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2015. Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Ecoaesthetics. Boston: Walter De Gruyter. Solinger, Dorothy J. 1999. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley: University of California Press. Turner, Sarah, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20: 647-668. Wellens, Koen. 2010. Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands: The Premi of Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Wilmsen, Brooke. 2011. ‘Progress, Problems, and Prospects of Dam-Induced Displacement and Resettlement in China.’ China Information 25: 139-164. Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China’s Floating Population. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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About the author Yang Cheng is an Associate Professor at Yunnan Minzu University, China. She received her MPhil in the anthropology of development from the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2014. Her main research interests are modernity and modernization processes (especially urbanization, migration, and globalization) in the southwest frontier of Yunnan, China. So far, she has joined four research projects which respectively focus on the Han, Naxi, Bulang, and Dulong ethnic groups in Yunnan. The latter two are cross-border ethnic groups along the China-Myanmar border. To make people’s livelihood the main concern, her researches focus on how the group under study experiences various modernization processes and adapts to modernity. Furthermore, she investigates how these adaptations engender transformations in identity, cultural heritage, traditional society, religion, education, and gender relationships. As a member of both the Center for Trans-Himalayan Studies at Yunnan Minzu University and the Research Section for Southeast Asian Studies at Yunnan Provincial Ethnology Research Institute, she is motivated to locate her scholarship in wider contexts and enrich her research vision and study methodology.

9

Tibetan Wine Production, Taste of Place, and Regional Niche Identitiesin Shangri-La, China Brendan A. Galipeau

Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH9 Abstract This chapter explores Tibetan wine production in Yunnan Province, where areas have been transformed into vineyards for state-promoted ‘Shangri-La Wine,’ marketed using Tibetan culture and landscapes. This marketing is also based upon a history of Catholic missionaries who first introduced grapes and wine into the area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the chapter I focus on a Tibetan Catholic community, examining how state promotion of tourism and wine has led to the engagement by villagers with their Catholic history through the production of wine and to the transformation of the village landscape into one defined by vineyards. Historical transregionality of Catholic Tibetan winemaking with France and Switzerland, and contemporarily with the larger Chinese and global economy is also emphasized. Keywords: Tibetan people, landscape, wine, terroir, identity, Catholic

Introduction Traveling through rugged Deqin County in China’s northwest Yunnan Province today, the landscape is quite distinctive, the Lancang River (Dzachu in Tibetan, upper reaches of the Mekong) and Jinsha River (Drichu in Tibetan, upper reaches of the Yangtze) flow through deep, dry, and arid canyons flanked by forest-covered mountains and high, snow-capped peaks. Along the banks of these rivers and their tributaries are scattered Tibetan villages,

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today identifiable by a common yet surprising sight – vineyards. In 2011, while researching the economic impacts of hydropower resettlement in the region, through daily ethnographic engagement with villagers I then began to understand just how important these vineyards have become to livelihoods and daily agricultural life (Galipeau 2014, 2015). Based upon these initial findings, I embarked upon a much larger ethnographic exploration into the history and overall project surrounding this village agricultural industry. I found it was based upon a long if yet small Catholic history in a few villages, combined with recent state-based schemes to simultaneously improve local livelihoods and further promote commodities produced within, and the development of the landscape of ‘Shangri-La.’ By Shangri-La, in this chapter I am referring to both a recently incorporated administrative unit of Yunnan Province and an imagined space for commercial use. This chapter illustrates the story of household wines produced in northwest Yunnan’s Deqin County, and how they have worked to produce distinctive and unique regional economic identities among Tibetan villagers. I begin by ethnographically outlining the history and story of French and Swiss Catholic missionaries who first introduced grapes and winemaking in a select few villages in the late nineteenth century. I then describe how over the last two decades, both the state and local Catholic villagers have moved to re-create village agricultural landscapes using this history. In the case of the Catholic village of Cizhong, working to form a new economic, ethnic, and religious identity melded with state-promoted tourism, while in other areas working to transform the local agricultural landscape of predominantly traditional and subsistence wheat and barley crops, to one primarily defined by vineyards and cash cropping. In the case of the Catholic village of Cizhong, I then ask and inquire into what ways the development of a wine economy based upon Catholic history has worked to give Cizhong a very specific economic niche within the larger landscape of ‘Shangri-La.’ More specifically, in Cizhong, how do wine, Tibetan culture, and conceptions of history work together to create forms of identity and distinction among villagers? In answering these questions, I draw upon the French notion of terroir as a cultural taste of place and method of producer empowerment (Demossier 2011; Ulin 2002; Ulin 2013), and recent engagement and explorations with of the formation of ‘Shangri-La’ as a physical space in China, bringing together state-based tourism development, and cultural and economic agency among local Tibetans (Coggins and Yeh 2014: 3-18; Hillman 2003; Kolas 2011; Smyer Yü 2015: 183-211). My primary argument and assertion within the themes of this volume is that Catholic Tibetans use their religious identity as a

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marketing instrument to promote winemaking as a livelihood practice, emphasizing their historical and religious transregionality with Europe and contemporary economic connections with other parts of China. Within the Sino-Tibetan borderlands this similarly ties into a larger ‘re-emergence of transnational luxury commodity chains’ as these borderlands and their landscapes have been opened up by the local state (Hathaway 2014).

Methodology The majority of the research upon which this chapter is based took place through long-term ethnographic engagement living among Cizhong villagers and engaging in their daily lives. My overall project on wine production in northwest Yunnan upon which smaller portions of this chapter also draw involved multisited regional ethnography in several villages along with visiting wineries, breweries and restaurants, and interviewing government officials. I also spent time in Paris, France, and Martigny, Switzerland, for one month to delve more deeply into the archival history of viticulture in Shangri-La and the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Data was collected over several years’ time in Shangri-La and Deqin County dating back to 2007. Primary data collection though took place beginning in the summer of 2013 with a pilot study in Cizhong village and with long-term work then taking place among a variety of locales over one year from fall 2014 through summer 2015; an additional six months of fieldwork was then conducted in spring and summer 2016. Living side by side with my study subjects and engaging in their daily lives was by far the most useful of my methodological approaches in addition to being a research instrument myself, constantly taking notes, and observing events and activities as they occurred so that I could later interpret them. As Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (2011: 11) also point out though, ‘substance cannot be considered independent of method,’ and I recognize that much of what is written in this chapter comes from my own understanding and interpretations as an ethnographer while simultaneously attempting to understand and interpret the events in the lives of my study subjects, while also stretching things like my own linguistic abilities.

The Missionary Past and Current Winemaking in Cizhong French Catholic missionaries from the Société des Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP) first arrived in northwest Yunnan in the nineteenth century,

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and viewed their work as a gateway to expanding their teachings across greater Tibet. Never being able to reach very far into this isolated and at times violent country, often due to resistance from local Buddhist lamas, the French would eventually manage to set up a slew of churches and convert many Tibetan communities in northwest Yunnan along both the Lancang and Nujiang (Gyalmo Ngulchu in Tibetan, upper reaches of the Salween) rivers. They were never quite able to pierce much further into Tibet. The first of these missionaries, Père Charles Renou, arrived in the region in 1852 and his followers subsequently worked toward establishing the first church in the Lancang Valley at the village of Cikou (today Cigu), just downstream of today’s Cizhong (Bray 1997; Moseley 2011: 124-125). While Renou and the other French priests who later followed him were able to befriend local Tibetan lamas in the Mekong region, this peaceful coexistence did not last. Eventually the churches were destroyed and the priests murdered in a major campaign carried out across the region by Tibetan lamas in 1905 (McLean 2009: 69-70; Moseley 2011: 124-129; Mueggler 2011: 23, 125-126). Four years later, however, in 1909, the Tibetan converts who had remained faithful began construction on a new church along the river, at Cizhong, just upstream of Cikou, where the French Catholics would also reestablish themselves. This community still exists today, and has remained faithful to its Catholic beliefs, with about 80 percent of village households remaining actively Catholic (Goodman 2001: 184-185; Moseley 2011: 124-129). As the French persisted in their missions, they were later joined in the early to mid-twentieth century by request in Paris by a group of Swiss hailing from the Great Saint Bernard Hospice high in the Alps. These fathers had already become quite famous for providing mountain rescues and services to Catholic pilgrims crossing the Alps en route to Rome. Their expertise in mountain travel and high-altitude living, including in mountain vinicultural techniques, were crucial in helping to continue and eventually take over the work first begun by the French in Yunnan. Today in Cizhong, where the original church built in 1909 still stands, Catholic households have persisted in their beliefs and are led in their prayers by a Han Chinese priest from Inner Mongolia who arrived in 2008, sent by the Catholic Association of China. Prior to this time, the village had no priest, and so no formal masses were held after 1952 when the remaining French and Swiss Christians were expelled. Villagers nonetheless maintained their religion and began to openly pray in the 1980s. In addition to leaving behind Catholicism, the French and more substantially the Swiss fathers also planted grapes within the walled churchyards at Cizhong, and according to local histories also made wine for mass, though this practice

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Figure 1 Map of Yunnan showing village field sites

was not widespread nor openly shared with many villagers except for those who directly assisted the fathers. According to a local, 86- year-old historian and elder in Cizhong who had direct encounters with the French and Swiss, grapes in the Deqin area were in fact first grown and introduced upstream in the area today known as Yanjing in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, where another Catholic church and winemaking also remain active today (Zhengping 2011: 54-56). The French here brought these grapes by way of Sichuan, though local history also suggests they may have also come by

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Figure 2 Father Angelin Lovey of the Saint Bernard Mission to Tibet tending vineyards in the Cizhong churchyard

Courtesy and copyright: Maison hospitalière du Grand-Saint-Bernard, Médiathèque Valais

way of Vietnam though southern Yunnan where French Catholics also established a strong presence (Michaud 2007). The grapes introduced by the fathers and still found in the churchyard and now in the fields of many Cizhong households are a varietal called ‘Rose Honey.’ Originally these grapes were grown predominantly for use in making wine for Catholic mass, though based on archival materials and the works of Bonet (2006: 161) and Croidys (1949: 153-154), it seems that the Swiss Saint Bernard priests in fact also produced wine and planted grapes in larger quantities for their own enjoyment and personal consumption. Today in Cizhong, something that I do not necessarily consider a revival but rather a reworking of the agricultural landscape and life has occurred to include widespread household grape growing and winemaking, a newly emergent commercial industry of sorts connected with the village’s Catholicism and history. I suggest that this new form of livelihood formation drawing on the village’s transregional history has created a unique means of modernization. Though elders today indicate that the original vines were mostly restricted to the churchyards and knowledge of winemaking was never passed on to a large number of villagers, this has not prevented a reworking of agricultural practices and identities to include what villagers describe as an historically important (if not expected) practice of growing

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grapes and making wine that comes along with being a Cizhong Tibetan, applying not only to Catholic households but to Buddhist ones as well. According to most accounts, the interest in growing grapes and making wine first occurred in one ethnic Catholic Tibetan household of Wu Gongdi in 1998. I use Wu Gongdi’s real name rather than a pseudonym by his own request. Gongdi is a public figure in Cizhong as the director of the church management association and has also been the main protagonist in a documentary produced about Cizhong and Catholicism in Tibet by the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, The Way to Tibet (2004). Gongdi and his son Hong Xing are both especially proud of their family’s winemaking and viticulture, which is something they are known for. They asked me to use their family members’ real names when writing about them because they do indeed want people to know about their wine and their family’s story. Gongdi told me that for him the idea of taking cuttings from ‘Rose Honey’ vines in the churchyard to plant his own vineyards and then make his own wine came from the thought that before wherever there was a missionary, there was a vineyard, and that to have a proper Catholic mass you also need to have wine. For him, especially as the manager of the church association, and lay spiritual leader at that time (ten years before a permanent priest arrived in the village), not having wine anymore meant that religiously and culturally, life in Cizhong was in a way incomplete. Additionally, with a burgeoning tourist interest just beginning at that time in Cizhong coupled with the beginning years of tourism promotion across ‘Shangri-La’ in northwest Yunnan, making wine to serve to tourists as a way of sharing local history and increasing his income seemed like a novel idea for Gongdi. Gongdi has also explained in two documentary films produced in the early 2000s about his family and Cizhong (one filmed by himself and his son with the support of Yunnan academics), that his interest in producing wine is also connected with rising concerns over health and naturalness in China, and that compared to hard grain liquor or baijiu, more and more people in China and turning to grape wine for its health qualities and, in his own case, because it is organic. Perhaps one of the most memorable times I have seen Gongdi discuss this matter was unfortunately before I met him, but he and his son Hong Xing perform a wonderful drinking song about the health and religious benefits of their wine in their self-filmed documentary, Cizhong Red Wine (茨中红酒) from 2002, produced by the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (Liu 2002). In the film, prior to singing the song, the entire family discusses their potential future economic gains that will come with the grapes they have begun to grow and the wine they are making, and they also toast with the family’s grandmother wishing her

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a long life by drinking their new healthy grape wine. The lyrics to the song they sing are as follows: Ah, wine! Beautiful fragrant wine! Ah, wine! Sweet dew that makes men happy! Plant a grape vine in the lands of Cizhong, Present the first glass of sweet grape wine to Almighty God, Present the second glass of clear and fragrant grape wine to your kind parents, Take the last glass of clear and fragrant grape wine for ourselves and play a game.

In order to ensure his wine was produced in the traditional method employed by the missionaries, in 1997 Gongdi first traveled to Yanjing to learn about winemaking from his grandmother’s sister, who was a Catholic nun there. After learning the methods, which he insists are unique to his family, though other villagers in Cizhong often say he boasts too much and everyone now uses this method of winemaking, he returned to Cizhong and from 1998 onward began producing wine, first using grapes from the church yard and from other areas around the Dzachu where they had been Figure 3 Wu Gongdi making wine

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planted, and eventually using grapes from his own vineyards planted with ‘Rose Honey’ cuttings taken from the church. Following Gongdi’s lead, by around 2002-2004, most families in Cizhong had also begun planting grapes and making wine using ‘Rose Honey’ cuttings, with each family seeing the potential market and success that selling wine as a historical product from Cizhong’s landscape could provide. Today every household in Cizhong can be seen as instrumentalizing upon Catholic religion and history for commercial orientation through viticulture and winemaking. This is one of the primary ways in which this trend ties into the themes of this volume, showing Gongdi’s and his family’s agency in reconstructing and reconfiguring household livelihoods and economic and touristic niche identities in Cizhong.

Landscape Change, Tibetan Identity, and Terroir in Cizhong There is no doubt that grapes and wine are indeed a foreign introduction, and most villagers themselves freely admit this, but simultaneously, Catholic villagers when asked will still often assert that wine is cultural for them as Catholic Tibetan people and because of Cizhong’s history and religious ritual practices coupled with new Shangri-La tourism. Below some quotes from Wu Gongdi and others are provided to help exemplify these assertions: Wine is important to local culture because it is needed for Catholic mass, and this ritual can’t take place without wine. Wherever there is a church there is a vineyard. I think Catholic culture is part of Tibetan culture, so wine is also part of Tibetan culture. But you also can’t talk about wine without talking about Catholic mass. The fathers who were here even learned to speak Tibetan and I think this also makes wine part of Tibetan identity here. Cizhong is a big name in local Tibetan culture and lore. Before wine and grapes were not part of Tibetan culture but now they are because everyone knows about our winemaking.

There are many more quotes like these from my interviews, but each of them all suggest that wine and vineyards are a part of a dual identity among Catholic Tibetans in Cizhong, whereby they are Tibetans through linguistic, cultural, and ethnic affiliation, and Catholic through their adopted religion.

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Through the facets of history, religion, and now with the development of Shangri-La and tourism, a reputation and expectation have also ensued among both visitors and villagers alike that Cizhong’s landscape includes two things: the original French church and the accompanying vineyards. These vineyards though are much more a modern part of Cizhong villagers’ identities given that historically they were never nearly as extensive as they are today. Indeed, Lim (2009), who has also published ethnographic work on Cizhong, while focusing primarily on the ethnic identity provided to villagers by Catholicism, has also observed the new landscape inscription provided by household vineyards in the context of villagers working toward exoticizing themselves within larger Shangri-La: Hence in an interesting way, the increasing commercialization of wine production has discursively facilitated the inscription of a ‘foreign religion’ into the local tradition of the Catholic Tibetan areas, through an advertising narrative that connects the legacy of the French missionaries with the exoticism of an earthly paradise in China. (93)

This brings me into the primary thrust of my discussion on Cizhong, landscape, and identity utilizing a construct of the French notion of terroir or ‘taste of place’ (Trubek 2009). Demossier (2011) describes terroir among wine growers in France as being a twofold process that has recently evolved more into a localized discourse in response to globalization, similar to what I argue is occurring among Cizhong Tibetans. Terroir, according to Demossier, was previously used as a marker of the geological and geographical uniqueness of French wines, and often came as a means of legal recognition following local senses of pride and distinction among individual winemakers in France. Today terroir has been recontextualized by rural vintners as a process of historical and cultural differentiation within the global economy; providing such farmers with a means but which to make themselves distinct. Terroir as a construct has allowed small-scale local farmers to identify themselves with their products, wine in particular, through direct connections to landscape and history (also see Guy 2007; Ulin 1995; Ulin 2002). As Demossier (2011) further indicates, the recent entry into terroir studies by ethnographically focused anthropologists in particular has brought to light new details on production, consumption, and social actors involved in winemaking (685). In a sense, anthropologists have sought to ask how wine is given meaning and value by those who make it, referring to terroir as a special, ecological, and cultural process that brings together actors, their histories, and agricultural practices (686). Drawing

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upon histories of wine growing in France in particular, terroir has created discussions regarding much like what is occurring in Cizhong, over how old histories and landscapes of winemaking are made new, and what the roles of history are in these social processes (697). However, despite the wide range of social scientific approaches meant to capture the deployment of terroir by winemakers in France, very few have sought to capture its strategic deployment in precise geographic locations as Demossier does in Burgundy, and as I seek to do in Cizhong (687). Terroir treatments in Asia and China in particular have not tended to focus on wine up until this point, even though this is where the conception began in France and where the majority of literature can be found. Using an inexplicit terroir style framework, Tsing (2008, 2009, 2013), in discussing matsutake (Japanese) mushrooms (also found in Yunnan Province and Deqin), has suggested that rural commodities can confer different forms of meaning and value upon those who both produce and consume them, and that more research into how such value among producers is created is necessary. Besky (2014), Ching Chan (2012), and Zhang (2013) borrowing the concept of terroir from wine scholars, have also each demonstrated how the creation or re-creation of agricultural landscapes using past histories combined with modern producer ideals can be engraved utilizing an idea of ‘taste of place,’ and that by mobilizing rural workers and farmers to buy into such an ideal, they themselves will begin to buy into the value of the crops being grown, in these cases highly expensive teas in Darjeeling India and various regions of China. I suggest here that a similar process of creation and re-creation of history and producers’ identities is taking place with wine in Cizhong, which is marketed by villagers utilizing the Catholic history of the missionaries who first introduced grape growing and winemaking to the region. In a sense, Cizhong wine and the household vineyards from which it is produced are marketed using what I suggest is terroir like language, both because they originate in a region officially designated as ‘Shangri-La’ or a Himalayan paradise by the government, and due to the history of French introduction and production that has since been passed on through generations of villagers to this day. While most colloquial translations and terroir refer to it as ‘taste of place,’ the ways in which Cizhong villagers produce and market their wine may in fact be better referred to as ‘place of taste.’ Cizhong and its people have developed a very specific reputation for their wine and for being a place where unique wine first introduced by French and Swiss missionaries and produced by villagers today following these original techniques can be found. Though in fact while most villagers market their wine and suggest

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that they produce it using traditional techniques introduced and taught to them by the Catholic fathers, Wu Gongdi’s story about how he first learned to make wine in 1997 from a nun along with other oral history accounts suggest that these forms of marketing are in fact slightly inaccurate, though certainly tell a good story, which is why what I choose to call ‘place of taste’ and historical-style marketing of Cizhong wine is so effective. The inaccuracy here, though, comes from the fact that winemaking was not a tradition passed on to the locals from the French and the Swiss, and then from generation to generation as most claim, but rather something newly learned. The elders confirm that the French and Swiss fathers shared their winemaking techniques with only a few close village assistants, and not with the general population. In a sense, Chinese and foreign tourists who visit Cizhong today and purchase wine do so primarily because of the historical value and history of foreign transregional Catholicism embedded within the landscape of Cizhong through the French church built in the early twentieth century, and through the agency of village winemakers. Over the last fifteen years, large swaths of household farmlands have been converted into vineyards in an attempt to imbue the landscape with a history of creating, drinking, buying, and selling wine based upon the village’s past, combined with the contemporary indigenous, state, corporate, and touristic inscription or imagination of ‘Shangri-La’ as a physical space through the renaming of a town and county previously known as Gyalthang, or Zhongdian in Chinese (Coggins and Yeh 2014; Hillman 2003; Smyer Yü 2015). By planting vineyards and invoking Cizhong’s Catholic history, I suggest villagers have been able to invoke something like terroir, as Demossier (2011) contends, to not only encompass things like soil, geology, and geography, but also cultural or ethnic elements as well. In doing so, they are not simply becoming subjects in the state ‘mapping of Shangri-La,’ but like many local Tibetans, rather playing an active role in the creation of Shangri-La as a physical space, alongside state and corporate manifestations of Shangri-La (Coggins and Yeh 2014: 5; Smyer Yü 2015: 191-195); through the process of landscape creation, they create their own image as Cizhong Tibetan people. I also wish to emphasize here that while the renaming of neighboring Gyalthang County in northwest Yunnan as Shangri-La, and what Coggins and Yeh term the ‘shangrilalization’ of the greater Sino-Tibetan borderlands have been conceived and formulated as state-based projects and forms of ‘governance […] where cultural economies are reconfigured for tourismbased development’ (2014: 16), in Cizhong, wine promotion and production have been a grassroots village endeavor. This is much different from the rest

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of Deqin County, where the state has played a very active role in promoting grape agriculture and wine production, which I discuss in the next section. In Cizhong, however, while the state promotes tourism to the village because of its unique history within the larger Shangri-La landscape, the endeavor of making and promoting wine as part of this tourism scheme and simultaneously promoting it as having been ‘Tibetan’ made, or rather ‘Franco-Tibetan’ made, has been a village-based endeavor beginning with Wu Gongdi’s efforts in 1997. Indeed, it is possible to visit Tibetan villages for tourism in any number of places in northwest Yunnan, so part of what wine and vineyards to an extent as a visual sight have provided Cizhong villagers with, is a level of distinction and niched living through the wine that they serve to visitors themselves. Perhaps one of my favorite quotes I came across regarding this idea came from the same local, 86-year-old historian I mentioned earlier, who compared the difference between serving visitors butter tea, the ubiquitous Tibetan drink served all over the region, and wine: People like the wine here for its unique history. The French fathers brought wine here and wine is more civilized than butter tea, and it is getting more and more popular in China. Through wine we can provide a civilized way to welcome tourists into Tibetan culture and to experience it and the region.

In many ways this quote, and in particular the use of ‘civilized,’ ties quite well into the dual cultural and religious consciousness of Catholic Tibetans, and niched living within larger Shangri-La, which I suggest has occurred with wine production in Cizhong. Given the transregional nature of this volume, it also points toward both the connections that borderland Tibetans have made with other parts of the globe and the Himalayas, and suggests an ideal of ‘indigenizing modernity,’ and both reproducing and reconstructing livelihoods in the face of a globalizing trans-Himalayan region, a major theme discussed by Smyer Yü in the introduction and by many of my coauthors in this volume (Li, Michaud, Smyer Yü, Turner, Yang; see also Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015). The idea that wine allows Cizhong villagers to provide a more civilized experience to tourists compared to other villages in the area is an important queue toward the distinction and niched living I suggest villagers experience in their wine production, as is the unique and authentic ‘ethnic Tibetan’ and rural household-produced component of village wines as explained by Wu Gongdi:

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All the bars and hotels in places like Zhongdian and Lijiang (another popular tourist town to the south), sell fake ‘Rose Honey’ wine, and it is not real. My family has actually received a certificate from the quality bureau of Deqin County stating that our ‘Rose Honey’ is authentic. People especially also like Shangri-La Wine because it says ‘minority’ and ‘homemade.’ This makes Chinese people more curious and interested in the wine.

Authenticity, being organic, and household made, are all important here within my contextualizing Cizhong wine as being marked by a village terroir, which emphasizes various aspect of the placiality of Cizhong, including the history of the missionaries, ‘traditional’ French winemaking techniques, and the Tibetan landscape. ‘Rose Honey’ grapes are also unique historically due their French or Swiss introduction and preservation within the churchyards, and villagers in Cizhong actively promote their wine as organic and also as being made from ‘Rose Honey’ grapes. This differs greatly from the larger corporate wine projects taking over village fields throughout the rest of Deqin, where recently introduced cultivars, primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, are grown, usually under heavy chemical intensification. Cizhong villagers recognize this and actively promote their wine as both authentic ‘Rose Honey’ and as being organic, which they contrast against the corporate Shangri-La Wine, which can also be bought in local stores and is produced using grapes grown by other villages in Deqin. In Cizhong, however, villagers have managed to define themselves through their wine and the planting of vineyards, highlighting what makes them not just Shangri-La Tibetans, or, based on the work of Lim (2013: 110), ‘religio-ethnic’ Catholic Tibetans. In my contention, this provides them with a newly emergent form of regional ethnoeconomic identity within the larger Shangri-La landscape, moderated by economic distinction and niched living as winemakers within larger Shangri-La. Both Smyer Yü in the introduction to this volume, and Michaud in his own chapter, drawing from Scott (2009), and others point toward earlier historical conceptualizations of this type of niched living I suggest is occurring in Cizhong with winemaking today. Here certain highland ethnic groups have formed identities based upon both subsistence living and economic production modes. As Smyer Yü notes, quoting Scott: ‘Ecological niche, because it marks off different subsistence routines, rituals, and material culture, is one distinction around which ethnogenesis can occur’ (Scott 2009: 262). Michaud aptly adds:

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Different ecological niches and variations in their degrees of industrialization, diffused chiefly from the core states, ensured that inhabitants from each tier could deliver specialized produce, goods, and services. Goods that were gathered, hunted, herded or grown in the high and middle regions (rare timber, coffin wood, medicinal plants, game, and various parts of animals considered essential in the Chinese, Indian, Thai, or Vietnamese pharmacopeia) were traded for indispensable processed goods common in the lowlands but often lacking in the highlands (cloth, precious metals, steel tools, salt, petrol, matches, firearms, or gunpowder).

Today this type of ethnogenesis and niched living continues among Cizhong’s winemakers, fulf illing a certain place within the imagined landscape of ‘Shangri-La,’ by producing goods for China’s emerging and mobile traveling consumer classes seeking out both Shangri-La and wine, an increasingly desirable good among Chinese consumers. This contemporary articulation (versus the historical notions of Smyer Yü and Michaud), of ‘niched living’ as a form of livelihood adaption to modernity, is aptly described by Yang (this volume) in the case of land-lost peasants outside the provincial capital of Kunming. Yang describes being modern among these peasants as an adaption or ‘floating niche,’ framed as a ‘site-specific “creative adaptation,”’ drawing from Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud (2015: 8), through which people make themselves modern. Through Yang’s particular case of ‘niched living,’ placed together with that of household winemakers such as Wu Gongdi in Cizhong, there is a certain pattern within the communities and peoples described across this volume (Li, Michaud, Turner) in which livelihoods tied to landscapes, natural resources, and agriculture are adapted through the agency of these peoples to cope with and meld themselves within the globalization and state-initiated changes occurring across this trans-Himalayan region. Wine production and promotion as a method of such state craft though, contrary to local agency, is also prevalent as I describe below.

Corporate and State Vineyard and Wine Development in Deqin Throughout the Lancang and Jinsha valleys in Deqin, vineyards and wine have similarly transformed village landscapes and household farming over the last fifteen years, though contrary to Cizhong, these changes have not been driven by household development of winemaking, but rather by state and corporate development interests. In this section, I briefly outline these

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developments drawing on a variety of interviews with county government officials, village leaders, and company officials. I then draw out my comparison between the changes this industry has brought to village agricultural landscapes, contrasting these changes with those also created by wine and vineyards in Cizhong. Wine promotion and production is big business in Deqin today, and has become a major local policy initiative for rural economic development in the region, with the government co-opting and monopolizing most of the grape and wine production, directing the majority of sales of village grapes to the Shangri-La Wine Company. Unlike Cizhong where at least some, even if a very limited history of growing grapes and winemaking previously existed, villages who never engaged in viticulture on their own, have now only done so at the urging of the prefectural and county governments, who partnered with Shangri-La Wine (part of a much larger nationwide conglomerate named VATS) sometime around 2002 or 2003. Based on interviews with the assistant manager of the Shangri-La Winery in Tiger Leaping Gorge Town to the south, the company itself was actually original begun as a barley liquor maker, but was later approached by the government to begin producing wine from grapes grown by Deqin’s villagers as part of both a ‘Shangri-La’ promotion scheme and method of improving household incomes. This has virtually transformed all of the lowland agricultural fields in Deqin into vineyards. Elsewhere, I’ve discussed the government and Shangri-La Wine Company’s development scheme, though in fact also mentioned that at the time when that research was conducted in 2011, my information was based mostly upon the direct experiences of village farmers, due to a lack of access to government and company officials (Galipeau 2015). More recently in 2014, due to better research permission and access, I was able to conduct such interviews and retell the story of Shangri-La Wine and village development here, drawing upon an interview with a public official named Litsing Gerong working in the Deqin County biological resource office. Litsing Gerong is an easily identifiable public figure and also heavily featured in an article from 2012 in the China Daily, crediting him with putting Deqin on the map as a wine region, so I’ve used his real name since he would be easily identifiable (Xiao and Li 2012). According to Litsing, grapes and wine first began with a pilot project in 2000 which included land in one village named Bu along with Cizhong. Based on my own work it is important to note here that this did not involve simply promoting the growing of ‘Rose Honey’ grapes, but rather introducing Cabernet varieties to Cizhong to sell to wineries as a new means of income, which for the most part actually

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failed in Cizhong with most Cabernet often becoming too diseased without heavy fertilizer and pesticide use. Thus most villagers in Cizhong have abandoned the state-promoted growing of Cabernet and just produce their own wines to sell to tourists, though unlike Wu Gongdi some do still grow more Cabernet and use more chemicals to do so. The original pilot project involved over 200 mu of land, though another former county agriculture worker in Bu told me only 60 mu were planted in each village. In 2002 Shangri-La Wine was then begun based on the initial observed successes with the pilot project and the government partnered with the Huaze (华泽), a barley liquor company formed near Shangri-La/ Zhongdian in 1999, to form Shangri-La Wine Company as part of a national liquor conglomerate named VATS. By 2013, there were 130,000 mu of vineyards being grown in the region. Litsing has also explained that his own wine and grape expertise has often been exaggerated, as seen in the China Daily article featuring him and crediting him with the introduction and success of this industry (Xiao and Li 2012). He began working for the county biological resources office in 2003 and was basically told to learn about grapes and wine then. In September 2013, though, he and others did visit wineries, restaurants, and chateaus in California to learn more about winemaking. In his position, by introducing wine and grapes as a new form of village agriculture, Litsing suggests the local government has been able to significantly increase household incomes across the region, something my own survey research (see Galipeau 2015) confirms, but there are costs to this potential success discussed in the next section. Despite a variety of concerns highlighted below regarding the motivations and successes of Shangri-La Wine as a household development project in Deqin, Litsing, as the organizer of this program at the village level, does come across as having a genuine interest in the well-being of villagers. He provides every villager with his phone number and prides himself on his direct and personal connection with all the villagers in the region whenever they need assistance. Three topics regarding the Shangri-La Wine project which I’ve been particularly concerned about in my own observations are heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in villages selling their grapes to ShangriLa, a lack of support for household wine production in places like Cizhong, especially when sales to Shangri-La are not successful, and the overall stability of the industry in terms of long-term outlook and food security described in Galipeau (2015). That is what has happened with little to no subsistence grain (wheat, barley, and buckwheat) production anymore, and an uneasiness among villagers about being able to sell grapes to ShangriLa. When discussing these concerns with Litsing, he actually provided

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some keen and fair responses, though not enough to ease my critiques completely. He did indeed admit that buckwheat, a traditional Tibetan staple and culturally significant crop, has actually gotten very expensive in Deqin due to being replaced by grapes, and that this is a problem since local people still really like it. He also explained that compared to other parts of China, less pesticides and fertilizers are used in Deqin for viticulture and that here there is also more organic manure which can be used as fertilizer. He went on to explain that in wine regions in the north of China many more chemicals are used, though I have nothing to compare or quantify this against, and have still seen a lot of chemical use, which only a limited number of environmentally active villagers seem to care about. With regards to individual villagers being able to promote their wine, and do so organically like Wu Gongdi and his son Hong Xing in Cizhong, Litsing explained that the government really doesn’t encourage household winemaking and wine marketing because it’s much harder to meet and uphold health and quality standards. Though this certainly doesn’t seem to have prevented virtually all of Cizhong’s villagers from making their own wine, something I’ve recommended elsewhere might actually be beneficial for income diversification in other villages due to the annual instability of selling to Shangri-La, who often shows up late in the season to buy grapes, causing concerns over income and food security (Galipeau 2015).

Conclusion: Juxtaposing Niche Winemakers and Livelihood Modernization in Cizhong with Corporate and State-Based Winemaking The development of viticulture and wine production in the rest of Deqin outside of Cizhong has followed quite a different path, far less related to individual producer identities, religion, culture, and history, and tied more heavily to the larger national Chinese economy and developing ‘Shangri-La.’ Grapes have become the crop grown in most abundance, often forming a virtual monocrop of vineyards. Outside of Cizhong, I view the development and promotion of grape growing as a household form of agriculture and a state methodology by which to enhance Deqin’s ‘shangrilalization’ (Coggins and Yeh 2014), as a primarily state-based, top-down form of development and also landscape alteration framed in the context of what Yeh (2013) calls ‘development as a gift.’ In this work, Yeh discusses state territorialization and landscape transformation in central Tibet related to urbanization, vegetable farming carried out first through local household labor and then

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migrant workers, and village and countryside modernization. Within these three examples, Yeh explains that development as a gift should be viewed in very ambiguous in terms of how it benefits local Tibetan households. Of five key points outlined within Yeh’s framework, one is particularly important and pertinent to my own case of wine and landscape change in Deqin: Exploring how tracing agency and power in the production of material landscapes helps to see how development produces contradictory subjects and complex subject positions. We can see that in Cizhong, while drawing upon the state’s promotion of Shangri-La, many of the material changes in the landscape have involved the agency of villagers such as Wu Gongdi themselves, building upon their history and identity as Tibetan Catholics. I argue that villagers use their seemingly Catholic-based identity as a marketing instrument for the promotion of household-grown grapes and wine. In this sense, the Catholic Tibetans fundamentally behave in the same ways as their non-Catholic compatriots who grow grapes purely as a cash crop, except that they cash in on their Catholic and European connections. This is a case of agency yet identity is also instrumental in the process. In Cizhong, people will explicitly tell you that for them producing wine has to do with their what I’ve called historical and religious ‘niche’ economic identities in larger Shangri-La. This differs greatly from the case of other villages in Deqin, where converting traditional agricultural fields to vineyards has been carried out largely at the suggestion of and through promotion by the state and corporate actors. Transregional religious identity melded with ethnic Tibetan identity has thus become vital in adapting to and indigenizing modernity for Cizhong winemakers. Along these lines of transregionalism, viticulture and wine also work to encompass and bring household economies and livelihoods into the fold of greater China, though the production of a luxury commodity, for China’s emerging consumer classes. For Catholics, this transregionality then also includes historical connections with Europe. This commodity is then also not only marketed as wine, but labeled as Tibetan (and in the case of Cizhong wine as French) from ‘Shangri-La,’ following recent trends among urban Han Chinese who seek to ‘consume’ Tibet.

References Besky, Sarah. 2014. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Bonet, Andre. 2006. Les Chretiens Oublies du Tibet. Paris: Presses de la Renaissance. Bray, John. 1997. ‘French Catholic Missions and the Politics of China and Tibet, 1846-1865.’ In Proceedings of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, Volume 1: Tibetan Studies, ed. Ernst Steinkellner et al., 83-95. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Graz. Ching Chan, Selina. 2012. ‘Terroir and Green Tea in China: The Case of Meijiawu Dragon Well (Longjing) Tea.’ In Geographical Indications and International Agricultural Trade: The Challenge for Asia, ed. Louis Augustin-Jean, Hélène Ilbert, and Neantro Saavedra Rivano, 226-238. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Coggins, Chris, and Emily T. Yeh. 2014. ‘Introduction: Producing Shangrilas.’ In Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ed. Emily T. Yeh and Chris Coggins, 3-18. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Croidys, Pierre. 1949. Du Grand-Saint-Bernard Au Thibet: ‘Sur La Terre Des Esprits’ Une Equipe Héroique S’en va Batir a 3000 Mètres Un Nouveau Saint-Bernard. Paris: Spes. Demossier, Marion. 2011. ‘Beyond Terroir: Territorial Construction, Hegemonic Discourses, and French Wine Culture.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17.4: 685-705. Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. 2011. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Galipeau, Brendan A. 2014. ‘Socio-Ecological Vulnerability in a Tibetan Village on the Mekong River, China.’ Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 34.2: 38-51. Galipeau, Brendan A. 2015. ‘Balancing Income, Food Security, and Sustainability in Shangri-La: The Dilemma of Monocropping Wine Grapes in Rural China.’ Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment 37.2: 74-83. Goodman, Jim. 2001. The Exploration of Yunnan. Kunming: Yunnan People’s Publishing House. Guy, Kolleen M. 2007. When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hathaway, Michael. 2014. ‘Transnational Matsutake Governance: Endangered Species, Contamination, and the Reemergence of Global Commodity Chains.’ In Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, ed. Emily T. Yeh and Chris Coggins, 153-173. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hillman, Ben. 2003. ‘Paradise Under Construction: Minorities, Myths and Modernity in Northwest Yunnan.’ Asian Ethnicity 4.2: 175-188. Kolas, Ashild. 2011. Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition: A Place Called Shangrila. London: Routledge. Lim, Francis Khek Gee. 2009. ‘Negotiating “Foreignness,” Localizing Faith: Tibetan Catholicism in the Tibet-Yunnan Borderlands.’ In Christianity and the State in

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Asia: Complicity and Conflict, ed. Julius Bautista and Francis Khek Gee Lim, 79-96. London: Routledge. Lim, Francis Khek Gee. 2013. ‘“To the Peoples”: Christianity and Ethnicity in China’s Minority Areas.’ In Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Francis Khek Gee Lim, 105-120. London: Routledge. Liu, Wenzeng. 2002. Christmas Eve in Cizhong, Cizhong Red Wine [Cizhong Shengdan Jie, Cizhong Hongjiu, 茨中圣诞夜, 茨中红酒]. Kunming: Baima Mountain Culture Research Institute. McLean, Brenda. 2009. George Forrest: Plant Hunter. Suffolk: Antique Collectors Club. Michaud, Jean. 2007. ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880-1930. Leiden: Brill. Moseley, Robert K. 2011. Revisiting Shangri-La. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press. Mueggler, Erik. 2011. The Paper Road: Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2015. Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Ecoaesthetics. Berlin: De Gruyter. Trubek, Amu B. 2009. The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tsing, Anna. 2008. ‘Contingent Commodities: Mobilizing Labor in and beyond Southeast Asian Forests.’ In Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature, and People in the Neoliberal Age, ed. Joseph Nevins and Nancy Lee Peluso, 27-42. 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Beyond Economic and Ecological Standardisation.’ Australian Journal of Anthropology 20.2: 347-368. Tsing, Anna. 2013. ‘Sorting out Commodities: How Capitalist Value Is Made through Gifts.’ HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3.1: 21-43. Turner, Sarah, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ulin, Robert C. 1995. ‘Invention and Representation as Cultural Capital.’ American Anthropologist 97.3: 519-527. Ulin, Robert C. 2002. ‘Work as Cultural Production: Labour and Self–identity among Southwest French Wine–growers.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8.4: 691-712.

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Ulin, Robert C. 2013. ‘Terroir and Locality: An Anthropological Perspective.’ In Wine and Culture: Vineyard to Glass, ed. Rachel E. Black and Robert C. Ulin, 67-84. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. The Way to Tibet. 2004. Hong Kong: Audio Visual Center of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong. Xiao, Xiangyi, and Yingqing Li. 2012. ‘High Ambitions.’ China Daily, 31 August. Yeh, Emily T. 2013. Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Zhang, Jinghong. 2013. Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Zhengping, Li. 2011. Chinese Wine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

About the author Brendan A. Galipeau completed his doctorate in anthropology in Spring 2017 at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa and begins as the Annette and Hugh Gragg Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transnational Asian Studies at the Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University in Fall 2017. He first travelled to Yunnan Province in China in 2007 as an undergraduate in field studies and has spent several months in the province each year since. His research interests and publications focus on environmental and economic anthropology of hydropower development, agricultural practices, and non-timber forest products in Southwest China. He is currently at work on a book manuscript under contract with the University of Washington Press tentatively titled Crafting a Tibetan Terroir: Wine Production, Identity, and Landscape Change in Shangri-La, China. This work explores economic and ecological representations of ethnicity and identity formation as they relate to agricultural change and commodification of wine and grape production among Tibetans in Northwest Yunnan Province. His work has appeared in a variety of publications including Human Ecology, Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, and Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment.

10 Tea and Merit Landscape Making in the Ritual Lives of the De’ang People in Western Yunnan Li Quanmin Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH10 Abstract De’ang is a Mon-Khmer-speaking people who, known for their tea farming livelihood, reside in the subtropical monsoon uplands of southwestern Yunnan bordering with Myanmar. For the De’ang, tea is not only a traditional farming crop for their market exchange, but is also an embodiment of their cultural memories and religious practice. This chapter demonstrates that the De’ang often use tea as an important object of Buddhist offering rituals to yield merit for their lives. This ritual practice produces what the author called ‘merit-landscape’ in their living space. Based upon the author’s ethnographic research, this chapter argues that the merit-landscape making conceived in De’ang tea-offering rituals exposes an ecological image with indigenous cultural practices. The manner in which the De’ang balance their morality and the scale of their tea farming in their living space in relation to the impact of development on their transregional livelihood reflects their way of keeping a sustainable relationship between people and environment. Keywords: tea, merit, landscape, ritual, livelihood

Introduction Tea, produced from a member of the Camellia genus of flowing plants, is a common consumer product in China, generates revenue for the national economy, and possesses social functions such as gift exchange in the Chinese practice of etiquette. Southwest China is regarded as one of the original

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places of tea cultivation. Some very old tea trees, planted around 1000 BC, are found in Sichuan and Yunnan (Chow and Kramer 1990; Wang 1992). Tea as a national commercial product can be dated back to the tea-horse trade between the Chinese dynasties and Tibetan empire. Today, the history of the tea-horse trade is being revived to explain the historical caravan trade between Yunnan and Tibet and is being used to expand the current tea market. Of China’s 55 official ethnic minorities, fifteen are indigenous to Yunnan. Under the western region development strategy implemented by the central government, the Yunnan provincial government has made great efforts to promote both tea trade and tourism. While the government focused on exploiting tea and ‘exotic ethnic culture’ for Yunnan’s economic development, private businesses also began to recognize the lucrative trade in tea made in the ethnic minority areas, resulting in a variety of locally produced teas that have begun to be sold in restaurants and cafés. This demonstrates the commercial importance of the region’s tea culture. Surprisingly, the De’ang missed out on these initially new marketing opportunities despite their long historical association with tea. The De’ang, an officially recognized ethnic minority in China, are MonKhmer speakers living along the Yunnan-Myanmar border. They share their ethnic origin with the Palaung in Myanmar and accordingly they have historically engaged in certain livelihoods common to highland minorities in the Southeast Asian Massif region referred to by Van Schendel (2002) and Michaud (2009). For hundreds of years, the Mon-Khmer-speaking people have been known for producing and selling tea (Milne 2004; Scott 1982; Howard 2001). Some De’ang communities continue to keep alive their old tea trees that were planted several hundred years ago. According to some Chinese reports and my fieldwork, neighboring ethnic groups praised the De’ang as ‘the old tea planters’ (Li 2000; Teng 2006). The De’ang Social History Survey (Yunnan Sheng Bianjizu 1987: 4) detailed the De’ang usages of tea in their lives: ‘Men and women are fond of drinking strong tea. Each household has planted tea trees around their houses or somewhere close to the villages. Tea leaves are processed manually, mainly for the purpose of self-consumption. If people have a surplus, they engage in market exchange.’ The De’ang plant tea and sell tea. They recognize the importance of tea’s commercial value in their economic lives. They drink tea, eat tea and use tea in their social and ritual lives in a way that reveals its noncommercial value among the De’ang. For the De’ang, tea is an integral part of their daily lives and cultural milieu. Two widely known folk stories relating to tea trace the ancestral origin of the De’ang to a heavenly tea tree and

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explain why the De’ang call tea ja ju in their language. The origin myth, titled ‘Dagudalenggelaibiao’ (Zhao and Chen 1983), describes how the De’ang’s ancestors were created by tea and the second story reveals ja ju as a term relevant to tea’s traditional medicinal function (Yunnan Sheng Bianjizu 1987: 24-25). Ja means paternal or maternal grandmother, while ju means ‘sight,’ or ‘seeing’; so, tea literally means ‘grandmother’s vision.’ These stories reveal the deep connection the De’ang have with tea, and shows its relevance in kinship terms. Thus, for the De’ang, the value of tea goes beyond its commercial function. In my fieldwork in De’ang communities, I find that the De’ang, like the Bulang, who are also Mon-khmer speakers in the south part of Yunnan, cannot avoid the market economy’s effects on tea production (Huang 2015: 1-15); however, they continue to cherish the cultural and religious value of tea well above its monetary value. They link tea with the Buddhist idea of merit. When this Buddhist idea is embodied in tea production, consumption, and ritual use among the De’ang, it engenders what I call ‘a merit-landscape’ that is physical but bears religious markings. In this chapter, I discuss how the merit-landscape is conceived in De’ang Buddhist tea-offering rituals and how it subsequently helps the De’ang find a balance between their ecological morality and the commercial farming of tea such that indigenous ecological knowledge is responsive to the impact of development on their transregional livelihood in Southwest China.

Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework of this chapter is based on discussions of ecological morality and its role relative to development in the social usage of things. Ecological morality is a concept showing nature-human integration and that proposes the harmonious relation between human, society, and environment. It recognizes ecological value as an integral part of the relationship between people and the environment. Merit-landscape, as conceived in this chapter, is grounded in ecological morality as a way to view nature-human integration. Merit is a crucial concept in Buddhism, especially in the Theravada Buddhism practiced by the De’ang. It correlates to the Buddhist doctrine of karma, which highlights the personal consequences of conduct with important social and cultural dimensions. Merit is a basic role value for both monastic and lay people. Monastic practitioners gain merit through practice (including meditation) and teaching, while lay people normally gain merit by being generous and doing good to others

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and following the Five Precepts of Buddhism (Bunnag 1973; Terwiel 2001). The practice of the transference of merit is an ancient and widespread Buddhist practice, and it is customary for many Buddhists at the end of Buddhist rituals to offer the merit generated during the ceremony for the benefit of other beings and in so doing to invite all present to rejoice in the merit of the ceremony (Gethin 1998: 109-110). In Tambiah’s anthropological studies of practical religion in a Thai village, the aspect of ‘merit-making as requiring solution within the framework of exchange and reciprocity’ (Tambiah 1968: 43) shows an important role in the analysis of merit making and its relation to Buddhism. In this chapter, I continue to analyze merit making and its relation to Buddhism in a De’ang village of Southwest China through exploring how the De’ang people link their tea and the Buddhist idea of merit to consist of a ‘merit-landscape’ that furthers a sustainable relationship between people and environment in the face of economic development in their transregional livelihood. Landscape is not simply a geographical term. In anthropology it has been diversified in a transdisciplinary arena among ecology, philosophy, psychology, and other critical theories, which are engaged in the discussions between place and space especially referring to ‘the meaning imputed by local people to their cultural and physical surroundings’ (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995: 1). Landscape as a cultural and analytical idea is closely related to image and representation (Barnes and Duncan 1992) and is defined as ‘a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing or symbolizing surroundings’ (Cosgrove and Daniels 1988: 1) and as a ‘cultural process’ existing in everyday social life (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995: 22). As a cultural and analytical approach, Smyer Yü (2015) visualizes landscape in terms of ‘mindscape’ in the Tibetan case. Here I would like to combine landscape and merit together being a new concept of a ‘merit-landscape’ in the De’ang’s case to show ecological morality and its role in development as a cultural process of representing and symbolizing surroundings in everyday social life. The social usage of things is an important issue related to exchange and consumption. In the dimension of exchange, Mauss argues, ‘much of our everyday morality is concerned with the question of obligation and spontaneity in the gift. It is our good fortune that all is not yet couched in terms of purchase and sale. Things have values which are emotional as well as material. […] Our morality is not solely commercial’ (Mauss 1969: 63). In the dimension of consumption, Carrier points out, ‘consumption is the meaningful use people make of the objects that are associated with them. The use can be mental or material; the objects can be things, ideas or

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relationships; the association can range from ownership to contemplation’ (Carrier 1996: 128). The De’ang people in this chapter are tea farmers and use tea in the course of exchange and consumption in their lives. Tea has values that are emotional as well as material. Among them, the De’ang have their distinctive tea usage for rituals that link tea with the Buddhist idea of merit to make a ‘merit-landscape’ balancing their morality and their commercial tea farming in response to the impact of development on their transregional livelihood. I undertook the fieldwork on which this chapter is based in Chudonggua De’ang village from 2006 to 2007, from 2009 to 2010, and from 2014 to 2015. Participatory observation and interviews were my main approach to doing fieldwork. The interviewees were mainly elderly De’ang villagers though some I spoke with were middle-aged and young. I studied the De’ang language with the villagers. The middle-aged and young villagers could speak Mandarin Chinese to me and sometimes they acted as my translators for the De’ang language spoken by the elders that I couldn’t understand. Chudonggua De’ang village is the largest De’ang village in Santaishan De’ang Autonomous Township, the only De’ang Autonomous Township located in De’ang Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in southwest Yunnan (see figure 1). Chudonggua De’ang village lies in a semimountainous area at an elevation of around 1,400 meters above sea level. This area is a Figure 1 Chudonggua De’ang Village

Photo by Li Quanmin, 2007

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subtropical region with a monsoon climate. The average annual temperature here is about 17ºC and the annual rainfall is between 1,300 and 1,700 mm. It has three seasons: warm, wet, and cool. The warm season is between March and May; the wet one is between May and October; and the cool season is between October and March. Around 80 percent of the annual rainfall falls between May and October. The three-season pattern is common in most Southeast Asian regions with a monsoon climate. Tea is the villagers’ traditional farming crop. The villagers followed the farming calendar ‘Dachun’ and ‘Xiaochun’ for tea cultivation. ‘Dachun’ refers to the farming time between May and October. ‘Xiaochun’ is the one between November and April of the next year. Tea farming activities in January involve plowing tea lands. In February, spring tea picking and the picking of the first flush of leaves from mature tea plants is undertaken (see figure 2). In March and April, the picking of spring tea is continued, as well as the sowing of tea seeds in nurseries and transplanting the tea seedlings into the fields. May marks the beginning of the picking of summer tea, as well as the application of liquid dung fertilizer on the fields in which tea has been newly planted and this pattern is continued in June. In July and August, summer tea picking continues and the fields are weeded. September’s activities include picking autumn tea and fertilizing. In October and November, autumn tea is still picked and weeding is continued. December’s activity Figure 2 Tea picking

Photo by Li Quanmin, 2007

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centers on weeding the tea fields. It can be seen that when the tea plant is mature enough to sustain harvest, the tea picking starts from the end of February and goes until November. Villagers traditionally leave some spring tea for family use and sell the surplus to local markets. As to the market price, the spring tea, considered to be superior, fetches the highest price, the autumn tea is second and the summer tea is the lowest. The establishment of nearby tea factories in recent years has encouraged the development of the village’s commercial farming of tea. More and more villagers sell their tea to the tea factories nearby. Chudonggua De’ang village has a very close kin relationship with Bansidai Palaung village in north Myanmar as most villagers are tied together by marriage and family alliance. They hold rituals regularly each year and attend rituals together on both sides of the border, making their transregional livelihood into one unit. In each ritual, they use tea to convey their Buddhist idea of merit between their expectations of good lives and their survival environment. Tea is an important part of villagers’ everyday lives. They are fond of drinking thick tea, eat prepared tea leaves as a dish, and use tea as a gift; it is a commodity and a ritual goodbye exchange in their social lives (Li 2008). Among them, the villagers use their ritual usage of tea to express their understandings on the sustainable relationship between themselves and their environment.

Merit-Landscape Making: Tea Offering in the Ritual Lives of De’ang Villagers Chudonggua De’ang village regularly hosts Buddhist rituals each year. These rituals are ‘Duo Hi Mai Bong’ in February; ‘Hong Pra’ in April; ‘Kao Va, Gan Va, Ou Va,’ which together comprise Buddhist Lent, between July and October; and ‘Kathin’ in November. Before a ritual starts, the village prepares ritual goods showing the importance and centrality of their beliefs and practices in their lives. Additionally, the ritual expert, acting on behalf of the whole village, prepares tea as a collective offering for the rituals ‘Duo Hi Mai Bong’ means burning bare wood and is a ritual that signals the warming of the weather. It lasts two days. On the first day of this ritual, a tower made of a pile of bare branches is set on fire. On the morning of the next day, the ritual expert takes some of the ash from the site of the ritual, together with tea and some small colored-paper flags, small white-paper flags, and a few flowers wrapped in banana leaves that he has prepared on behalf of the whole village, to the temple and offers these things to the

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Buddha. The villagers also go to the temple with small flags and flowers they have prepared. The offering of tea is only practiced by the ritual expert on behalf of the village. ‘Hong Pra’ means water splashing on the Buddha images. As the biggest ritual of the year, all villagers must attend. The three-day ritual involves villagers splashing water on Buddha statues and on each other and they don’t work at all during the period of this ritual. The monk and the villagers are very busy at this time. On the first day, the ritual expert, on behalf of the village, first goes to the temple and invites the monk to the village square where ‘Hong Pra’ is held. Then the monk presents the offerings that the villagers have collectively prepared on behalf of the village to Buddha. These offerings mainly consist of tea, small colored-paper flags, small whitepaper flags, flowers wrapped in banana leaves, and cooked rice wrapped in banana leaves. After the monk finishes the offerings, the villagers present their own offerings to Buddha. There is no tea in the villagers’ offerings. The old villagers say that tea can only be offered by the monk on behalf of the village, as it is the most important of the valuables and also the linkage between the sacred and the profane. After the offerings are made, a few young people beat drums and gongs, male villagers follow the ritual expert into the temple and move the small Buddha statues around the big Buddha, circumambulating out of the temple to the pavilion located in the village square. After the small Buddha statues have been moved into the pavilion, the monk kneels in front of the pavilion and the villagers kneel behind him and listen to him chanting scriptures. The old people stay until evening in a special place beside the pavilion that belongs to the temple where lay visitors may rest and sleep and stay when they are invited to the village to attend certain rituals. On the second day, the monk repeats the offerings of the previous day to the Buddha statues and chants before he leads all the villagers to fetch water twice from a pond some kilometers away from the village. On the third day, the monk repeats what he did on the previous day and the villagers fetch water to splash the Buddha statues and splash themselves. The villagers believe that the water washes the impurities of the last year away and gives them a clean beginning. Kao Va, Gan Va, and Ou Va are the three important rituals in what is commonly called Buddhist Lent, between July and October. During this time, monks must stay in the temple. According to many sources this was originally because of the belief that if they walked abroad during the rainy season they might injure or kill tiny insects. Additionally, the villagers can’t build houses or hold weddings, and unmarried people are not supposed to court. Kao Va, in the De’ang language, means ‘entering the temple’; this

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event lasts three days. The ritual expert prepares tea and other offerings on behalf of the village to the temple, elders go to the temple to listen to the monk and the ritual experts chanting scriptures. Gan Va lasts two days, and as before, tea is an important ritual good offered by the ritual expert together with other offerings to the temple before he joins the chanting with the monk. Ou Va, marking the end of the series of three rituals, also lasts three days and tea is a ritual necessity too. The monk, the ritual experts and the villagers repeat the actions performed in Kao Va. Kathin means presenting new robes to the monks in the temple. Taking place in November, a ritual expert again prepares tea on behalf of the whole village together with other offerings to offer to the temple. A ritual expert in Chudonggua De’ang explained that tea is more important than money, as it carries the suo (merit) of the whole village. This tea offering embodies the merit of the whole village for the health, safety, and prosperity of their lives in their landscape. Tea is a visible and visualized expression of the merit-landscape, mediating between the ritual offering and the village’s ability to provide for a good life for its residents.

Merit-Landscape in Chudonggua De’ang Village: An Ecological Image with Indigenous Cultural Practices The above account has shown that the De’ang value merit-landscape making because they believe that merit accumulation in this life will assure a rebirth with happiness, prosperity, and wealth. The De’ang ritual expert acts on behalf of the whole village to offer tea and other ritual goods to the temple, and the monk offers blessings to the whole village in return. The monk is the intermediary who can access mystical powers associated with the Buddha, and who can transfer these powers to the village in a form that can positively sacralize this life and the next life. He chants in the collective religious ceremonies as well as in the funeral rites. He performs certain ritual roles for the village whenever he is needed. When the De’ang ritual experts bring tea together with other ritual goods to the temple, the intention is to convey the collective aspirations for the health, safety and prosperity of the whole village. Under the ritual experts’ instructions, the villagers identify with their fellow laymen with whom they make merit together. They believe that they will improve their own merit if they share it with parents, ancestors, or other villagers. From another, more functionalist, point of view, merit-landscape making is a collective action directed to the temple and the monk provides these occasions for the laymen to assemble

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periodically. The workings of merit are personal, yet it can also be achieved through collective ritual actions. Although one’s private thoughts, words, or acts may be of merit, the most common public occasions for merit-landscape making are ritual acts toward the temple and toward the village and all villagers. Ingold says, ‘Every landscape is a particular cognitive or symbolic ordering of space’ (Ingold 1993: 152). Tea is a product of the De’ang. Their meritlandscape making can be seen as part of public activities in their ritual lives. In particular, tea offering in the course of the Buddhist rituals reflects a set of reciprocal ideas that center on the concept of merit-landscape in the relationship between the De’ang and their living environment. In this case, merit-landscape making can be explored from Mauss’s theory of gift and reciprocity, thereby reflecting something about morality in the connection of the sacred and profane as found in the De’ang undertaking of transregional livelihood. Mauss argues, The thing given brings return in this life and in the other. It may automatically bring the donor an equivalent return – it is not lost to him, but reproductive; or else the donor finds the thing itself again, but with increase. Food given away means that food will return to the donor in this world; it also means food for him in the other world and in his series of reincarnations. Water, wells and springs given away are insurance against thirst; the clothes, the sunshades, the gold, the sandals for protection against the burning earth, return to you in this life and in the other. (Mauss 1969: 54-55)

The De’ang villagers’ merit making demonstrates a kind of reciprocity, as Jane Bunnag (1973) shows. Additionally, Mauss’s idea of material reciprocity is helpful to explore the merit-landscape conceived in the tea-offering rituals of the De’ang, making it possible to conceive of merit, grounded in a particular place, as a landscape in between the sacred and the profane. Smyer Yü (2011: 59) argues that the sentient ecology pertains to the ecoreligious practices and ecospiritual sentiment embodied in the landscape. He affirms the inherent mutual saturation and bonding between landscape and mindscape in the case of Tibet, which is not only a place, but also symbolizes the embodiment of sacredness in its mountains. Although the sensorial and ecological dimensions of landscape are critical, he argues, it is ‘the actual bodily experiences of individuals in the landscape of Tibet whether they are natives or outsiders’ that makes the narratives of Tibet happen (Smyer Yü 2015: 21), and he adopts ‘affordance’ to affirm the

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materiality of placial potency of place. In a related way, it can be seen that the De’ang use the giving of tea offerings in their ritual lives to accumulating the merit that is ‘afforded’ by the tea that provides their livelihoods and connects them to their place – and that is the most precious form of accumulation in the worlds of birth and rebirth. When De’ang ritual experts use tea as a collective ritual good to make merit for the whole village, tea represents their spiritual connection between the sacred and the profane, between the De’ang themselves and supernatural beings, and between the monastic and lay communities. They do this in recognition of a need for balance between their values and the commercial farming of tea on which family well-being, fertility, and regeneration depend. The De’ang wish for fertility, regeneration, health, safety, and family unity for their community explains why tea is considered a more important offering than items of greater monetary value, even though they grow tea as an economic crop. In this regard, this merit-landscape, for the De’ang, integrates landscape and mindscape through affordance. Ecology and religion are often considered together in order to examine cultural awareness of interactions required for the continuity of life, and can present ‘an important lens whereby humans can understand and reenvision their roles as participants in the dynamic processes of life’ (Grim and Tucker 2014: 63). Chudonggua De’ang villagers are Theravada Buddhists. They are used to making merit in their daily lives. Merit making in their language is called ‘suo chiu.’ ‘Suo’ refers to merit, which means valuables, and ‘chiu’ means making. The villagers often use tea in their ritual activities to link merit which they call it ‘Suo’ in their language for their survival safety in their living space. They believe that one receives a reward for doing good and punishment for doing bad. The reward can be better health, happiness, and material prosperity in this and in future lives. Punishment can be sickness, misery, and poverty. The villagers show their aim to get great fortune in this life or a better status in the next life in their Buddhist idea of merit and their usage of tea in their rituals. It has been mentioned that merit refers to the personal consequences of conduct with important social and cultural dimensions. Landscape as a cultural and analytical idea is connected with image and representation. In comparison to Tambiah’s village study in northern Thailand, ‘the villagers engage frequently in merit-making as a positive action devoted to acquiring religious values’ (Tambiah 1968: 42), Chudonggua De’ang villagers located their usage of tea in connection with the Buddhist idea of merit in their rituals, which produces an ecological image with indigenous cultural practices and religious values, that is, merit-landscape.

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Conclusion: Merit-Landscape and the Commercial Farming of Tea in the Development of Chudonggua De’ang Village Tea has been an important commercial product of going across the boundaries of the country between China and the rest of the world. The tea industry has been encouraged as an economic pillar to develop the local economy in Yunnan. In Xishuangbanna and Pu’er district in the southern part of Yunnan, large areas are dedicated to tea cultivation and are mainly managed by tea companies. The farmers of these large areas employ workers from the Han and other ethnic groups. As they are only employees, they have no ownership rights to the tea products themselves. The De’ang, however, known regionally as being historically linked to tea farming in the southwest part of Yunnan, cultivate their own tea and sell it in the local market themselves, though seem not to be influenced by the widespread economic development of the tea industry. Their farming of tea has been household based, with half of their production for selfconsumption and half for selling. In Chudonggua De’ang village, the scale at which tea is farmed has been decreased due to increased pressure to produce sugar cane as a cash crop that brings families more income than does tea. In spite of commercial pressures that push for greater cultivation of cash crops, the De’ang merit-landscape protects their tea farming from completely diminishing. Their ritual use of tea, as well as their commercial cultivation of the plants, reveals a nexus of religion, culture, and traditional ecological knowledge. As Berkes points out, Putting together the most salient attributes of traditional ecological knowledge, one may arrive at working definition of traditional ecological knowledge as a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment. (1999: 8)

Thus we can see that De’ang villagers create a merit-landscape that balances their ecological morality and their commercial farming of tea in response to the impact of development in their living place, putting the most salient features of their traditional ecological knowledge as a combined body of knowledge, practice and belief about the relationship of people with one another and with their environment. The cross-regional trade of tea, and the similar cultural practices and religious rituals found in other transboundary villages and regions in the tea-growing areas of southern Yunnan, provide

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evidence of meaning-rich livelihoods that are ecologically defined and that take into account a complex interweaving of material, this-worldly, aspirations of keeping a sustainable relationship between people and environment.

References Barnes, S., and J. Duncan, eds. 1992. Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. London: Routledge. Berkes, Fikret. 1999. Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis. Bunnag, Jane. 1973. Buddhist Monk, Buddhist Layman: A Study of Urban Monastic Organization in Central Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carrier, James G. 1996. ‘Consumption.’ In Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, ed. Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, 128-129. London: Routledge. Chow, Kit, and Ione Kramer. 1990. All the Tea in China. San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals. Cosgrove, Denis, and Stephen Daniels, eds. 1988. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gethin, Rupert. 1998. Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grim, John, and Mary Evelyn Tucker. 2014. Ecology and Religion. Washington, DC: Island Press. Hirsch, Eric, and Michael O’Hanlon, eds. 1995. Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Howard, Michael C., and Wattana Wattanapun. 2001. The Palaung in Northern Thailand. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Huang, Po-Yi. 2015. Tea Production, Land Use Politics and Ethnic Minorities: Struggling over Dilemmas in China’s Southwest Frontier. Palgrave Macmillan. Ingold, Tim. 1993. ‘The Temporality of the Landscape.’ World Archaeology 25.2: 152-174. Li, Jiaying. 2000. De’ang Zu Chuan Tong Wen Hua Yu Xian Dai Wen Min [The traditional culture and the modern civilization of De’ang]. Kunming: Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe. Li, Quanmin. 2008. ‘Identity, Relationships and Difference: The Social Life of Tea in a Group of Mon-Khmer Speakers along the China-Burma Frontier.’ PhD thesis, Australian National University, Mauss, Marcel. 1969. The Gifts: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Michaud, Jean. 2009. ‘Handling Mountain Minorities in China, Vietnam and Laos: From History to Current Concerns.’ Asian Ethnicity 10.1: 25-49

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Milne, Leslie. 2004. The Home of an Eastern Clan: A Study of the Palaungs of the Shan States. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Scott, J. George. 1982. Burma and Beyond. London: Grayson & Grayson. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2011. The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment. London: Routledge. Smyer Yü, Dan. 2015. Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Eco-aesthetics. Boston: De Gruyter Press. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1968. ‘The Ideology of Merit and the Social Correlates of Buddhism in a Thai Village.’ In Dialectic in Practical Religion, ed. E.R. Leach, 41-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Terwiel, Barend Jan. 2001. Monks and Magic: An Analysis of Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Teng, Erzhao. ed. 2006. Gu Lao De Cha Nong: Zhong Guo De’ang Zu She Hui Fa Zhan Bian Qian Shi [The old tea planters: The history of De’ang society development and change]. Kunming: Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia.’ Environment and Planning, D: Society and Space 20: 647-668. Wang, Ling. 1992. Zhong Guo Cha Wen Hua [Chinese tea culture]. Beijing: Zhongguo Shudian. Yunnan Sheng Bianjizu [Yunnan Province Editorial Group], ed. De’angzu Shehui Lishi Diaocha [De’ang social and historical survey]. Kunming: Yunnan Minzu Chuban She. 1987. Zhao, Lalin, and Chen, Zhipeng. 1983. ‘Dagudalenggelaibiao.’ In Benglongzu Wen Xue Zuo Ping Xuan [Selection of Benglongzu works of literature], ed. Dehong Zhou and Wen Lian, 140-154. Dehong: Minzu Chubanshe.

About the author Li Quanmin is Associate Professor at Yunnan Institute of Ethnological Research, Yunnan Minzu University. She received her PhD in anthropology from the Australian National University. Her research interest focuses on tea trade and gift economy in the borderlands of Southwest China and Southeast Asia. Her The publications representative of her work include Identity, Relationships and Difference: The Social Life of Tea in a Group of Mon-Khmer Speaking People along China and Burma Frontier (Yunnan University Press, 2011) and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on tea in rituals, gift exchange, and market economy, social governance, and regional development.

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In-between Poppy and Rubber Fields Experimenting a Transborder Livelihood among the Akha in the Northwestern Frontier of Laos Li Yunxia Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH11 Abstract Fueled by the synergy of cross-border trade, investment, and development between China and Laos, the Lao state attempts to reassert its domination over the upland areas and population by converting poppy fields into rubber land. However, at the same time, the influx and circulation of money, goods, and people resulting from the cross-border economic exchanges rework local social and economic life and produce new forms of sociality. Accordingly, my focus is on the social significance of the interactions between the Chinese and the Lao Akha in Muang Sing and Muang Long. Problemtizing the concept of ‘frontier,’ I argue that this frontier space is of multiple engagements and significantly provides the Lao Akha new ways to experiment with a spectrum of social and economic opportunities. By highlighting the role of aspiration, indigenizing modernity and personalized connections, this examination casts new lights on the Lao Akha’s experience of their livelihood transition from a subsistence-oriented to a market-based one. Keywords: frontier, Laos, transborder livelihood experiment, indigenized modernity

Introduction Since appearing in the 2000s, rubber plantations have spread widely throughout the areas of Laos and Myanmar which border Southwest China. This surge in rubber-cultivation activities has been primarily motivated by

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China’s high demand for natural rubber; mainly in support of its expanding automobile industry (FAO CTTP 2010; Huang 2007). According to official Chinese discourse, the opening of rubber plantations in Laos and Myanmar close to the Chinese border provides an alternative to the growing of opium poppies in these areas, and in practice such plantations are operated by highly business-oriented state and private enterprises. By 2010, over 180 Chinese companies were engaged in agriculture projects (including rubber, sugarcane, rice, and other seasonal cash crops) in the former poppy-growing regions of Myanmar and Laos, covering 0.12 million hectares in Myanmar and 0.09 million hectares in Laos (CPGMSECP 2011). On the Laos side, the introduction of alternative forms of development by China has been underpinned by the Laotian state’s drive to modernize highland populations, halt swidden agriculture, commercialize land resources, and, through the eradication of opium production, reshape the nation’s identity (Cohen 2013). Partly motivated by the high price of latex in the global market, in the mid-2000s many smallholders from ethnic groups living in the highlands of Luang Namtha – a northern Lao province – attempted to diversify their livelihoods through the cultivation of rubber. Among these groups, the Akha,1 the largest group in two border districts of Luang Namtha Province (Muang Sing and Muang Long) were heavily influenced by the rubber boom. Coming under pressure to eradicate poppy cultivation, the Lao Akha moved to the crowded lowlands, eking out of an economic niche primarily alongside the Tai Lue and Tai Dam groups, as well as a number of smaller ethnic groups (Lyttleton et al. 2004). In this chapter, the surge in rubber serves as a lens to see how the Lao Akha are constructing a new livelihood in the midst of domestic transition from subsistence to market, from farm to nonfarm, and their accelerating regional economic integration. These new rubber plantations have drawn the Lao People’s Democratic Republic this small and landlocked country – further into the global resource extraction and commodity production market. At the same time, in academic research fields, frontiers themselves have become a popular trope for conceptualizing the changing social and resource space incurred by the intrusion of capital (Fold and Hirsch 2009). Fold and Hirsch contend 1 Akha are scattered in the five nation-states of Laos, Vietnam, China, Thailand, and Myanmar. In the official ethnic identification of China, Akha are renamed as Aini and subsumed under the Hani as one of the 55 ethnic groups. In this chapter, Hani and Akha are distinguished from each other as Akha is a self-addressed term. Also, terms such as Chinese Akha and Lao Akha are used to specify their nationalities.

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that frontiers are productive ‘in-between’ spaces that define particular transitions and also represent ‘an amalgam of spaces of newly emerging social and environmental relations’ (2009: 96). The geographical frontier in question belongs to the trans-Himalayan region that has been characterized by regular movements of people and goods, under both premodern and other polities (Sturgeon 2005; Giersch 2006), since the third century AD (Hill 1989 and 1998). In the region, mountain dwellers have long maintained multiple and shifting relations with various lowland powers and polities through time and space (Sturgeon 2005; Giersch 2006; Michaud, in this volume). Giersch (2006) uncovers that frontier in the history as a ‘middle ground’ where indigenous and nonindigenous conjoin, negotiate, acculturate, and produce a hybridity of governing institutions and cultural dynamics. My case study of the Lao Akha resonates with the perspectives of Giersch (2006, 2010) and Fold and Hirsch (2009) as I see frontier as a place of incubating new social relations and their consequences which are interwoven and where transborder capital, human and natural resources converge. Historical opportunism and loosening political strictures of the contemporarily dominant Laotian and Chinese states foster transregional, market-based entrepreneurialism and rework the social space of the frontier, therefore, engendering new livelihoods that are transborder in nature. Contemporary globalization has led to a renewed recognition of the relationship between states and their citizens. Ong (2006) argues that this has created possibilities for individuals to carve out economic, cultural and religious niches within a more global space. As a result, I draw on Ong’s ‘experiments of freedom’ (2006) to conceptualize cross-border operations in the study area in terms of the relationship between the state and the people in this frontier zone. However, these individual experiments are still constrained by the unpredictable ‘loosening and tightening’ of frontiergoverning mechanisms applied by Laos and China (Diana 2013). This is not to say that the two states have absolute and seamless control over the flow of goods and people – or even the border crossings – that take place. The area covered by Yunnan and Laos is part of what Michaud refers to as the ‘Southeast Asian Massif’ (Michaud 2006) and what Smyer Yü (in this volume) has termed ‘multistate margins.’ Experiencing the migration of an array of non-Tai people from what is now China, the study area also served as an area to which people took flight between the 1950s and 1970s, seeking asylum and shelter from state-making projects governed by the nation-building processes undertaken by China and Laos (Cohen 2000).

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From this follows my second idea, one that echoes Van Schendel (2002), who reminds us of the importance of looking across geopolitical boundaries to understand regional contiguity and social closeness. As regional economic integration that thrives on old trade routes gathers force (Giersch 2010), social networks based on shared ethnic ties, intimacy, and cultural and linguistic affinities are translated into webs of reciprocity and exchange, and as formative steps toward extending commodity chains across physical and cultural borders (Turner, in this volume; Lyttleton and Li 2017). I will show in this chapter that social networks between the Chinese and the Lao Akha are instrumental in their negotiation over livelihoods while being closely observed by the Laotian state. The particular case of the Lao Akha explored here also shows that ‘Zomia thinking,’ a form of ‘consciousness held by inhabitants of “Zomian” spaces’ (Shneiderman 2010: 293), is relevant when analyzing ‘transboundary state effects’ (Smyer Yü, in this volume) at the intersection between China and Laos, a location in which the social networks in place between the previously partitioned ethnic groups and other diasporic subjects are still at work. My discussion is informed by a fifteen-month period of fieldwork for my PhD study. It was carried out between August 2008 and January 2010 in Luang Namtha Province, Laos. The fieldwork covered twelve Akha villages in Muang Sing and Muang Long District, close to the China-Laos border, with Lao Akha people from different locales and social backgrounds being interviewed by myself in Akha or with the help of Lao Akha research assistants. Conversational interviews in Mandarin Chinese and Yunnanese Chinese with over 60 Chinese trade intermediaries, state and individual rubber investors, subcontractors, and extension workers have been completed by myself. The interviews with ethnic Laotians (Laotian state officials and NGO extension staff) have been carried out in Lao with the help of a Lao interpreter or in English alone. I will refer to the above-mentioned state effect in my discussions of the people and frontier area. My description of the frontier presented here may conjure up a state of anarchy, but with varying degrees of effective or intentioned state regulation being applied from district to district on the Laos side. For example, Dwyer’s case (2014) offers an example of how the Chinese-invested rubber ventures in Laos facilitate and reinforce the accumulation and population management by the Laotian state. I will focus on the different dimensions of frontier life that exist, attesting to the interpersonal relationships that are the key to understanding the materialization created by the frontier. Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud (2015) have shown that the role of indigenized modernity is pivotal in local

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people’s livelihood reconstruction as both market and state are entangled in the frontier area. On the one hand, local people’s drive for modernization manifests a heightened sense of livelihood experimentation or, put in another way, to ‘modernize or perish’ (Michaud, in this volume). On the other hand, selectively being modern becomes a creative and pragmatic way to refashion traditions of belief and value. In carrying out my ethnography of this frontier, it is important for me to focus on how the concepts of the indigenization of modernity (Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015) and social networks intersect as analytical parameters.

The Setting: Ban Assan, the People, and Their Livelihoods Ban Assan 2 is located on a mountainside at the northeastern tip of Mom subdistrict (tasseng in Lao) in Muang Sing District, Luang Namtha Province. It is a few kilometers from the Chinese border and villagers are able to visit a market in Meng 3 Run, a nearby Chinese town of Meng La County, Xishuangbanna4 Dai Autonomous Prefecture (hereafter referred as Xishuangbanna Prefecture), Yunnan, and China via two footpaths that become inaccessible during the wet season. Ban Assan is comprised of 95 households, and has a population of 388 people. The ethnic makeup of the village is quite complicated when compared to Akha villages further inside Laos. While Akha is the dominant group, some Han Chinese and Hani have recently moved from China into the community. For a long time, Ban Assan villagers have had ongoing interactions with the Chinese (be it Han Chinese, Dai, or Chinese Akha) and the Lao residents (usually Akha but also Tai Lue and other ethnic groups). Most villagers are multilingual, reflecting the ethnic variety of the region. What Sturgeon (2005) terms ‘the practice of landscape plasticity’ shows the Akha’s complex and malleable ways they organize their transborder environmental and social space. She contends that the Akha’s customary notion of landscape largely corresponds to the ecological habit of their ancestors, which has been divided up by modern nation-states since the mid-twentieth century. However, the Akha continue to retain their kinship 2 Ban is the Lao term for village. All the names of villages and people in this chapter have been altered to protect their confidentiality. 3 From muang in the Tai Lue and Lao languages, customarily a small feudal principality. 4 From Sip Song Panna in the Tai Lue language (The Twelve Principalities), the ancient muang federating Lue village polities across the China-Lao border.

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bonds in the transborder fashion (Sturgeon 2005: 37-41). Referred to as kha (Lao and Tai languages, meaning ‘slave’ or ‘servant’) by the lowland Tai groups, the Lao Akha, at the same time and like many other mid- and upland groups, maintained vassal relation with lowland polities through performance of the corvée and tributary system (Nguyen Duy Thieu 1993). Some Ban Assan villagers used to barter opium with Chinese Akha and the Dai in China, in exchange for bowls, matches, salt and other daily necessities. These interactions continued even when the border was under the strict control of the Lao Issara Army in the 1960s. During the collectivization period in China (1958-1978) and during the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961), Ban Assan villagers supplied rice to their relatives in China. The village moved to its present site at a lower elevation after the political situation in Laos began to stabilize in the early 1990s. However, few social services were provided by the Laotian Government. As with other Akha villages in Muang Sing, from the mid-1990s Ban Assan began to receive some basic health care, education and other development assistance from the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), a large German development agency. Practicing slash-and-burn agriculture mainly to cultivate dry rice, villagers open new plots of land every three to five years, and after that time, could claim ownership of the land they were cultivating. Prior to programs to integrate the Akha into centralized forms of state governance, this type of customary tenure arrangement enabled them to make their own agricultural production decisions on what to plant and how much they needed to plant to sustain their subsistence-oriented life style (Alting von Geusau 1983; Sturgeon 2005). Under the ‘get tough’ poppy-eradication campaign introduced in 2003, villagers were encouraged to gradually stop their smallholder poppy cultivation activities. The village’s proximity to China offers those living there other livelihood options, as some households rent plots of land at lower elevations to Chinese people from nearby Xishuangbanna Prefecture for them to grow bananas, watermelons, and seasonal vegetables. In the mid1990s, and as promoted by the Laotian government, villagers contracted with a Chinese company from Meng Peng in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, to cultivate sugarcane, but most households abandoned this crop in 2002, as they diverted their labor and land resources toward rubber cultivation instead. By as early as 1991, smallholder rubber cultivation had been officially identified by the Laotian government as a key part of its poverty alleviation strategy; an instrument to help eradicate shifting cultivation and replace poppy cultivation among the highland ethnic groups. However, its role in

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terms of transferring planting techniques was limited (Alton et al. 2005). In Ban Assan, eight Akha households established the first rubber plantation between 1996 and 1997 before the Laotian government institutionalized its introduction. During the 1970s and 1980s, these same families sought refuge in Meng La, where they were enlisted in the local Chinese production system. Then, in the early 1990s, when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Chinese government together with the Laotian government were organizing the repatriation of refugees to Laos, these villagers did not return to their natal villages, but instead chose to stay in Ban Assan, hoping to develop their own rubber plantations. Taking advantage of a border agreement,5 these smallholders transported their rubber latex on motorbikes and sold their freshly harvested product to intermediaries in Meng Run. After these former refugees began earning a reasonable income from their mature rubber trees, in the mid-2000s other villagers followed suit. However, by the time of my first investigations in 2009, incremental rubber cultivation had not yet provided big yields: only 20 households/rubber growers had started to tap their rubber trees. Compared to areas of Muang Sing further away from the border, Ban Assan’s physical proximity to China has drawn many Chinese investors looking to open agri-businesses since the privatization of rubber production in Xishuangbanna Prefecture in 1980s (Fujita and Phanvilay 2008; Sturgeon 2010). At the same time, and as promoted by the village chief, after 2003 two rubber companies owned by Chinese businessmen from Guangdong and Fujian Province were established in Ban Assan, occupying over 134 hectares of land in the village. These investors promised to supply the capital required for preparing the land, and for purchasing rubber seedlings and other plantation materials. Once the trees had reached maturity, any profits were to be divided up between the company and the villagers: 60 percent to the investors and 40 percent to the villagers. Despite opposition from the villagers to this offer, the village chief – from the most powerful family in the village – pressured the villagers into accepting the deal. Driven by the potential for large profits, since that time the Laotian Army based in the provincial head town of Luang Namtha has also sought partners across the border to help develop rubber plantations (Shi 2008). Also, a Laotian military-backed Chinese company has opened rubber plantations in several villages of Mom subdistrict, including Ban Assan, claiming land 5 Tax and fees are exempted in line with a border agreement between China and Laos, which allows residents living within 20 kilometers of the border to engage in tax-free trade up to a limit of 3,000 yuan per transaction.

250 Li Yunxia Figure 1 Old forest, new road, and an emerging rubber plantation in the upland of Laos

Photo by the author, 2009

(but not a precise amount) within these villages as ‘defense land.’ In this way, since the influx of external investment in rubber cultivation, the villagers have experienced significant land loss, while increasingly feeling the need to compete for the village land that is left.

Accessing ‘State Land’ in Ban Assan As mentioned above, the Akha in Ban Assan have long maintained close cultural and socioeconomic relations with those on the other side of the border, and the reopening of the border in the 1990s allowed them to resume those ties, which had been weakened by decades of nation-building. Since they returned to Laos, former refugees from the village have introduced their friends (Akha: po guo po seo), businesspersons and entrepreneurs from Meng La County to Ban Assan. Endogenous alliance with the Chinese Akha has expanded with quite a few women from Ban Assan marrying Chinese Akha and residing virilocally in adjacent villages in Meng Run. Based on

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shared ethnicity and historical links through patron-client relationships, the Chinese Akha and the Dai from various locales in Xishuangbanna Prefecture have attempted to approach their ethnic and kinship-based brethrens in Laos (Sturgeon 2012; Sturgeon et al. 2013). Seeing rubber as a lucrative cash crop, Han Chinese investors also have sought to expand their rubber-cultivation activities across the border. Interpersonal relations through gift giving, feasts, and favors given for mutual benefit have been newly constructed and reconstructed by the Chinese (including the Akha and the Dai from China), in the form of guanxi in Chinese. It is believed by many Chinese that these acts of giftgiving and reciprocity help draw their Laotian counterparts closer to their business interests, as they reduce the social and emotional distance that exists between the two groups and align them in a collective risk-sharing venture (Lyttleton and Li 2017). Villagers in Ban Assan regard these Chinese overtures as instrumental, since the Chinese come with clear intentions; to access land, which as a resource is becoming unobtainable in China. However villagers in Laos enjoy the conveniences and comforts they obtain through their connections with the Chinese. For example, they can borrow money from the Chinese in times of need, visit Chinese doctors and send their children to schools in China. However, at the same time they do feel under pressure to give up their land to the Chinese. These guanxi collaborations cultivated through exchange have visible outcomes. According to my 2009 survey, 80 percent of the 95 households in Ban Assan share their cropping activities with the Chinese, and almost half of them have traded (Akha: aw-eu) their land with the Chinese. As a result, one elderly male resident of the village lamented to me that: ‘as long as you have land, the Han Chinese [Akha: labeu] will be your relatives [Akha: a ye a ni].’ In contrast to the rubber contracts offered by government agencies in Luang Namtha Province at various levels, both formally and informally, nonofficial/informal contracts have also been agreed upon between Laotian and Chinese (including Akha) in Ban Assan. The profits generated by these contractual agreements are commonly split 60/40 or 70/30, with the Chinese claiming the larger share since they tend to provide the initial capital investment and technical expertise. The villagers supply the land, and then the labor required to maintain the land. As rubber tapping is a very delicate activity, with rubber trees easily damaged by inadequate work practices, it is normally the Chinese who carry out this task, as they have more experience. As well as rubber sharecropping, it is commonplace for villagers to ‘lease’ land containing rubber trees to the Chinese, based on either oral or written agreements. To prevent these clandestine operations from

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being discovered by the state authorities, the villagers underreport their shared rubber- planting activities. Instead, they report them as independent activities to the District Agriculture and Forest Office (DAFO). For the inexperienced rubber growers – meaning most of the Lao Akha villagers in Ban Assan – their Chinese counterparts play an important role in helping them to understand the different market that exists on the other side of the border. Any business, be it big or small, entails risk, but an illicit business partnership in a foreign country poses particular challenges. From production to circulation, the whole process needs to withstand state scrutiny. Currently, neither the Lao Akha’s own nor their shared plantations are ready for tapping, and the villagers and Chinese fear that once their shared plantations are fully developed, the local Laotian authorities might intervene and collect tax on the land and/or on the latex production activities taking place there, since both the people (laborers used for tapping and transportation) and the yields are likely to be conspicuous. Adopting a ‘thinking ahead’ attitude in order to secure their future profits, the Chinese plan to take care of all fees and taxes on the China side, and also advise their Laotian counterparts on how to handle what they regard as the local, predatory Laotian authorities on the Laos side; to avoid being discovered. For instance, the Chinese entrepreneurs have suggested to the Akha farmers in Laos that it is important to develop and maintain good relations with the village chief and other state officials, as they represent the eyes and ears of the Laotian government. Upon the visit of patrol officers, army men or state officials from the district, villagers serve good food and liquor in order to maneuver within their random application of law. During the rubber-tapping season, some individual Chinese traders in Meng Run have diverted their latex-collection activities over to the Laos side; for example, by setting up mobile latex-collection vendors right on the border. Concerned about the increasing level of protectionism and inconsistent quarantine rules applied at the border, the Lao Akha farmers tend to bypass state control by smuggling products and goods along numerous routes used by ethnic groups on both sides of the border to maintain their trade activities, ethnic interactions, and ties. What should be noted is that these land deals between the Chinese and Lao Akha take place within a context in which formal land use and entitlement has not yet been fully established (Vandergeest 2003a). Despite the fact that the socialist regime in Laos declared in its early days that all the land belonged to the state while the populace had only the right of use (Evans 1990), it is still in the process of formalizing property relations between the state and its citizens (Fujita and Phanvilay 2008). Lund (2011) contends

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that this transition of property relations has had a parallel effect in Laos, as, in the process of claiming land, people start to become familiar with the idioms and language used by a wide variety of institutional actors in relation to the state. While on the one hand this familiarity inculcates Laotian ‘stateness’ among the people, on the other it raises these same people’s political awareness. Therefore, Lund argues that through the land reform and resettlement process in Laos, the authority of government institutions is affirmed and reinforced. However, this is not a straightforward process. For example, High (2008) indicates that the Laotian state’s dominance is far from complete, the government’s enforcement of the law is inefficient, and the gap that exists between policies and practice is persistent, giving rural residents room to maneuver. What High points out helps us to understand how the Lao Akha farmers attempt to carve out their own rubber plantations from the state-owned land – an unregulated practice supported by the inflow of Chinese people and capital. At the beginning of 2003, agents from DAFO and Lao-German cooperation tried to implement an official land-use plan that largely prioritized forest conservation to help enforce the policy of land and forest allocation in the village (Soulivanh et al. 2004). However, in response to this imposed, alien land-use plan, the villagers simply did not know what to do except align with market demands. Clinging to a customary sense of land ownership, most villagers do not understand why the land they have cultivated for generations suddenly belongs to the Laotian state. Like elsewhere in rural Laos, villagers do not pay attention to the allegedly improved land use promoted by the state and visualized in the land-allocation map posted at the village entrance (Lestrelin et al. 2011). Adding to these unregulated land-use practices has been the ‘land rush’ and land competition activities that have taken place due to Chinese investment in agriculture. Since the introduction of the New Economic Mechanism policy in Laos in 1986, laws, decrees, and other policies aim to turn land into capital through foreign investment and the Laotian government believes that international agricultural cooperation is the way for this sector to become modern (LAO PDR 1998; CPI 2007; DSLLC 2009). However, from the perspective of the state regulatory system, establishing rubber plantations with the individual Chinese in Ban Assan is illegal, as it challenges the designated land-zoning system and involves individuals selling ‘state land,’ which is forbidden. DAFO officials have advised Ban Asaan’s village chief to terminate any contract-farming activities with the Chinese, and threatened to take legal action against him. Meanwhile, on the Chinese side in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, when state agents have become aware

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of the cross-border rubber transactions taking place in adjacent villages in Laos, they tried to close the border to end this ‘chaotic’ and ‘disruptive’ action; as they assess that it threatens social harmony and good governance (Sturgeon 2010). However, attempts on both sides to curtail these activities are usually carried out in vain. The Laotian population is familiarizing itself with new mandates via the state and donor agencies, and this process is becoming evident through the growth of various kinds of instrumental rationality (Cf. Lyttleton 2005). This is particularly true in Ban Assan, where, while claiming land and undertaking commercial activities, villagers have learned to engage with state authorities in a number of ways. In the state processes, boundaries between legal/licit and illegal/illicit are shifting and unsettling (Abraham and Van Schendel 2005). In the eyes of the Laotian state, the informal arrangement of cross-border shared cropping as well as land deals are illegal because they do not go through district and provincial government channels for official approval. It is at the same time illicit because of the social perception of activities that are defined as ‘deviant.’ In the region, modern forest knowledge and racialization of minorities as backward, and threats to social stability and the natural environment contribute to land-use restrictions imposed on ethnic minorities (Vandergeest 2003b; Sturgeon 2005; Sturgeon et al. 2013). Sturgeon (2013) argues that on the China side the Akha subvert social hierarchy; likewise in Laos, rubber planting entails similar emotional endeavors as Lao Akha imagine they too might leapfrog social subordination into socially commended economic security (Li 2013). To make this happen, rather than fleeing to more remote areas which is a classical Zomian response, the villagers in Ban Assan deliberately and consciously turn their transborder network, traditional border crossing, and trade into an advantage for economic benefit. Therefore, to the villagers, the state is not necessarily an abstract form of power, but is represented by the personal control wielded by state agents (High and Petit 2013; Ducourtieux 2013), those to whom they can approach or from whom they can hide. As the case of Ban Assan shows, the recognition of state authority does not produce the optimal outcomes expected by state agents, in fact, in contrast and depending on the level of collaboration taking place with the Chinese, Laotian farmers’ increased awareness of government politics and regulations has led to them learning how to engage with state agents in such a way as to gain economically through using informal means. However, villagers’ decreasing access to land threatens their key livelihood activities – based on swidden rice cultivation – when effective land-use

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entitlement and enforcement is absent (Alton et al. 2005; Shi 2008; Friis et al. 2016). Under traditional Akha land-use arrangements, to be described shortly, the utilization of land depends on the availability of household labor (Epprecht 1998; Sturgeon 2005). While the land-use policy legitimated customary rights to communal territory, it is often taken advantage of by the village authorities and powerful families in the village who chip away at the land available to the villagers. It will continue to offer challenges to official maneuvers that regulate investment and trade. As a consequence, the widespread interest in rubber among a number of stakeholders ‘makes it difficult for members of DAFO to mediate and resolve conflicts effectively using the existing resource management framework’ (Thongmanivong et al. 2009: 344). Spatial freedom and market-driven mobilities do not always result in the realization of interstate social and ethnic solidarity but rework the social, economic life and physical space in complex ways. Consequently, social and economic differentiation have become more pronounced and require substantial modification to restore their livelihoods (Sturgeon et al. 2013). What echoes Ong (2006) is the negative freedom that challenges global common good.

Being Akha on the Frontier A cursory review of the burgeoning literature on Laotian people’s livelihood transition would suggest a positive view on their adaptation to the changes introduced by market forces (Rigg 2005, 2006; High 2008; Barney 2009). While acknowledging the pitfalls of development and change, these authors show that local people do not imagine their future predominantly in terms of preservation and stasis and they often embrace such changes, as they aspire to a better life. Similarly, I want to add to this mounting evidence regarding the importance of aspiration and modernity based on my own ethnographic work among the Lao Akha in Muang Sing and Muang Long in Luang Namtha Province. They expressed their gratitude for the job opportunities provided by various Chinese-owned agribusinesses, as they have helped them survive the decapitalization incurred by opium-eradication programs and the Laotian government’s ‘get tough’ poppy-eradication program which displaced them from their upland fields (Evrard and Goudineau 2004; Lyttleton et al. 2004). One villager said: ‘If the Chinese had not come to Muang Sing, we would have starved to death.’ One member of the Lao Akha political elite in Muang Sing shared his aspirations with me in these terms:

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The Western mode of development is too complicated to understand, there are too many meetings and little action. Also, we were asked to plant things that did not have a market in Laos. However, falang [the Westerners] have brought us water, mosquito nets and medicines. The Lao government knows nothing but to extract from us; the Chinese have wise heads and bad hearts, but if you follow the Chinese you will become rich and smart.

Certain parts of this statement reflect the local reality and the livelihood changes that have taken place in the study area. First, as passive recipients of Western development and aid, the Lao Akha have experimented with sustainable development and the Laotian state’s attempts to turn the premodern into modern via structural change (cf. Lyttleton et al. 2004). However, China’s rigorous, profit-driven modernization and the market have been important in solidifying the local people’s frontier aspirations. Second, even though it is often maligned, the state remains a central reference point for people’s lives and interpretations. Rather than seeing the Han entrepreneurs and investors as pure exploiters, the Lao Akha view the Laotian government as being impotent when faced with the actualization of modernization and development. Third, by using the word ‘follow,’ the Akha man quoted above reveals that to develop highly personalized relations with the Chinese is a pathway to wealth. Although the Chinese, including the Akha from China, present a morally ambiguous face to the Lao Akha, my interviewee’s comments reflect the importance the Chinese have in northern Laos. From the Lao Akha’s point of view, the Chinese are relatively rich and have both the money and savvy to handle the Laotian officials who intervene in their trade activities. Through the Chinese businesspersons, the Lao Akha have been able to access the Chinese market, and have been introduced to their business networks. Focused on an entrepreneurial experiment, this Akha man – who is actually illiterate – has been able to send his children to Chinese schools across the border, because ‘everything in Muang Sing is going to be about China.’ The key features of the aspirations voiced above are closely linked to specific notions of modernity. Bashow (2006) proposes that modernity exists in comparison; it is a ‘relevant’ matter associated with Western privilege and domination. According to his analysis, (Western) modernity works in a non-Western setting based on the socioeconomic barriers and cultural and racial boundaries that exist there. Therefore, the modernity serves as a paradigm to resolve non-Western people’s problems. However, this leaves such people as latecomers to modernity, who then merely mimic the ‘White

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man.’ Modernity also takes on very specific traits in this part of the world: owning a mobile phone, owning and riding a motorbike, performing wage labor, owning a brick/cement house, listening to Tai music, wearing a Lao skirt; these are all the elements or objects of modernity the Lao Akha desire, but are not necessarily about China or about being Chinese. Likewise, the Chinese path to wealth via planting rubber trees may be the inspiration for the Chinese Akha farmers seeking modernity (Sturgeon 2013), but what the Lao Akha pursue can hardly be said to be ‘Chinese.’ Following Sahlins’s idea of ‘indigenize[d] modernity’ (1999), Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud (2015) add agency to the locale. They illustrate how the Hmong living around the Vietnamese frontier have adapted their livelihood portfolios, having been pressured to adapt to market integration and the processes of nation-state building. They have deftly preserved many elements of their own culture and resorted to covert resistance, while engaging with modern, capitalist expansion in the uplands, creating a vernaculization of modernity within their lifeworlds. Likewise, the Lao Akha have been able to express their sense of modernity as a type of material acquisition, in which modernity and modernization are undifferentiatedly conflated, while selectively incorporating specific features and ideas, those they assume will help to advance their lives. For instance, in grappling with modern, Chinese entrepreneurship (which involves taking risks and economic accumulation), and speaking some Chinese, they have been able to adopt Lao etiquette (such as speaking softly and eating slowly) as part of a desired personal transformation. As Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud (2015) have shown, materializing what people construe as modern based on a certain path does not make people more ‘the same’; it actually makes them more differentiated. The Lao Akha’s adoption of rubber-cultivation activities does not mean that they now blindly march to the tune of the market economy. According to present official discourse of Laos, opium represents an embarrassing past, while planting cash crops (including rubber) represents a step toward a modern life. Yet the Lao Akha are trying to maintain a balance between what they want and what others expect from them, as many of the Lao Akha I spoke to still believe that opium comparatively speaking was a lower-risk cash crop in spite of its illegality and the externally perceived embarrassment. They almost all agree that ‘planting sugarcane is physically taxing but since it is a yearly crop, the economic return is ensured; planting rubber can generate a better income but it is too risky as it takes too long [seven to ten years, depending on management practices] to start generating a profit. Also, rubber makes village life complicated.’ While the

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former quotes reflect a level of calculation and decision-making regarding the Lao Akha’s livelihoods, the last quote reveals their reluctance to have village life altered by the influx of external investment. To an outsider with apparent economic sophistication, the Lao Akha may have rushed too fast into the cultivation of rubber, due the erratic nature of the global price for the commodity. But, as the case of Ban Assan here shows, planting rubber trees reflects one way in which the Lao Akha can lay claim to land; to maintain their livelihoods, and, to reach a more comfortable future.

Conclusion: A Continuing Frontier Experiment My emphasis in this chapter is placed on the reconstruction of livelihood of peripheral subjects situated in the expansion of rubber cultivation around the Laotian borderlands, as well as the manner in which immaterial dimensions have been crucial to social change in this context. As the Laotian and Chinese states have loosened their grip on flows of people and financial capital, as well as other resources, so have local people gradually expanded their social networks across borders, thus forming webs of economic partnerships. While Fold and Hirsch (2009) see frontier space as human encountering rather than isolating, as shown above these concrete social interactions produce unpredictable outcomes. Taking advantage of highly fragmented and personalized state control over the borderland region (High and Petit 2013), the Chinese and Lao Akha have developed strategies to maximize their economic ventures within Laos. The Laotian state has remained of importance in relation to the Lao Akha farmers’ interpretation of livelihood transitions – as in the past – but so far, and as the cases in this chapter show, the state’s development approach does not bring the type of modern life style to which the Lao Akha aspire. While free market, neoliberal rationality and practices – those that have fostered economic opportunities in the region – are a recent development, the Lao Akha’s livelihood experiments are historically specific, as they are hinged upon the social webs cultivated around the frequent movements of goods and people that have occurred over time. However, the new transborder livelihood that exists in the Lao frontier presents challenges to the Laotian state’s intent to regulate cross-border investment and trade.

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References Alting von Geusau, Leo. 1983. ‘Dialectics of Akhazan: The Interiorization of a Perennial Minority Group,’ In Highlanders of Thailand, ed. John McKinnon and Wanat Bhruksasri, 243-276. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Alton, C., D. Bluhm, and S. Sananikone. 2005. ‘Para Rubber Study Hevea brasiliensis Lao PDR.’ Lao-German Program Rural Development in Mountainous Areas of Northern Lao PDR. Abraham, Itty, and Willem van Schendel. 2005. ‘Introduction: The Making of Illicitness.’ In Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders and the Other Side of Globalization, ed. Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham, 1-37. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barney, Keith. 2009. ‘Laos and the Making of a “Relational” Resource Frontier.’ Geographical Journal 175: 146-159. Bashkow, Ian. 2006. The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cohen, Paul T. 2000. ‘Lue across Borders: Pilgrimage and the Muang Sing Reliquary in Northern Laos.’ In Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social And Cultural Change in the Border Regions, ed. Grant Evans, Christopher Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng, 145-162 Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Cohen, Paul T. 2013. ‘Symbolic Dimensions of the Anti-Opium Campaign in Laos.’ Australian Journal of Anthropology 24: 177-192. CPGMSECP. 2011. ‘China’s Participation in Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Cooperation Program.’ http://www.china.com.cn/policy/txt/2011-12/18/content_24182317.htm. CPI [Committee for Planning and Investment]. 2007. Presentation to the MAF/ NLMA Conference: Land Use in Commercial Plantation Development, 1516 February 2007, Vientiane, Laos. Diana, Antonella. 2013. ‘The Experimental Governing of Mobility and Trade on the China-Lao Frontier: The Tai Lue Case.’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34: 25-39. DSLLC [Decree on State Land Lease or Concession]. 2009. No. 135/PM, VCC, May 25th 2009, Prime Minister’s Office, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Unofficial translation. Ducourtieux, Olivier. 2013. ‘Lao State Formation in Phongsali Villages: Rising Intervention in the Daily Household and Phounoy Reaction.’ Asian Studies Review 37.4: 451-470. Dwyer, M. 2014. ‘Micro-Geopolitics: Capitalizing Security in Laos’ Golden Quadrangle.’ Geopolitics 19.2: 377-405.

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Epprecht, M. 1998. ‘Opium Production and Consumption and Its Place in the Socio-Economic Setting of the Akha People of North-Western Laos: The Tears of the Poppy as a Burden for the Community.’ MSc thesis, University of Berne. Evans, Grant. 1990. Lao Peasants under Socialism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Evrard, Olivier, and Yves Goudineau. 2004. ‘Planned Resettlement, Unexpected Migrations and Cultural Trauma in Laos.’ Development and Change 35.5: 937-962. FAO CTTP. 2010. FAO Commodities and Trade Technical Paper-12003, MediumTerm Prospects for Agricultural commodities: Projections to the Year 2010. http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y5143e/y5143elc.htm. Fold, N., and P. Hirsch. 2009. ‘Re-thinking Frontiers in Southeast Asia.’ Geographical Journal 175.2: 95-97. Friis, Ceilie, et al. 2016. ‘Changing Local Land Systems: Implications of a Chinese Rubber Plantation in Nambak District, Lao PDR.’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 37: 25-42. Fujita, Y., and K. Phanvilay. 2008. ‘Land and Forest Allocation in Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Comparison of Case Studies from Community-Based Natural Resources Management Research.’ Society and Natural Resources: an International Journal 21.2: 120-133. Giersch, C. Patterson. 2006. ‘Introduction.’ In Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier, 1-14. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giersch, C. Patterson. 2010. ‘Across Zomia with Merchants, Monks and Musk: Process Geographies, Trade Networks, and the Inner-East-Southeast Asian Borderlands.’ Journal of Global History 5: 215-239. High, H. 2008. ‘The Implications of Aspirations.’ Critical Asian Studies 40.4: 531-550. High, H., and Petit, Pierre. 2013. ‘Introduction: The Study of the State in Laos.’ Asian Studies Review 37.4: 417-432. Hill, A.M. 1989. ‘Chinese Dominance of the Xishuangbanna Tea Trade: An Interregional Perspective.’ Modern China 15: 321-345. Hill, A.M. 1998. Merchants and Migrants: Ethnicity and Trade among Yunnanese Chinese in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. Huang, Xunjing. 2007. ‘Natural Rubber Continues to Be Short of Supply.’ China Chemical Reporter, 16 May. LAO PDR. 1998. Law on Agriculture, No. 01-98/NA, 3 April. Lestrelin, Guillaume et al. 2011. ‘Measuring Participation: Case Studies on Village Land Use Planning in Northern Lao PDR.’ Applied Geography 31.3: 950-958. Li, Yunxia. 2013. ‘From Poppy Planters to Rubber Growers: An Ethnographic Account of Cross-Border Supply Chain Capitalism in Northwest Laos.’ PhD diss., Macquarie University.

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Lund, C. 2011. ‘Fragmented Sovereignty: Land Reform and Dispossession in Laos.’ Journal of Peasant Studies 38.4: 885-905. Lyttleton, Chris. 2005. ‘Market Bound: Relocation and Disjunction in Northwest Laos.’ In Migration and Health in Asia, ed. B. Yeoh, S. Jatrana, and M. Toyota, 41-60. Milton Park: Routledge. Lyttleton, Chris, and Yunxia Li. 2017. ‘Rubber’s Affective Economies: Seeding a Social Landscape in northwest Laos.’ In Changing Lives in Laos: Society, Politics and Culture in a Post-Socialist State, ed. Vanina Bouté and Vatthana Pholsena, 301-324. Singapore: NUS Press. Lyttleton, Chris, et al. 2004. ‘Watermelons, Bars and Trucks: Dangerous Intersections in Northwest Lao PDR: An Ethnographic Study of Social Change and Health Vulnerability along the Road through Muang Sing and Muang Long.’ Institute for Cultural Research of Laos and Macquarie University. Michaud, Jean. 2006. Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Nguyen, Duy Thieu. 1993. ‘Relationships between the Tai-Lua and Other Minorities on the Social-Political Systems of Muang Xinh (Northern Lao PDR).’ Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Thai Studies, SOAS, London. Rigg, J. 2005. Living with Transition in Laos: Market Integration in Southeast Asia. London: Routledge. Rigg, J. 2006. ‘Land, Farming, Livelihoods and Poverty: Rethinking the Links in the Rural South.’ World Development 34.1: 180-202. Sahlins, Marshall. 1999. ‘What is Anthropological Enlightenment? Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century.’ Annual Review of Anthropology 28: i-xxiii. Shi, W. 2008. ‘Rubber Boom in Luang Namtha: A Transnational Perspective.’ Report prepared for GTZ RDMA. Shneiderman. Sara. 2010. ‘Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia? Some Scholarly and Political Considerations across Time and Space.’ Journal of Global History 5: 289-312. Soulivanh, B., et al. 2004. ‘Study on Land Allocation to Individual Households in Rural Areas of Lao PDR.’ Vientiane: German Technical Cooperation Sector Project Land Management. Sturgeon, Janet C. 2005. Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Sturgeon, Janet C. 2010. ‘Governing Minorities and Development in Xishuangbanna China: Akha and Dai Rubber Farmers as Entrepreneurs.’ Geoforum 41.2: 318-328. Sturgeon, Janet C. 2012. ‘Cross border Rubber Cultivation between China and Laos: Regionalization by Akha and Tai Rubber Farmers.’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 34.1: 70-85.

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Sturgeon, Janet C. 2013. ‘The Cultural Politics of Ethnic Identity in Xishuangbanna, China: Tea and Rubber as “Cash Crops” and “Commodities.”’ Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 41.4: 109-131. Sturgeon, Janet C., et al. 2013. ‘Enclosing Ethnic Minorities and Forests in the Golden Economic Quadrangle.’ Development and Change 44.1: 53-79. Thongmanivong, S., Yayoi, F., Phanvilay, K., and Vongvisouk, T. 2009. ‘Agrarian Land Use Transformation in Northern Laos: from Swidden to Rubber.’ Southeast Asian Studies 47.3: 330-348. Turner, S., C. Bonnin, and J. Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ong, A. 2006. ‘Experiments with Freedom: Milieus of the Human.’ American Literary History 18.2: 229-244. Vandergeest, Peter. 2003a. ‘Land to Some Tillers: Development-Induced Displacement in Laos.’ International Social Science Journal 55.1: 47-56. Vandergeest, Peter. 2003b. ‘Racialization and Citizenship in Thai Forest Politics.’ Society and Natural Resources 16: 19-37. Van Schendel, Willem. 2002. ‘Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20.6: 647-668.

About the author Li Yunxia is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Yunnan Minzu University. She received her MPhil in social anthropology from University of Bergen, Norway, and PhD in anthropology from Macquarie University, Australia. Her research focuses mainly on Southwest China, northern Laos, and China-Lao border areas. Currently, her research interests include frontier issues, Western and Chinese modes of aid and development, transborder capital and human flows, agrarian studies, gender, social work, and ethnic policies. She has been actively involved in several projects related to public health and gender studies. Prior to these projects, she also participated in gender training programs sponsored by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. She has published articles on gender, cosmologies, and domestic education of the Hani/Akha. Her current research project focuses on ethnic social networks in China-Lao borderlands.

12 A Fortuitous Frontier Opportunity Cardamom Livelihoods in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands Sarah Turner Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CH12 Abstract Rural livelihoods in the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands are in a state of flux. While some upland societies have been cautious about altering long-standing practices, others have embraced new prospects offered by agrarian transformations, far-reaching commodity markets, and commercial intensification. The dilemmas created by such opportunities are especially palpable in the case of one upland nontimber forest product, black cardamom, now increasingly commoditized across these borderlands. Demand for this high-value spice has risen steadily over the last two decades, and many ethnic minority farmers have seized the opportunity to cultivate cardamom under the forest canopy. Yet this trade includes complex webs of social relationships, uneven power structures, and very different economic returns for different actors competing to access key resources. Keywords: Rural livelihoods, Sino-Vietnamese borderlands, Hmong, nontimber forest products, commodity chains

Introduction On both sides of the Sino-Vietnamese borderline, across a frontier region that incorporates upland northern Vietnam and southeast Yunnan, rural livelihoods are being tested, negotiated, and transformed in response to an inflow of industrialized agricultural methods and far-reaching commodity markets. Commercial intensification, resource- extraction projects, market liberalization, and new infrastructure and communications technologies

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are all playing key roles in diversifying the life projects of local, rural inhabitants. Since the start of reforms in the late 1970s in China and mid-1980s in Vietnam loosened the grip of these communist states over their flagging economies, this frontier region has witnessed collective property regimes being reorganized into private land-use rights, the strong promotion of cash cropping, and shifting cultivators being encouraged to become permanent, settled farmers. As an important conceptual marker, the term ‘frontier’ often denotes landscapes used for extracting natural resources, politically marginalized locales, or sites where minority ‘other’ populations dwell, in addition to other interpretations. The term therefore seems apt to describe these borderlands, although it is important to note that ‘borderlands’ and ‘frontiers’ are not always one and the same. Historically, the frontier concept had two divergent definitions. Frederick Jackson Turner, writing in 1894 about the colonial conquest of the United States of America, (in)famously defined the frontier as ‘the meeting point between savagery and civilization’ (1894: 200). He drew a distinction between US and European versions of the frontier, suggesting that in contrast to the US version, the European frontier consists of ‘a fortified boundary line running through dense populations.’ Four decades later, Owen Lattimore (1940) drew on Turner’s North American conceptualization of the frontier as the foundation for his study of the inner Asian frontiers of China. Lattimore portrayed frontier relationships as constituting the march of Chinese modernity over marginal lands and peoples, with the frontier being a constantly shifting region. Lattimore argued that taming the frontier was an uneasy and difficult endeavor requiring significant work and financial investments to succeed. A dualism was thus generated between empty/backward and densely populated/ modern, as also enshrined in the US frontier model. Also working in China but far more recently, Pat Giersch (2006) has tackled the obvious ethnocentric biases that such a conception of the frontier maintains. For Giersch (2006: 3), the frontier is ‘a territory or zone in which multiple people meet; at least one group is intrusive, the other indigenous.’ The idea that the frontier is flexible remains central to this rejuvenated imagery. Giersch argues that frontier formation is not a one-way process, and frontiers have moved both forward and backward through history. The territories where this movement occurs become ‘middle grounds’ where indigenous and intrusive people mutually influence one another. Others working on frontiers in Latin America (Cleary 1993) and Southeast Asia (Barney 2009) have also taken part in the sustained academic critique of the original Turner thesis that focused on ‘the absorption of peripheral regions

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by an expanding capitalism’ (Cleary 1993: 331). They argue that such a thesis allows too much of a ‘tendency towards homogeneity in economic structure and social relations in the cycle of frontier development’ (Cleary 1993: 331; see also Harrell 1995). Indeed, this case study will show that, by taking a transboundary focus, as noted by Smyer Yü in this book’s introduction, we can appreciate how local frontier communities often react to, rework, and resist such homogeneity in nuanced ways. Living at a distance from their respective state seats of power, ethnic minorities in the physical and economic frontiers of China and Vietnam are often considered to be located on the cultural margins, frequently deemed culturally less evolved than the Han in China (Harrell 1995; Nyíri 2006) and as backward, marginal, or lazy in Vietnam (Koh 2002; McElwee 2004). These minorities are currently navigating a number of important livelihood choices, but their multiple marginal positions complicate their options. While some upland minority individuals have remained guarded about altering traditional practices in response to these opportunities and challenges, others have been more eager to pursue new livelihood options and alternatives. One such livelihood opportunity gaining popularity among ethnic minority residents in this frontier area – and which will be the focus for this chapter – is the cultivation and trade of the nontimber forest product cardamom. Demand for black cardamom,1 a high-value commodity which must be cultivated under the forest canopy, has risen steadily over the last two decades (Tugault-Lafleur 2007). As such, a number of ethnic minority farmers on both sides of the border have seized the opportunity to begin expanding the cultivation of what was historically a perennial plant growing wild in the forest. For those now cultivating this spice in Vietnam, intermediaries transport large sacks of the (usually dried) spice to the lowlands or, more commonly, export it to China along complex commodity chains. Across the border in China, commodity chains for the Vietnam-sourced product merge with those coming from frontier cultivators in Yunnan. On both sides of the border, these commodity chains are enmeshed with highly uneven power structures, which in turn create widely varying economic returns among the actors involved. This chapter sets out to explore these 1 Within the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), two main genera named as forms of cardamom are Elletaria cardamomum (commonly called cardamom, green cardamom, or true cardamom), and Amomum (also known as black, brown, or false cardamom as well as other localized names; see Buckingham 2004). In the latter genus, there are several species, with Amomum tsao-ko (草果, cao guo) in Yunnan and thảo quả in Vietnam, being the focus of this chapter (Aubertin 2004; Lim 2013).

266 Sar ah Turner Figure 1 The Sino-Vietnamese borderlands – a transnational space and a key site for the cultivation of black cardamom by ethnic minorities

Map produced by Phạm Thị Thanh Hiền and Jean Michaud

uneven structures and returns, while interpreting how they reflect the dynamics of this frontier region more broadly. This chapter is based on yearly fieldwork focusing on upland livelihoods in northern Vietnam since 1999 and in southeast Yunnan since 2008. The focus in Yunnan Province has been on the counties of Jinping and Hekou in Honghe Prefecture, and on Maguan and Malipo in Wenshan Prefecture. In Vietnam, the focus has been on the provinces of Lai Châu, Lào Cai, and Hà Giang (fig. 1). Conversational interviews have been completed with over 250 ethnic minority farmers, trade intermediaries, and wholesalers, along with over 20 semistructured interviews with state officials, including market managers, border control officers, agricultural extension officers, and forest rangers. Interviews with ethnic minorities have been predominantly undertaken with the help of research assistants of that same ethnicity, while those with state officials have been completed with a Vietnamese interpreter or alone.

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Engaging the Market Black cardamom, a perennial herb, is native to the cloudy, cool, and humid regions of upland Southeast Asia. For centuries, where agro-ecological conditions permit, this plant has been one of many forest products that uplanders have collected for household use. Users of traditional Chinese medicine value cardamom for its ability to cure digestive problems, dysentery, and other ailments. Not surprisingly, this forest product therefore has a long history of being traded throughout the Chinese empire and its environs (Aubertin 2004). Historically in Vietnam, both French colonizers and then the independent Vietnamese state sought to develop a domestic pharmaceutical industry, facilitating the trade of cardamom. During the subsidy period (thời bao cấp) in Vietnam (1975-1986), legal as well as underground, informal cardamom trade networks existed as both state and nonstate actors tried to benefit from this trade. Since the mid-1980s, cardamom has shifted from being a product only periodically traded in the Sino-Vietnamese frontier to an influential commodity. Today, as one of the world’s most expensive spices by dry fruit weight (close behind saffron and vanilla), cardamom’s medicinal qualities are sought by millions of potential consumers in Asia, and its culinary uses are in demand across the globe (Buckingham and Tu Minh Tiep 2003; Choocharoen et al. 2013; Omanakutty and Joy 2007). In Yunnan, cardamom is most heavily cultivated in Xishuangbanna (Li et al. 2010). It also grows – either naturally as a pioneer species on former swidden land, or purposely intercropped among alder trees – in Jinping and Hekou Counties in Honghe Prefecture and Maguan, Malipo, and Xichou Counties in Wenshan Prefecture (Guo Huijun, Xia Yongmei, and Padoch 2007). As suitable land for cardamom production in Yunnan has become increasingly scarce since the early 2000s due to forest regulations and competing land uses, Vietnam and Laos have become important source areas (Aubertin 2004; Choocharoen et al. 2013). On the Vietnam side of the border, cardamom is particularly common in the Hoàng Liên mountain range and in other forested areas of Lào Cai and Lai Châu Provinces. Though the rocky terrain east of Lào Cai is less suited for the production of this forest product, in Hà Giang and Cao Bằng Provinces Hmong farmers, and to a lesser extent Dao (Yao), have also been attempting to cultivate it where possible (Novellino 2000). To the west, cardamom cultivation has also been increasing in Phongsaly Province, Laos, due to rising global demand (Aubertin 2004; Ducourtieux, Visonnavong, and Rossard 2006).

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Cardamom is an appealing cash crop for upland residents, and the process of cultivating cardamom is comparatively simple compared to terraced rice farming. While land does need to be prepared to some extent, this is in the shade of forest trees, and the process is not as meticulous as rice field preparation. Furthermore, no animal labor is required, the harvesting season usually complements other upland agrarian work, and the process of drying the cardamom pods is long-established indigenous knowledge handed down through generations. Many Hmong (Miao), Dao (Yao), and Hà Nhì (Hani, also known internationally as Akha) ethnic minority households have made the leap from just collecting the plant in the wild to actively cultivating and trading it. Dried cardamom’s high value-to-weight ratio is an additional appealing characteristic and an important consideration in a rural region where many cultivators lack access to reliable transport (cf. Sowerwine 2004a, 2004b). Cardamom Commodity Chains Originating in Lào Cai Province, Vietnam The small-scale gathering of cardamom has long been practiced by Hmong and Yao households in Lào Cai Province, the province with the greatest cardamom production in Vietnam. However, it was not until the 1990s that households began to intensify their cultivation efforts. The economic liberalization policies of Đổi Mới, enacted in 1986, abolished collectives and opened up access to market trading. After Vietnam banned opium production and restricted the logging industry in 1993, upland residents who had previously been reliant on these channels for periodic income found themselves in need of alternative cash sources (Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1992, 1993). Moreover, since 1998-1999, the Vietnamese state has been attempting to increase food production and homogenize agriculture in the uplands using hybrid varieties of rice and maize. This switch to hybrids has had important repercussions for livelihood strategies, as farmers are now obliged to purchase (infertile) hybrid rice and maize seeds annually as well as chemical pesticides and fertilizers (Bonnin and Turner 2012). This has increased the need for cash income among local farmers considerably, especially for fertilizer. As word spread about cardamom’s growing demand and prices in China, it quickly became a promising crop due to such rising cash needs. Now deliberately planted beneath forest canopies, cardamom is harvested from September to November and then dried for several days over a wood fire, often in the forest. Depending on the size of a household and how

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much cardamom it has grown, cultivation may rely upon reciprocal labor agreements between local families. This work is carried out primarily by men, since periods of time must be spent in the forest guarding the maturing cardamom pods from the risk of theft, and this is not deemed culturally appropriate for women. With June and July often being difficult months for Hmong and Yao semi-subsistence farmers, when some households experience yearly food shortages; cardamom cultivation has allowed households to enter into relationships with trade intermediaries who provide access to cash advances.2 In sum, cardamom income is now acting as an important cash buffer to insure against seasonal hunger and to pay for hybrid rice seed and fertilizer. For those who can harvest significant quantities, it can also help pay for water buffalo, weddings, and funerals. Competition and conflicts have been growing among minority households cultivating cardamom due to the limited amount of appropriate land. As more households realize the potential financial rewards, the number of cardamom cultivators has risen and demand for prime forested land continues to grow. As one Hmong cultivator in Bát Xát District, Lào Cai Province, noted, ‘the forests around here are now full. We’ve filled them with cardamom over the last 10-15 years.’ Moreover, while official Red Book land-use certificates guarantee households property rights over their own housing and agricultural land, cardamom fields are often located in communal forests, and thus ethnic minority farmers seldom possess officially recognized title to the plots they cultivate (cf. Neef 2001; Sowerwine 2004b). Though locals are obliged to treat cardamom disputes like any other issue and report them to the local People’s Committee, in practice farmers are loath to involve the state in internal conflicts over land that is not even legally protected. In addition, state-appointed village officials often charge hefty fees to act as arbitrators. The frequent disputes that arise over crop theft can therefore escalate into violence instead. As a result, imaginative solutions are often sought. Households deter theft by making multiple trips to their plots from July onward, and men frequently sleep in the forest overnight leading up to the harvest to protect maturing cardamom fruit. Moreover, although fully ripe fruit are the most valuable, households that are fearful of theft will sometimes decide to harvest their crop early, hence losing out on potentially bigger financial

2 From fieldwork in the province, I estimate that about 30 percent of Hmong and Yao households in Lào Cai Province face food shortages for at least 1 to 2 months a year (see also Delisle 2014).

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returns (see Aubertin 2004; Choocharoen et al. 2013 for discussions of the same concerns in Laos). Things get even more complicated when one is cultivating cardamom in a national park. Hmong and Yao living within Hoàng Liên National Park, in Lào Cai Province, are in close proximity to old-growth forest ideal for cardamom fields. Despite the fact that many households in ethnic minority hamlets predate the park’s establishment, with some families and their ancestors having resided there for over 200 years, conservationist regulations forbid logging, hunting, and collecting flora or fauna. Nonetheless, residents continue to illegally harvest forest products. With their extensive knowledge of the forest, upland farmers are adept at avoiding park officials who lack the resources to fully enforce the law. The farmers’ lack of legal access rights to forest land, however, renders cardamom cultivation a rather fragile option. Park officials I have interviewed are aware that Hmong and Yao residents are planting fields in the park, and are concerned about the drying of cardamom over fires – not least because the process requires the illegal collection of fuel wood. But despite the confiscation of other forest products harvested for sale in local marketplaces, park officials have not cracked down on cardamom trading to date; as a result, many – but not all – ethnic minority farmers continue to consider the benefits of illicit cardamom cultivation to outweigh the risks. In one village within the park’s boundaries, the cultivation of cardamom is so extensive – some families collecting over 500 kilograms a year – and the risk of theft so high from village outsiders, that local men have decided to create an informal cardamom protection committee. In this case, a Hmong informant explained that the easiest and most direct route from the villagers’ surrounding cardamom fields to the main road that heads toward the district capital of Sa Pa (where the cardamom is taken to be traded) is through the village itself. The informal committee keeps tabs on the flow of cardamom, and villagers pay for the protection provided with a small percentage of their crop. Anyone not known to committee members is stopped and questioned regarding what they are transporting. While this approach has reduced theft, not all villagers subscribe to the idea wholeheartedly, and some transport only a portion of their harvest along this ‘official’ route, while using forest paths for the rest of their crop to evade the committee and the required payments.3 3 While collusion or bribery between park officials and those involved in the cardamom trade would seem an obvious option given the relatively high prices obtained for this product, I have yet to hear of such arrangements (cf. Hoang Cam 2007). On the one hand, local state officials

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Moving along the Cardamom Commodity Chain Ethnic minority cultivators are located at the initial node of these cardamom commodity chains (fig. 2). From September to November, cardamom buyers – often Kinh (majority Vietnamese) or Giáy based in local villages as small shop traders – purchase the spice from minority farmers. Ethnic minority farmers are not well positioned to take advantage of business opportunities along this commodity chain, and tend to sell their harvests to such intermediaries, with whom they have some amount of regular interaction and familiarity. These intermediaries then use motorcycles or vans to transport the cardamom to wholesale businesses that are nearly all run by Kinh women in district towns. In addition, in recent years, some minority farmers have purchased motorbikes in order to visit local towns to sell directly to wholesalers. These intermediaries and wholesalers often buy cardamom on credit, giving cash to cultivators before the harvest, as noted earlier. While this suits cultivators by supplying their households with a cash infusion in the lean months of June and July, it also means that their cardamom yield is bought for a hypothetical price that is often set lower than what it might be possible to fetch later the same year. Such agreements allow Kinh and Giáy intermediaries and wholesalers to dictate their rate of return and wield a financial advantage over Hmong and Yao suppliers. For instance, in 2013 and 2014, Kinh wholesalers in one district were offering advance payments of US$5.30, while prices for cardamom after harvest rose to US$6-7. During the harvest in 2015, cardamom cultivators again noted a similar US$1-2 difference over time. These cardamom wholesalers depend on strong networks with larger-scale wholesalers in Lào Cai City, where the product is next transported. During the peak of the harvest season, merchants from Lào Cai City head to a range of district head towns by truck to collect cardamom supplies, while other district wholesalers who have collected substantial supplies transport their stock to Lào Cai City. Market knowledge and social networks are important assets in this trade. Neither Hmong and Yao cultivators, nor Kinh and Giáy intermediaries can access the market knowledge and networks that Kinh wholesalers in the at the commune level are often closely entwined with local communities, and this means they often turn a blind eye to activities that many of their own family members are undertaking. On the other hand, officials transferred from elsewhere are sometimes more concerned with showing positive ‘development’ outcomes for local communities via reductions in poverty and improved food security.

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district head towns and Lào Cai City rely on to gauge regional, national, and international cardamom demand, supply, and prices, including Chinese trends (Xu Zaifu 1991). It is therefore Kinh wholesalers who have the human, social, and financial capital required for international negotiations, including well-established cross-border links with Chinese traders. There are fewer than ten such wholesalers in Lào Cai City and, like the wholesalers in district head towns, they also tend to run their businesses from the ground floor of their homes, stacking up piles of large sacks (often 100 kg each) of cardamom from October through February. In the case of Lào Cai City, most of these wholesalers collect their cardamom from the districts of Sa Pa, Văn Bàn, and Bát Xát. Chinese wholesalers then pay a visit to these wholesalers, or vice versa, to negotiate prices and purchase stock, necessitating a trip across the border to or from nearby Hekou, the Chinese frontier town just over the Nậm Thi River. While most of the stock held by Lào Cai wholesalers is bound for the Chinese consumer market, some stays in Vietnam. For these commodity chains, Kinh traders purchase cardamom in Lào Cai City or sometimes in district head towns and transport it to the lowlands. In Hanoi, one of the main regional wholesale hubs is Đồng Xuân market, where traders sell it on to vendors from smaller neighborhood markets, specialized herbal medicine shops, and restaurant operators. Local customers consume cardamom in their favorite snacks sold by food vendors and restaurants throughout the city. These eateries use the spice in Vietnam’s beloved national dish, the ubiquitous noodle soup phở, and as an important ingredient in chè, sweetened porridge, among other dishes. Cultivation and Trade in the Yunnan Frontier Cardamom is also an important nontimber forest product for a number of ethnic minorities on the Yunnan side of the border.4 Jinping Miao, Yao, and Dai Autonomous County, located in Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, is one such cardamom cultivation area in this frontier zone directly across the border from Lào Cai Province, Vietnam. Here, a number of different land access regimes are in place. For instance, in Jinping Fenshuiling Reserve, Honghe Prefecture, farmers can gain legal access to forested land, paying ¥10/mu (US$19/ha) into an ‘ecological compensation fund’ (Xu Jianchu 2005: 17). Yet other cultivators continue to harvest illegally in national forests, where control is limited. Farmers note that if they expand their cultivation 4 In this chapter I only summarize brief findings from the Yunnan side of the border, as this is the focus of a much larger research project currently underway.

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areas very slowly, officials are willing to turn a blind eye. Local intermediaries, usually Han Chinese, then buy up the cardamom from these ethnic minority farmers – who are often Hani or Hmong (Miao) – and commonly sell their stock onto wholesalers in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with a lesser amount going to Kunming. Transportation is taken care of by freight forwarders, many based in local cities such as Mengzi. From Guangxi, it is a short haul to the lucrative markets of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The Frontier Commodity Chains Merge The Chinese pharmaceutical industry consumes the majority of the cardamom grown in Vietnam and China. In Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan, and Nanning City in Guangxi, Han traders distribute dried cardamom to Figure 2 A stylized commodity chain diagram for cardamom, with a focus on the flows originating from upland Vietnam Vietnam

China

Cultivators in Hmong & Yao villages, upland Lào Cai Province, Vietnam

Cultivators in Hmong, Yao & Hani villages, Honghe & Wenshan Prefectures, Yunnan

Intermediaries (Kinh or Giáy) Villages & local towns Wholesalers (Kinh) Towns (such as Sapa) Wholesalers (Kinh) Lào Cai City

Intermediaries (Zhuang & Han) Local county towns

Long-distance wholesalers (Zhuang & Han)

Lowland traders (Kinh) Hanoi Herbal medicine retailers (Kinh) Lowland medicinal markets

Pho and Chè vendors (Kinh) Lowlands

Cardamom wholesalers & manufacturers (Zhuang & Han) e.g. Kunming, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Other Asia locations

Consumer markets Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, S. Korea, Mongolia

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processors who grind it into powder or press it for oil before it is mixed into various pharmaceutical products sold to consumers across East Asia. It is at this commodity node that Vietnamese cardamom is frequently mixed with local Yunnan cardamom. The Chinese pharmaceutical industry buys an estimated 2,000 tons of cardamom annually, half of which is produced domestically, with the remainder imported from Vietnam, Laos, and Burma (Xu Zaifu 1991). Indeed, when contacting spice wholesalers and traders in the United States, few knew whether the black cardamom they traded was from Vietnam or China.

Balancing the Accounts of a Cash Crop Trade System: The Case of Vietnam As cardamom has evolved from a wild forest product gathered for household use into an international commercial commodity, an increasing number of intermediaries have become involved in its trade across the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands. The growing complexity and spatial expansion of networks originating in the uplands has created a situation where some actors profit significantly more than others. Here I take a closer look at what is happening in the Vietnamese frontier. Hmong Cardamom: Modest yet Significant Incomes Wild cardamom plant densities are relatively low, but by carefully propagating young rhizomes, one hectare of cultivated cardamom may yield 50 kilograms of dry fruit per year (Kvitvik 2001; Aubertin 2004). Included in the income equations for ethnic minority households cultivating cardamom are the labor and transportation costs that they incur while tending and trading their crop. Prices that households then receive vary from year to year and district to district. In Vietnam, cardamom seems to have first dipped and then risen in value from 2005 to 2015. In 2005, cultivating households were receiving US$4.10-4.50 per kilogram of dried cardamom. This dropped to US$3.30-5.00 in 2010, and in November 2015 was standing at US$5.60-7.00. The higher of these two recorded prices each year reflect prices obtained by farmers able to wait two to three months after the harvest to sell their crop, rather than selling at the same time as everyone else, immediately upon harvesting. At 2015 prices, households producing 70-100 kg of dried cardamom could earn roughly US$392-560 – a substantial cash inflow to their overall livelihoods. Interestingly, when interviewed in 2015, one ethnic

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minority woman was fairly scathing about the ability of people from her ethnic group (which I will not name here) to carefully consider the potential financial benefits of stockpiling their harvest. She noted: ‘My people are useless at waiting to sell at a higher price. They see that they can get money now [during the harvest period], and so they sell now. That’s always the problem, they can never wait, they want to buy a motorbike now.’ In Sa Pa District, households in Lao Chải and Tả Van Communes cultivate 70-100 kg of cardamom per year on average, while some in Bản Khoang, Bản Hô,� and Séo Mý Tỷ Communes gather up to 200-500 kg annually. Other ethnic minority households continue to maintain only a small plot of cardamom for household use and emergency cash, gathering as little as 20 kg. In these cases, households sometimes decide not to dry the cardamom pods before trading, deciding that the effort of finding enough firewood is too labor intensive. The unpredictable climate in the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands causes yearly yields to fluctuate widely, while natural disasters can also wreak havoc. The maturing fruit can be damaged by extreme weather during the summer rainy season, or due to winter cold spells. Households in Bản Khoang Commune, in Sa Pa District, suffered heavy losses from frost and Figure 3 Cardamom recovering from a harsh winter in Bản Khoang Commune, Lào Cai Province, Vietnam

Photo by the author

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hail storms in 2011 and from an early, cold winter in 2013. Snow in high altitude areas on both sides of the border in late 2014 and 2015 has caused serious declines in cardamom yields for 2015 and 2016 (fig. 3). Other natural events can also impact harvests, such as when forest fires struck Hoàng Liên National Park in February 2010, and again in 2014. One young Hmong woman had her entire cardamom crop destroyed by the 2014 fires. As she recalled, ‘The fire was huge and it took 4-5 days for them to put it out. They had to bring in a helicopter and take water from the lake behind the dam. My cardamom is all gone. The forest there is all gone. Now it’s only good to grow maize.’ Farmer incomes from cardamom are therefore unstable due to a diverse range of direct and indirect factors. Sizeable Returns for Intermediaries and Wholesalers Along cardamom commodity chains, intermediaries and wholesalers collect far higher profits than ethnic minority cultivators. Village-based Kinh and Giáy intermediaries can earn profits of around US$0.30/kg and can be moving up to five metric tons of cardamom per year. This amounts to US$312 per ton traded, a significant amount even after accounting for transportation, packaging, and storage costs. Even more money can be earned further along the chains. In 2006, one Kinh wholesaler based in Sa Pa Town had an annual flow of 30-40 metric tons per season, yielding revenues of just over US$10,000 (fig. 4). While profits are a well-kept secret, I estimated from discussions with Lào Cai City wholesalers in 2012 that on average, they could earn at least US$18,000-20,000 annually for moving about 300 metric tons, since Chinese wholesalers were buying cardamom that year for around US$6.80-$7.00/kg. On the Chinese trade site Alibaba.com, six Vietnamese trading companies offered Vietnamese black cardamom for sale in 2015. Each presented a range of qualities, with the average lowest price being US$5,520 per metric ton, and the highest average price being $47,300 (US$5.52-$47 per kilogram). After the involvement of numerous intermediaries, black cardamom can then retail for a staggering US$105-$918 per kilogram on North American websites for boutique spice stores.5 5 These are the lowest (allspiceonline.com) and highest (wholespice.com) prices found across ten US-based websites selling black cardamom pods. However, it is not specified on such websites whether this cardamom is from China or Vietnam. Four stores contacted for follow-up questions confirmed that their cardamom was ‘from China,’ although two noted that they could source Vietnamese cardamom if sufficient quantities were requested. One store noted that their popular

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Figure 4 Sorting cardamom for a Kinh wholesaler in Sa Pa town, Lào Cai province

Photo by the author

Who Benefits from this Frontier Opportunity, and How? At the different nodes along these commodity chains originating in Vietnam, actors are able to access widely varying types and amounts of financial, physical, and social capital. Kinh traders in regional urban centers like Sa Pa Town and Lào Cai City possess numerous advantages over ethnic minority producers who reap comparatively small profits. The vans and trucks of Kinh traders provide them with direct access to markets and cross-border opportunities, while their extended networks based on shared ethnicity, family ties, language, and economic status facilitate trade links founded on trust and reciprocity. Kinh wholesalers rely heavily on networks of relatives and friends among intermediaries to buy cardamom in the uplands and then sell it in either China or the Vietnamese lowlands. Moreover, these wholesalers benefit from their ability to access up-to-date information on supply, demand, and market prices. Ethnic minority cultivators remain spatially separate from these traders, lacking access to both financial capital for investments like trucks and ‘Phở spice kit’ contained Vietnamese cardamom, with this kit retailing at US$3.98 for a 42 g kit (the equivalent of US$94 per kilogram in 2015 prices).

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social capital in the form of ethnic affiliation and trust relations with Kinh/ lowland networks. Currently, minority cultivators cannot compete with better-connected traders further along these commodity chains, and the financial returns for the harvesting efforts of minorities remain comparatively marginal. Whether they are satisfied or not with this situation, and whether they are even tempted to involve themselves on the broader stage, becomes the next question. Though the Kinh, Giáy, and Han merchants operating in Lào Cai Province reap far greater profits from their role in the cardamom trade than Hmong and Yao cultivators, even the small amounts that minority growers receive are crucial for their households’ food security. For both Hmong and Yao, endogenous definitions of wealth are based on a household’s ability to feed itself through the entire year from home-grown rice or maize without facing food shortages, to possess a house that can accommodate all who are expected to live there, and enough water buffalo to plough the rice fields (if situated in the appropriate agro-ecological conditions) (Turner 2012; Turner, Bonnin, and Michaud 2015). For those struggling to meet these criteria, the significant cash value of their cardamom crop acts as insurance against shortfalls in rice and basic consumption goods. Financially secure households – those meeting the criteria above – may spend cardamom income on annual festivals and lifecycle rituals or invest in land-use certificates, construction materials, agricultural inputs, or mobile phones, televisions, and motorbikes. Séo Mí Tỷ Village, in Sa Pa District, has such large returns from cardamom that most village households are now able to buy such additional commodities. On the whole, however, households prefer to direct any extra cash toward securing the continuation of their customary livelihood activities rather than being enticed to expand cash crop portfolios or pursue employment as traders. Instead of luring Hmong and Yao uplanders into a new economic niche, this cardamom boom seems to have been indigenized as a supplemental opportunity to gain necessary capital, while preserving their preferred principal livelihoods based around rice and/or maize production. While farmers across this frontier are skilled at identifying new economic opportunities, they take care that such adaptations do not endanger core elements of their cultural identities and livelihoods. Indeed, ethnic minority cultivators in northern Vietnam cite four main concerns regarding cardamom’s potential as a source of cash. First, households are finding that they must plant new plots deeper and deeper in the forest as competition for suitable land rises; not only does this make tending the cardamom plants more difficult in terms of sheer walking distances, but it also exacerbates

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growers’ lack of control over fields to which they do not hold legally protected rights. Second, households with fewer able-bodied male members or labor-sharing options are at a disadvantage considering the physically demanding nature of cardamom harvesting. Third, uplanders are wary of a commodity whose value is dictated by national and global market forces over which they have no control. Finally, in recent years, extreme weather events have also added uncertainty regarding the rewards of this cash crop. Ethnic minority interviewees express reluctance to continue farming cardamom if the challenges – such as the risk of theft without legal recourse, low returns on labor, and uncertain weather conditions – become too burdensome. Cardamom is a supplemental, complementary crop, and at all times remains secondary to their main subsistence-based agrarian livelihoods. In Lào Cai and Lai Châu Provinces, the all-important wet rice crop remains crucial as an indicator of household wealth and a secure source of nutrition even though cardamom has the potential to be grown on a larger scale. Ethnic minority Hmong and Yao work to ensure that traditional household-based economies are enhanced rather than replaced by their involvement in the profitable but potentially fragile cardamom trade. Though the expansion of government-funded hybrid rice and maize programs are pressuring uplanders to enter the cash economy to buy yearly seed, fertilizer, and pesticide inputs, ethnic minorities appear to be striving to protect the core elements of their customary livelihoods as long as possible.

Concluding Thoughts Across this frontier region, undergoing rapidly changing market imperatives and opportunities, a range of property rights coexist. I have briefly introduced some of these, from illegal harvesting in national parks to communal forests, to legal provisions for harvesting in state-sponsored arrangements. Clearly, power dynamics with regard to state policies come into play here to determine farmer access to potential cardamom cultivation sites. Yet a much broader range of relations, not only with state officials enacting (or ignoring) policy, but with other cultivators, intermediaries, and wholesalers, also shapes the possible livelihood outcomes for those at the initial nodes of these commodity chains. Moreover, livelihood decisions – and specifically the degree of engagement with cardamom trade opportunities – are made with an eye to the costs and benefits of negotiating cardamom thefts, dealing with intermediaries that are not of the same ethnicity and that are

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suspected of rigging prices, coping with a rising number of extreme weather events, and juggling other household priorities. In Vietnam, upland ethnic minority residents find themselves increasingly ‘under the state’s gaze’ as they are progressively incorporated into national visions of agrarian transformation and circuits of commodity production. The increasing need among ethnic minority farmers for access to cash is having profound implications on frontier livelihoods and ways of life. As Barney notes, a frontier region can ‘be understood as a contested and complex empirical “reality”’ (2009: 147). As such, scale is important in an analysis of frontier relations. If one focuses on the household, one begins to understand that these minority farmers are operationalizing opportunities in ways that fit their own needs and life projects, and their contemplation of possible rewards does not necessarily result in them jumping on a resource extraction bandwagon. Will this remain the case in the future? It is hard to tell, and further research on the Chinese side of the border may reveal a different story again. For the time being, however, ethnic minority cardamom cultivators in northern Vietnam are drawing upon a particular agency that creates a distinctive narrative at the household level, and one that does not reflect a purely extractionist mindset across this frontier. Yet it is important to reiterate that upland Yao and Hmong farmers are far from static and inflexible. When their livelihoods are at stake, they adapt, using their agency to the best of their ability. Historical trade routes across the border are hence being strengthened by this cardamom trade, and long-term networks are not being severed by a state-created borderline. Instead, cardamom transboundary trade maintains, reshapes, and diversifies relations among communities, and across ethnicities.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the interviewees who contributed to this chapter for their time and insight. Special thanks to Yang Pang, Shu Tan, and Lan Du for cross-checking specific details in Vietnam, and to Dr. Xu Yi Qiang and Dr. Jean-François Rousseau for discussions regarding preliminary findings for the Yunnan section of this investigation. Thanks also to Thomas Kettig and Melody Lynch for research assistance.

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References Aubertin, Catherine. 2004. ‘Cardamom (Amomum spp.) in Laos PDR: The Hazardous Future of an Agroforest System Product.’ In Forest Products, Livelihoods and Conservation: Case-Studies of Non-Timber Forest Products Systems, ed. K. Kusters and B. Belcher, 43-60. Bogor: CIFOR. Barney, Keith. 2009. ‘Laos and the Making of a “Relational” Resource Frontier.’ Geographical Journal 175.2: 146-159. Bonnin, Christine, and Sarah Turner 2012. ‘At What Price Rice? Food Security, Livelihood Vulnerability, and State Interventions in Upland Northern Vietnam.’ Geoforum 43.1: 95-105. Buckingham, Sebastian. 2004. Synthesis Report on Cardamom Cultivation. Hanoi: Fauna and Flora International. Buckingham, Sebastian, and Tu Minh Tiep. 2003. ‘A Rapid Characterization of Amomum Aromaticum (Roxb.) in Three Villages in Van Ban District, Lào Cai Province.’ Hanoi: Fauna and Flora International. Choocharoen, Chalathon, Antonia Schneider, Andreas Neef, and Pavlos Georgiadis. 2013. ‘Income Options for the Poorest of the Poor: The Case of Cardamom in Northern Laos.’ Small-Scale Forestry 12.2: 193-213. Cleary, David. 1993. ‘After the Frontier: Problems with Political Economy in the Modern Brazilian Amazon.’ Journal of Latin American Studies 25.2: 331-349. Delisle, Sarah. 2014. ‘“The Weather Is Like The Game We Play”: Hmong and Yao Food Security and Emerging Livelihood Vulnerabilities in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam.’ MA thesis, McGill University. Ducourtieux, Olivier, Phoui Visonnavong, and Julien Rossard. 2006. ‘Introducing Cash Crops in Shifting Cultivation Regions: The Experience with Cardamom in Laos.’ Agroforestry Systems 66: 65-76. Giersch, Charles Patterson. 2006. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Guo Huijun, Xia Yongmei, and Christine Padoch. 2007. ‘Alnus nepalensis-Based Agroforestry Systems in Yunnan, Southwest China.’ In Voices from the Forest: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Sustainable Upland Farming, ed. M. Cairns. 326-340. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future Press. Harrell, Stevan. 1995. ‘Introduction.’ In Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. S. Harrell, 3-36. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hoang Cam. 2007. ‘On Being “Forest Thieves”: State Resource Policies, Market Forces and Struggles over Livelihood and Meaning of Nature in a Northwestern Valley of Vietnam. Working paper. Chiang Mai: Regional Center for Social Sciences and Sustainable Development.

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Koh, Priscilla. 2002. ‘Perception and Portrayal of Minorities in Vietnamese Communist Ethnology (1954-2001).’ MA thesis, National University of Singapore. Kvitvik, Trond. 2001. ‘Cultivating and Collecting Cardamom (Amomum spp.) and Other NTFPs in Muong Lung District, Luang Namtha Province, Lao PDR.’ MSc thesis, University of Bergen. Lattimore, Owen. 1940. Inner Asian Frontiers of China. New York: American Geographical Society. Li, G., A.J. Chen, X.Y. Chen, X.L. Li, and W.W. Gao. 2010. ‘First Report of Amomum villosum (Cardamom) Leaf Lesion Caused by Pyricularia costina in China.’ New Disease Reports 22.2. Lim Tong Kwee. 2013. Edible Medicinal and Non-Medicinal Plants, Volume 5: Fruits. Netherlands: Springer. McElwee, Pamela. 2004. ‘Becoming Socialist or Becoming Kinh? Government Policies for Ethnic Minorities in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.’ In Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities, ed. C.R. Duncan, 182-213. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Neef, Andreas. 2001. ‘Sustainable Agriculture in the Northern Uplands: Attitudes, Constraints and Priorities of Ethnic Minorities.’ In Living with Environmental Change: Social Vulnerability, Adaptation and Resilience in Vietnam, ed. W.N. Adger, P.M. Kelly, and N.H. Ninh, 109-121. London: Routledge. Novellino, Dario. 2000. ‘Indigenous Highlands in Transition: The Case of Ha Giang Province in Northern Viet Nam.’ Land Reform 2: 95-107. Nyíri, Pal. 2006. Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Omanakutty, M., and Beena Joy. 2007. ‘A Study on the Retention of Fresh Flavour of Cardamom Oil by Cold Grinding.’ Journal of Essential Oil Bearing Plants 10.6: 490-493. Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 1992. ‘Government Decision No. 18-HDBT by the Council of Ministers on Total Ban on Logging and Hunting of 13 Species of Trees and 36 Species of Animals, and a Limited Ban on Logging/Harvesting of 19 Plants and Animals.’ Hanoi: National Political Publishing House. Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 1993. ‘Law on Environmental Protection.’ Hanoi: National Political Publishing House. Sowerwine, Jennifer. 2004a. ‘The Political Ecology of Yao (Dzao) Landscape Transformations: Territory, Gender and Livelihood Politics in Highland Vietnam.’ PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. Sowerwine, Jennifer. 2004b. ‘Territorialisation and the Politics of Highland Landscapes in Vietnam: Negotiating Property Relations in Policy, Meaning and Practice.’ Conservation and Society 2: 97-135.

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Tugault-Lafleur, Claire. 2007. ‘Diversifying Livelihoods: Hmong Use and Trade of Forest Products in Northern Vietnam.’ MA thesis, McGill University. Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1894. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Turner, Sarah. 2012. ‘Making a Living the Hmong Way: An Actor-Oriented Livelihoods Approach to Everyday Politics and Resistance in Upland Vietnam.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102.2: 403-422. Turner, Sarah, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Xu Jianchu. 2005. Who Drives Conservation in China? A Case Study in Protected Areas in Yunnan, Southwest China. Washington, DC: Forest Trends. Xu Zaifu. 1991. ‘From Shifting Cultivation to Agroforestry in the Mountainous Areas of Yunnan Tropics.’ In Agroforestry Systems in China, ed. Zhu Zhaohua, C. Mantang, Wang Shji, and Jiang Youxu, 190-194. Beijing: Chinese Academy of Forestry.

About the author Sarah Turner is a Professor of Geography at McGill University, Canada. She has conducted fieldwork in urban Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and since 1999 with upland ethnic-minority groups in rural northern Vietnam and Southwest China. Her current research revolves around questions concerning livelihood diversif ication approaches of ethnic minorities, the roles of everyday politics and resistance in socialist states, commodity chain analyses of nontimber forest products, and the societal impacts of agrarian change in frontier locales. She also studies the livelihoods of rural and urban small-scale traders and street vendors, and is interested in innovative qualitative methods. Recent publications include Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands (coauthored with C. Bonnin and J. Michaud) (University of Washington Press, 2015), and Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in upland Socialist Asia (edited volume, University of British Columbia Press, 2013).

Conclusion Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Studies Jean Michaud Dan Smyer Yü & Jean Michaud (eds.), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands. Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. DOI: 10.5117/9789462981928/CONCLUSION Abstract Several undercurrents run throughout this book that exemplify the types of frictions characteristic of the trans-Himalayan situation. I briefly reflect here upon four that cut across our case studies transversally and point to telling overlapping implications: livelihoods, modernity, agency, and borderlands. I argue that bringing together approaches that can build on locally rooted understandings of livelihoods, while being acceptable to the state, should be our aim. It is where the challenge lies for creating and supporting truly sustainable livelihoods and durable life projects. Keywords: Trans-Himalayas, livelihoods, modernity, agency, borderlands, current issues

Anna L. Tsing has stated that: ‘Cultures are continuously coproduced in the interactions I call “friction”: the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’ (2005: 4). She added: ‘As a metaphorical image, friction reminds us that a heterogeneous image and unequal encounters can lead to new arrangements of culture and power’ (5; see also Miyasaki Porro 2010). As this book demonstrates vibrantly, in the highlands straddling the borderlines across the trans-Himalayan region, transformative pressures and frictions are reshaping on a daily basis, in known as much as in unpredictable fashion, the livelihoods of thousands of ethnic minority communities. The lives of over 150 million people are impacted directly and many more indirectly. All these pressures are closely linked to the agrarian transition (Mohanty 2016; Kelly 2011), incorporating great market integration, and a drive toward

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modernity (Taylor 1999). The frictions the agrarian transition causes and exposes across the highlands simultaneously destabilize, reformat, and mobilize responses regarding the locally rooted livelihoods of communities, their worldviews, and their alternative takes on modernity (Gaonkar 2001). People in this vast borderland on the fringes of multiple nations are constantly addressing conflicting social, political, and environmental conditions and imperatives while consistently refining their creative adaptation to change and their expertise of the ecological systems they inhabit. Far from being victims of these processes and of ecological determinism, they construct and uphold complex livelihoods and activate their agency to negotiate state policies and market normalization. In Tsing’s words (2005: 5): ‘Speaking of friction is a reminder of the importance of interaction in defining movement, cultural forms, and agency.’ In these highlands, as chapters in this book illustrate carefully, transregional modernization programs and agrarian change take place in the form of cross-border infrastructural expansion, technology transfer, and movements of capital and labor, including the intensification of agriculture and trade, expansion of credit and debt, and rural-urban migration. Concurrently, ground infrastructure is no longer the only way for the state to ‘demolish distance’ and reduce the ‘friction of terrain,’ as James C. Scott put it (2009). More and more, forms of interconnectivity are overcoming physical as much as cultural distance. Aerial routes, satellite coverage, the internet, globally linked social media, but also national education, official languages, and nationalist narratives are all refurbishing human networks. Recent books such as Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma (Sadan 2013), Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (Yeh 2013), Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities between Nepal and India (Shneiderman 2015), and Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands (Turner et al. 2015) are all representative in demonstrating how people, under the relentless pressure to integrate into national projects and the liberal economies, are forming the genesis of alternative modernities. Would it be only for the sheer number of (minority) ethnicities living in these highlands, the need is acute to gain a better understanding of how such transformative processes, considered from the widest possible range of perspectives as offered by the contributors to this book, are cross-breeding the meanings and forms of economic negotiations. Chapter after chapter investigates, questions, and draws lessons from observing in situ how transborder effects of ‘making a living’ nourish the simultaneous creation of flexible economies, boundary marking, and identity renewal.

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Livelihoods, Modernity, Agency, Borderlands Several undercurrents run throughout this book that exemplify the types of frictions characteristic of the trans-Himalayan situation. I briefly reflect here upon four that cut across our case studies transversally and point to telling overlapping implications. Livelihood studies, within the framework of the agrarian transition, have revealed much regarding minority societies living on the physical and cultural margins of strong nation-states in Asia (Li 2014; Sadan 2013; Springate-Baginski and Blaikie 2013; Simon 2012; Forsyth and Michaud 2011). The agrarian transition represents a profound process of social change, including agricultural intensification and territorial expansion, increasing market integration, and accelerated processes of industrialization (Hall et al. 2011). The agrarian transition frequently involves the setting in motion of now superfluous labor from rural to urban areas where they feed into the insatiable unskilled labor market. This heightened mobility of populations is not just within national borders but also crosses them. Concurrently, there has been an intensification of regulation, as new forms of private, state, and suprastate power emerge, while these processes also intertwine with environmental changes that are modifying relationships between society and nature, as resources are valued in new ways (Rigg 2015; Li 2007). Logically, these are constant sources of friction (Tappe 2015; Cairns 2015). Livelihood studies are focusing our awareness on how such different vectors of agrarian change impact on people’s ability to make a living (Champalle and Turner 2014; Turner 2012; McKinnon 2011; De Haan and Zoomers 2005). This approach brings to the fore context-specific cultures, historic specificity such as political regimes, and unique spatial dynamics such as found in highland borderlands, all impacting how people create and sustain economic and social reproduction in the trans-Himalayas (Tripathi 2015; Scoones 2009; Arce and Long 2000). As a stream of chapters in this book exemplify, a livelihoods focus also bring out spheres of institutional power, with individual actors (farmers, small-scale traders, urban informal workers, and so on) influenced by discrepancies in access to assets and information (Hann and Hart 2011). Charles Taylor (1999) notes that to be analyzed correctly, modernity cannot be considered a-culturally, that is, outside of context. Consequently, there is no such thing as a universal form of modernity; there is instead, a range. Indeed, many anthropologists (Guy 2016; Knauft 2014; Fabian 2014; Merry 2006; Sahlins 1999) argue that instead of soaking up modernity submissively, local cultures worldwide ingeniously twist it to fit their own

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worldviews. Hence, actors are changed by outside pressures, but also creatively use what power they have to interpret, adapt, and even subvert such pressures (Endicott 2015; Elliott 2014; Michaud 2012). Sally Engel Merry (2006) argues that local actors vernacularize modernity by either replicating outside models, or hybridizing them. To hybridize outside models, individuals produce a ‘more interactive form, with symbols, ideologies, and organizational forms generated in one locality merging with those of other localities to produce new, hybrid institutions’ (Merry 2006: 46). The novelty here does not lie in arguing that people adapt new inputs to their needs. What this collective work wants to highlight is evidence of a number of specific signatures – nearly as many as there are chapters in this book – regarding this creative process as it pans out along the mountainous borderlands of the trans-Himalayas. Such signatures are not always spelled out by the actors themselves, but may remain decipherable through their overt and covert practices. The consideration of how global pronouncements are invested locally with fresh meaning points to the pivotal notion of agency. Agency can be synonymous with the forms of power people have at their disposal, their ability to act on their own behalf, influence other people and events, and maintain some kind of control over their own lives (Li 2014; Ortner 2006; Mahmood 2004). Mahmood thinks of agency as ineluctably bound up with the historically and culturally specific disciplines through which a subject is formed. Tying in meaningfully with the cultural variety shown in this book, Ortner (2006: 186) states that ‘every culture, every subculture, every historical moment, constructs its own forms of agency.’ The lesson we draw here is that agency appears and evolves in context and has to be studied in relation to the circumstances that have formed the acting subjects. Expanding on Ortner’s idea of ‘agency as project,’ Mario Blaser (2004) proposes that communities do not just react to the state and market; they also sustain life projects. These life projects (Myers and Peterson 2016; Bruland 2012) are embedded in local histories, encompassing visions of the world and the future that are frequently distinct from those embodied by projects promoted by the state and market. Finally, this book makes abundantly clear that borders may impose limitations, but they are also a source of opportunities. Borderland studies (Tripathi 2015; Van Schendel and De Maakerb 2014; Bal and Chambugong 2014; Rumford 2013) reveal that jurisdictional borderlines rarely represent the reality of the frontier territorial regions and cultural landscapes on either side (Korf and Raeymaekers 2013; Perkins and Rumford 2013; Walker 2009). People and institutions at the local level are part of complex,

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interwoven transborder relationships with other people, communities, and ethnic groups, both within and outside of their own state (Shneiderman 2013). Our range of case studies show that border residents devise highly pragmatic ways of negotiating borderlines and related policies, such that state efforts to establish political and economic parameters for cross-border interactions are often unable to fully control everyday practices of creative livelihoods (Konrad 2015; Morehouse et al. 2004). Such transborder studies contribute to raising international awareness of ethnic ‘minority’ groups that otherwise frequently end up being misrepresented, thus disempowered (Amelina et al. 2012). Overall, these themes have allowed us to unpack local livelihood decision making, and how it is intertwined with processes of state pressure and agrarian change. The cases help us to gain a greater understanding of how local actors vernacularize modernity and draw on their agency when adapting their livelihoods to friction processes. In turn, we gain a detailed appreciation of how the latter play out across upland borderlands, embedded in particular political, social, and cultural relationships.

Across the Trans-Himalayas Himalayas: the Home of Snow, from Hindi/Sanskrit himá (ि हम) ‘snow, ice’ and ālaya (आलय) ‘dwelling.’ Clearly, as Cederlöf, Drew, Shneiderman, and Smyer Yü remind us in this book, Indian heritage and influence cannot be skirted around when studying the trans-Himalayas. But today, it is the Tibet-versus-China narrative that tends to occupy the front stage in the West as much as in China itself and our book is a reflection of that state of affairs. Equally momentous is the fact that the largest portion of the highlands of Asia, geographically as much as demographically, is located within communist polities. The Marxian political credo enforced by the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Lao Communist Parties (Michaud 2013; Tapp 2001) entails that all ‘minority nationalities’ within their borders are categorized according to their economic performance, justifying the need to bring ‘primitive communists’ up to national levels of ‘scientific socialism’ (Mullaney 2011; MacKerras 2003; Salemink 2003). This credo underscores the political but also moral authority of the state over the high border communist fringes, validating the promotion of centrally designed, yet market-oriented production and trade – what Harvey (2005: chapter 5) calls ‘Neoliberalism “with Chinese Characteristics.”’

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Within these multiethnic and multinational transborder highlands in communist countries, many minority groups have maintained lineagebased forms of social organization, living in farming communities scattered across a rugged terrain, with many communities still favoring semisubsistence economies (Brush 2007; Salemink 2001). Case studies in this book such as those by Turner, Li Yunxia, Horstmann, and Li Quanmin, focus on such societies. In harsh environmental conditions, individuals and households attempt to maintain sustainable livelihoods, often with very frugal means (Pijika et al. 2015; Michaud 2015). Others are still involved in householdbased agriculture, but have also taken up cash cropping, wage work, and urban or peri-urban living to a greater degree; this is illustrated in the chapters by Galipeau, Yang, and Smyer Yü. Still, the majority continue to make use of their meticulous indigenous knowledge of food and agriculture systems while adapting to state-sponsored vectors of economic integration (McElwee 2016; Lai and Farquhar 2015; Forsyth and Walker 2008). Elsewhere in the noncommunist trans-Himalayas (visible in the chapters by Shneiderman, Diemberger, Drew, and Smyer Yü) such modernist strategies are also prevalent, supported in these cases by the increasing inroads made by the market economy, in turn underpinning the globalization and development package. All are impacting markedly on highland livelihoods.

At Stakes These uplands are a multiethnic space par excellence. Historical concentrations of ethnicities do exist in particular areas – Zhuang around Guangxi or Tibetans around the Tibetan Plateau for instance – but more often than not, diversity rules (Michaud et al. 2016). As such, this book asks policy makers to be more aware of how upland Asian borderland livelihoods are embedded in local cultures and practices, and crucially, how development and social policies will only yield long-term success when embracing the diversity of these cultures and practices (Michaud 2011; Van Schendel 2005). Collectively, we challenge conventional development views, as well as state-sponsored academic discourses that, typically, reflect the dominant modernist, nationcentric creeds (Rigg 2015; Gros 2012; World Bank 2009; Marschke et al. 2008). This collection, we gamble, will help enhance understandings of highland livelihoods today among state off icials, academics, nongovernmental organizations, development practitioners, and other stakeholders. Specific challenges that face the local communities being studied here are unavoidably connected to broader processes occurring across Asia’s

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highlands: globalization, environmental and climate change, land grabbing, border formation, urban sprawl, and urban insertion (Hall et al. 2011). These challenges translate into such social matters as forms of local power, economic opportunities, gender debates and imbalances, alternative histories, sense of place, and formal schooling versus customary education. Cultural problems connect to the commodification of cultures, identity volatility, religious distinction, the generational gap, the cultural use of technological advances, and more. How these intricate trials are resolved will greatly impact on the well-being of these populations on the margins, rural as much as urban, and determine in large part how successful local communities will be in adjusting and even thriving. With the distinguished exception of Bhutan, official economic programs at the national level in the trans-Himalayan region are systematically attuned to the agenda of growth and progress, two pillars of the modernization process in a neoliberal world (Harvey 2005). The dominant rhetoric, after decades of applied social evolutionism and civilizational rhetoric adopted by capitalism and Marxism alike, has been swapped for the morally based language of development – human, economic, intellectual, and sanitary (Escobar 1995). Scores of actors and agencies from the affluent world come knocking at the door to offer their goods and projects, the indispensable ‘expert knowledge’ of this industry being relentlessly reiterated, endorsed, and reified (Rigg 2015). All such initiatives, well intentioned as they may be, play directly into the national governments’ strategies of absorbing margins into the national economy and the nation (Scott 2009). Contributors to this book have all addressed these burning issues, some one at a time but more often, in clusters that reflect an inescapable complexity on the ground. The principle guiding the selection of these case studies has been to work from the ground up, putting local situations against a shared backdrop. The editors here bank on the heuristic value of case studies firmly rooted in places, cultures, and histories. Not with the intention of turning them into debatable evidence highlighting global truths but instead, to emphasize that locality, singularity, intangibility, and an absence of statistical validity should not be discarded as weaknesses, but have a well-deserved place in the methodological toolbox of development. As I noted a few years ago (Michaud 2011: 219, 225), time and again through highly varied circumstances, ethnically rooted agency appears as a key factor in the local interpretations and translations of global commands and engagements. Taking culture and ethnicity into account when working to acquire an in-depth knowledge of local societies is vital simply because, alongside local politics and history, culture, ethnicity and agency play

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core roles in livelihood decision making (Escobar 2001). Yet these features are frequently ignored or dismissed in development initiatives. Bringing together approaches that can build on locally rooted understandings of livelihoods, while being acceptable to the state, should be the aim. It is where the challenge lies for creating and supporting truly sustainable livelihoods and durable life projects.

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Li, Tania Murray. 2014. Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier. Durham: Duke University Press. MacKerras, Colin. 2003. ‘Ethnic Minorities in China.’ In Ethnicity in Asia, ed. Colin MacKerras, 15-47. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Mahmood, Sabah. 2004. Politics of Piety. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Marschke, Melissa, David Szablowski, and Peter Vandergeest. 2008. ‘Engaging Indigeneity in Development Policy.’ Development Policy Review 26.4: 483-500. McElwee, Pamela D. 2016. Forests Are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental Rule in Vietnam. Seattle: University of Washington Press. McKinnon, John. 2011. ‘Ethnicity, Geography, History and Nationalism: A Future of Ethnic Strife for the Inland Border Peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia?’ In Asia-Pacific: New Geographies of the Pacific Rim, ed. R.F. Watters and T.G. McGee, 283-301. London: Hurst. Merry, Sally Engel. 2006. ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle.’ American Anthropologist 108.1: 38-51. Michaud, Jean. 2011. ‘Conclusion: Lesson for the Future.’ In Moving Mountains: Highland Livelihoods and Ethnicity in China, Vietnam and Laos, ed. Jean Michaud and Tim Forsyth, 215-227. Vancouver: UBC Press. Michaud, Jean. 2012. ‘Hmong Infrapolitics: A View from Vietnam.’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 35.11: 1853-1873. Michaud, Jean. 2013. ‘Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos.’ In Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia, ed. Sarah Turner, 22-39. Vancouver: UBC Press. Michaud, Jean. 2015. ‘Livelihoods in the Vietnamese Northern Borderlands Recorded in French Colonial Military Ethnographies, 1897-1904.’ Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 16.4: 343-367. Michaud, Jean, and Sarah Turner. 2016. ‘Tonkin’s Uplands at the Turn of the 20th Century: Colonial Military Enclosure and Local Livelihood Effects.’ Asia Pacific Viewpoint 57.2: 154-167. Michaud, Jean, and Tim Forsyth, eds. 2011. Moving Mountains: Highland Livelihoods and Ethnicity in China, Vietnam and Laos. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Michaud, Jean, Meenaxi Barkatari-Ruscheweyh, and Margaret Byrne Swain. 2016. Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the South-East Asian Massif. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Miyasaki Porro, Noemi. 2010. ‘Conclusion: For a Politics of Difference.’ In Land Tenure, Gender and Globalisation: Research and Analysis from Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. Dzodzi Tsikata and Pamela Golah, 271-294. Delhi: Zubaan, and Ottawa: IDRC.

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Mohanty, B.B., ed. 2016. Critical Perspectives on Agrarian Transition: India in the Global Debate. London: Routledge. Morehouse, Barbara Jo. 2004. ‘Theoretical Approaches to Border Spaces and Identities.’ In Challenged Borderlands: Transcending Political and Cultural Boundaries, ed. Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi, Barbara Jo Morehouse, and Doris Wastl-Walter, 19-39. Aldershot: Ashgate. Mullaney, Thomas S. 2011. Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Myers, Fred, and Nicolas Peterson, eds. 2016. Experiments in Self-Determination: The Origins and History of Outstations as Aboriginal Life Projects. Canberra: ANU Press. Ortner, Sherry B. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press. Perkins, Chris, and Chris Rumford. 2013. ‘The Politics of (Un)fixity and the Vernacularisation of Borders.’ Global Society 27.3: 267-282. Pijika, Timsuksai, Nguyen Dinh Tien, and Terry Rambo. 2015. ‘Homegardens of the Cao Lan, a Tai-Speaking Ethnic Minority in Vietnam’s Northern Mountains.’ Southeast Asian Studies 4.2: 365-383. Rigg, Jonathan. 2015. Challenging Southeast Asian Development: The Shadows of Success. London: Routledge. Rumford, Chris. 2013. ‘Towards a Vernacularized Border Studies: The Case of Citizen Borderwork.’ Journal of Borderlands Studies 28.2: 169-180. Sadan, Mandy. 2013. Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sahlins, Marshall. 1999. ‘What Is Anthropological Enlightenment? Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century.’ Annual Review of Anthropology 28: i-xxiii. Salemink, Oscar. 2003. The Ethnography of Vietnam’s Central Highlanders. A Historical Contextualization, 1850-1990. London: Curzon Press. Salemink, Oscar, ed. 2001. Viet Nam’s Cultural Diversity: Approaches to Preservation Memory of Peoples. Paris: UNESCO. Scoones, Ian. 2009. Livelihood Perspectives and Rural Development. Journal of Peasant Studies 36.1: 171-196. Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shneiderman, Sara B. 2013. ‘Himalayan Border Citizens: Sovereignty and Mobility in the Nepal-Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) of China Border Zone.’ Political Geography 35: 25-36. Shneiderman, Sara B. 2015. Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities between Nepal and India. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Simon, Scott. 2012. Sadyaq Balae! L’autochtonie formosane dans tous ses états. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. Springate-Baginski, Oliver, and Piers Blaikie, eds. 2013. Forests People and Power: The Political Ecology of Reform in South Asia. London: Earthscan. Tapp, Nicholas. 2001. Hmong in China. Leiden: Brill. Tappe, Oliver. 2015. ‘Introduction: Frictions and Fictions – Intercultural Encounters and Frontier Imaginaries in Upland Southeast Asia.’ Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 16.4: 317-322. Taylor, Charles. 1999. Two Theories of Modernity. Public Culture 11.1: 153-174. Tripathi, Dhananjay. 2015. ‘Interrogating Linkages between Borders, Regions, and Border Studies.’ Journal of Borderlands Studies 30.2: 189-201. Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Turner, Sarah. 2012. ‘Making a Living the Hmong Way: An Actor-Oriented Livelihoods Approach to Everyday Politics and Resistance in Upland Vietnam.’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102.2: 403-422. Turner, Sarah, Christine Bonnin, and Jean Michaud. 2015. Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Van Schendel, Willem. 2005. ‘Spaces of Engagement: How Borderlands, Illicit Flows, and Territorial States Interlock.’ In States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization, ed. Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham, 38-68. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Van Schendel, Willem, and Erik de Maakerb. 2014. ‘Asian Borderlands: Introducing Their Permeability, Strategic Uses and Meanings.’ Journal of Borderlands Studies 29.1: 3-9. Walker, Andrew. 2009. ‘Conclusion: Are the Mekong Frontiers Sites of Exception?’ In on the Borders of State Power: Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region, ed. Martin Gainsborough, 101-111. London: Routledge. World Bank. 2009. Country Social Analysis: Ethnicity and Development in Vietnam. Washington, DC: World Bank. Yeh, Emily. 2013. Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

About the author Jean Michaud is a social anthropologist and professor at Université Laval in Canada. Since 1987, he has conducted anthropological research in highland India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Yunnan on social change and responses to

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modernity among highland societies. He is the author of ‘Incidental’ Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880-1930 (Brill, 2007), and coauthor of Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands (UW Press, 2015), and The Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif, 2nd ed. (Rowman & Littlef ield, 2016). He coedited  Moving Mountains: Ethnicity and Livelihoods in Highland China, Vietnam and Lao (UBC Press, 2011). His research articles include ‘Zomia and Beyond’ (Journal of Global History, 2010), ‘Hmong Infrapolitics: A View from Vietnam’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012), and ‘What’s (Written) History For? On James C. Scott’s Zomia – especially Chapter 6½’ (Anthropology Today, 2017).

Index adaptations to modernity 58, 200, 257 Adventist Development and Relief Agency Myanmar 175 agency and livelihood 286, 288 of local cultures 287-288 agrarian transition 58, 285-287 agriculture commercial 58 Aihui-Tengchong Line 23-24 Aihwa Ong 35 Akha 35, 244 and China 251 crops of 248 integration with the state 248 markers of modernity for 257 notions of landscape of 247 transborder bonds of 247-248, 250-251 and tributary relationships 248 villages 247 Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji 91 Amnesty International political positions of 169 Anand, Dibyesh 87 Anglo-Burmese war 133 animists 178 apartment complexes as villages 198 area studies 17 and the Cold War 18 as a hindrance 18 Asad, Talal 29 concept of “agentive complexity” 92, 100 autonomy of highlanders 55 regional 56 Back Pack Health Worker Team 179 Bahuguna, Suderlal 154-157 barbarians 15, 22-24, 46 and Han Chinese 22 Barrett, Tim The Woman Who Discovered Printing 111 Barth, Fredrik 66 Bashkow, Ira 256 Basso, Keith 157 Bayfield, J.G. 126, 128, 141 documenting of markets by 128 belonging and territory 67-68 Bengal British expansion in 132 Berkes, Fikret 240 Bernstorff, Dagmar Tibet: Theocracy to Democracy 93 Bhave, Vinod 154

bidonvilles 172 biodiversity 153 Blaser, Mario 288 Blum, Susan 191 Bodong Chogle Namgyal 114, 118 books 105-123; see also texts destruction of 118 as embodying the speech of the Buddha 109-110 preservation of 118 production of 107 as reflective of social relationships 116 and ritual practice 110 Tibetan 109 as tying people together across geographies 117 Border Consortium 173, 177; see also Thailand Burma Border Consortium borderlands 245; see also borders; frontiers contested 29 as cultural boundary 31 as distinct from frontiers 264 fixity of 27 militarization of 176 modernization of 33 porousness of 15-16 resilience of populations of 27 of sovereign states 31 borders 12-13; see also borderlands; frontiers alliances across 235 arbitrariness of 138-139 and centers 106 closing of 254 creation of 136-137 disputes 88 disruption caused by 16 drawing of 136-138 evolution of 31 and globalization 99 imperial visions of 26 loosening and tightening of 245 marriage across 250 networks across 254, 258 as opportunities 288 porousness of 99, 117 pragmatic ways of negotiating 289 rigidity of 31, 92 and social relationships 246 solidification of 17, 30, 36, 99, 139 and sovereignty 27 boundaries administrative 73-78 affective 73-78 arbitrariness of 137 in cities 75

300  geographical features as 74 restructuring of 78-80 of villages 74-75 British expansion in Bengal 132 expeditions into Burma 127 explorers 30, 125-127 goods in Burma 128 textiles 141 British East India Company 14, 77, 85, 126 expansion of 129 introduction of new boundaries by 127 monopolies of 129-130 restrictions on 129 surveying by 135-136 trade alliances of 131 Buchanan, Francis Hamilton 132 Buddhism and communalism 91 Indian roots of 114 as moral compass 34 socially engaged 86, 89 as socially radical 91 Theravada 182, 231 Buddhist festivals 34 modernism 96 offerings 235-236 revival of traditions 118 rituals 235-236 secularities 85-103 buffer zone highlands as 52 Tibet as 88, 98 Bunnag, Jane 238 Burma arrival of British troops in 133 British expeditions into 127 Chinese merchants in 127-128 colonial actions in 130 economic instability of 127 trade in 129 Burma Issues 179 Cachar, kingdom of 137-138 cakravartin 110-111 Calhoun, Craig 100 cardamom 35, 263-283 advantages of growing 268 as an alternative to logging and poppies 268 commodity chain of 265, 271, 273-274 consumption of 272 contributions to livelihood 274 cultivation of 267-268 demand for 268 disputes over 269 distribution of 272 earnings from 274-276 economics of 269, 274

Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

medicinal uses of 267 pricing of 271 problems with raising 278-279 as providing supplemental income 278-279 theft of 269-270 trade intermediaries 271 trade of 267 wholesalers 272, 277 in Yunnan 272 Carey, Felix 133, 141 Carrier, James 232 cartography 29, 133-135 and the division of Himalayas 88 as imperial vision 135 Casanova, José secularist theses of 94-95 cash crops 196, 203 economics of 198 Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong 213 Cederlöf, Gunnel 19, 26, 30-31 Chellaney, Brahma 89-90 Chenggong 189-206 modernization of 190 urbanization of 192-193 China 23 business opportunities in 255 connection to South Asia 190 connection to South East Asia 190 difficulties of studying 48 economic opening of 264 globalization of 35 gratitude toward 255 and India 88, 90-92, 289 influence in northern Laos 256 investment in rubber production 249 and modernity 200 as nation state 26 occupying of highlands 52 sea route to 130 sovereignty of 87 state-building in 201 stratification of society 194 terroir in 217 and Tibetan Buddhism 90 ties with Laos 251 Chinyalisaur 159-160 churches in refugee camps 177 cities boundaries in 75 identification with 75 citizenship 56 civil society development of 173 civilized 15, 22-24, 35, 219 clan 50 Cold War and area studies 18 colonial commerce 30-31 expansion 129

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Index

observers 49 officers 13-14 colonialism 26 in Burma 130 early contact with 128 and Himalayas 14 and transitions in politics 128 commerce colonial 30-31 communalism and Buddhism 91 communist countries approaches to minority nationalities 289 livelihood strategies in 290 communities linking of 106 organization of 115 peaceful coexistence of 116 connectivity and livelihood 20 revitalizations of 18 conservation of forests 253 continuity and discontinuity 12 ecological 16 contracts illegal 254 informal 251 crops and natural disasters 276 risks of planting 257 and weather 275-276 cultural memory 34 mosaic 46 Cultural Revolution 118 culture of minorities 55 currency 130 dagong 194 Dagudalenggelaibiao 231 Dalai Lama 29, 89, 94 Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World 96 charisma of 91, 96 and China-India relations 98 Ethics for the New Millennium 96 geopolitical significance of 98 opposition to 97 political involvement of 91, 94-95 religious role of 95 secular ethics of 96 selection of 94 succession of 97-98 undemocratic actions of 96 Dalits 91 dam building 147-166; see also Tehri Dam benefits of 151 impacts of 147 as modernity 148-149 subjective implications 148

Daphne 114-115 De’ang 229-242 and modernization 35 tea growing by 230 tea-offering rituals of 34 democratization of Tibet 94 Demossier, Marion 216-217 development adaptation to 161 agenda of 291 alternative 153 as contested 162 conventional views on 290 diverse voices on 163 economic 32, 36, 58 versus environment 147 idea of 149 impact of 160 improvements promised by 162 Indian 151 locals not benefitting from 160 and nation-states 36 as place-based 158 regionally appropriate 162 role of social scientists in 162-163 dharma digital 106 Dharmapala, Anagarika 86 dialects Tibetan 73 diaspora Karen people in 168, 182 dichotomies 21-22 Diemberger, Hildegard 26, 30, 139 concept of “a galaxy of communities” 30 digital dharma 106 distribution of texts 118-119 scriptures 106 District Agriculture and Forest Office (DAFO) 252-253, 255 diversity ethnic 28 of highlands 290 Doctors without Borders political positions of 169 domination 45 Drew, Georgina 31-32 Dreyfus, George 112 Duo Hi Mai Bong 235 earthquakes relocation due to 79 response to 80 sociopolitcal effects of 79 and territory 79 ecological continuity 16 morality 231, 240

302  niches 51 zones 19 ecology and colonial control 132 and frontiers 23-24 humanitarian 168 and livelihood 19-20 and religion 239 sustainable 153 and tea 240 value of 231 economic development 32, 36, 224-225 instability in Burma 127 niches 34 economics of cash crops 198 of farming 198 of feudalism 50 of tea farming 240 Edgeworthia 115 egalitarian groups 49-50 electricity distribution of 160 elevation 47 environment degradation of 57 versus development 147 environmentalism and opposition to the Tehri Dam 153 as Western discourse 58 Escobar, Arturo 157 ethnic diversity 28 groups in Yunnan 192 minorities 265 ethnography methodology 209, 233, 246, 266 and travel restrictions 171 Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalaya (conference) 11 explorers 13-14 British 30, 125-127 Exploring New Ground in Himalayan Studies (workshop) 13 farmers as entrepreneurs 196-197, 203 experience of modernity 199-200, 202 lack of social capital 278 livelihood of 33 relocation of 33, 203 farming of cash crops 196 economics of 198 illegal 270, 272 industrialized 197-198 in national parks 270, 272 reinvestment in 278

Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

returning to 196 of tea 240 farmland affective ties to 193 loss of 193 fertilizers 224 festivals Buddhist 34 feudalism 49 economics of 50 in the highlands 54 Fisher, Thomas 136-137, 139 fleeing minorities 56 the state 53-54 flows blocking of 106 changing 140 commercial 15 cross-border 28 of goods 131 of interest to the British 134-135 of labor 287 and nation-states 28 of refugees 168 religious 15 Foucault, Michel 170 Free Burma Rangers 179 frontiers see also borderlands; borders connotations of 264 as distinct from borderlands 264 and ecology 23-24 as ethnocentric concept 264 and homogeneity 265 as malleable 35 Galipeau, Brendan A. 33-34 Ganden Phodrang 108 Ganga river death of 157 as deity 32, 152 as mother 155 religious importance of 152, 156, 159 rituals for 157 Gaozong 107 Garhwal Himalaya 148 gau 74-75, 80 gavisa 74-75, 80 geographical features as boundaries 74 geography imperial 135 and interconnectedness 30 processual 36 of the Southeast Asian Massif 47-48 of trans-Himalaya 17 virtual 106 geopolitics and Himalayan studies 15 and secularity 86

Index

and Tibet 90 and Tibetan Buddhism 89, 99-100 German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) 248 ghost towns 189-190 Gidwani, Vinay 149 Giersch, Patterson 21, 245, 264 concept of “persistent frontiers” 31 gift giving 251 globalization 17-18, 20, 30, 58 and borders 99 in China 35 in Laos 35 and livelihood 20 and niche 245 terroir as response to 216 goods 51 availability of 58 British 128 flows of 131 trade of 133 government municipal 75 pre-modern 28 grapes 212 organic varieties 220 varietals 222-223 Great Chinese Famine 248 guanxi 251 Guru, Afzal 87 Habermas, Jürgen concept of “the political” 91 Han 23 and barbarians 22 settlement in Yunnan 192 settlers 52 Harrell, Stevan 191 Hedin, Sven 13-14 Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet 13 Hidden Valley of Khenbalung 115-117 guides to 117 High, H. 253 highlanders allegiance of 55 autonomy of 55 as backward 55 blaming of 57 government positions on 54 lacking citizenship 56 prejudices against 57 as “raw” 57 relocation of 57 highlands as buffer zones 52 challenges facing 291 diversity of 290 feudalism in 54

303 lack of interest in 52 modernization of 244 occupation of 52 shifting relations with lowland powers 245 hills 21-22, 25 Himalayan Massif 17 research centers 36 Himalayan Connection: Disciplines, Geographies and Trajectories (conference) 11 Himalayan studies see also trans-Himalayan studies conception of 12 and geopolitics 15 legacy of 12 origins of 13-14 public engagement of 36 revisioning of 16 Himalayas see also trans-Himalaya anthropological studies of 66 and colonialism 14 default conception of 12 division through cartography 88 as multi-state space 21 multiple political centers of 135 as network 16 religion-based conflicts in 92 reterritorializing of 99 as signifier 12 as transnational space 120 historical records lack of 48 Hmong 35 Hoàng Liên National Park 270 Hodgson, Brian Houghton 14, 85, 99 influence of 88 homelands division of 26 homogeneity and frontiers 265 Hong Pra 235-236 Hong Xing 213 Horstmann, Alexander 32-33 concept of “plasticity” 169 concept of “plurality” 168-169 horticulture 50-51 Hu Huanyong 23 humanitarian organizations cooperation with the state 174, 184 distribution conflicts caused by 170 diversity of 182 entanglements with geopolitics 170 as evangelical 175 faith-based 174, 179-180, 183-184 imposing themselves on villagers 174 Karen 178, 183 local knowledge of 170 in non-state spaces 184 relationships with armed groups 174 as replacing state functions 168

304  secular 184 as transformative 168 workers of 172 humanitarian work as contributing to nationalism 185 divided by borders 176 economy of 33, 185 moral and political dilemmas of 168 in Myanmar 185 and national identity 173 as not neutral 32, 169 politicization of 181 hunting-gathering 50-51 Hyde, Sandra 191 hydroelectric projects see dam building identity Catholic 225 discourse of nation-states 15 dual 215 ethnoeconomic 220 fragmentation of 36 and winemaking 216 India and China 88, 90-92, 289 industrialization of 151 as nation-state 26 sovereignty of 87 and Tibet 88 Tibetans in 90 Indian civilization in Tibet 88-89 secularism 87 indigenous claims to territory 68 industrialization of India 151 ink production 115 insurgency 56 integration of minorities 56-57 interdisciplinary 13 intermediaries midland groups as 58 Jawaharlal Nehru University 87 Kao Va, Gan Va, Ou Va 235-237 Karen Affairs Committee 180, 182 Karen conflict 33, 168-187 in the 1980s 171, 176 Karen culture 180-181 Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) 171, 176 Karen National Union (KNU) 173, 176-177, 179 Karen nationalism 174-175, 180 Karen people Buddhist 174 Christian 174 Christian organizations of 171 in diaspora 168, 182 remittances of 168 suffering of 177

Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

kashag 94-95 secularization of 93, 97 Kathin 235, 237 ketang 193 kinship 50 Kuntu Sangmo 112 Kyirong Route 107 land allocation 253 competing claims on 136-137 under cultivation 275 formalizing of relations with the state 252-253 lack of 269 renting of 196-197 tenure 72 unregulated use of 253 use policies 255 landmines 176 landscapes 19 definitions of 232 and livelihood 221 and merit 34, 231-232, 237-239 plasticity of 169 postdevelopment 160-161 and religion 32 transformation of 20, 32 languages of Nepal 70-73 Laos globalization in 35 military of 249-250 and modernity 258 and resource extraction 244 ties with China 251 Lattimore, Owen 23, 25, 264 concept of “hegemony of ecology” 23-24 Leach, Edmund 31 Li Quanmin 34-35 concept of “merit-landscape” 34 Li Yunxia 35 lineage 50 Litsing Gerong 222-223 livelihood 26, 34 and adaptation to modernity 200 and agency 286, 288 cardamom’s contributions to 274 and connectivity 20 decisions regarding 279 and ecology 19-20 experimentation 247 in the face of globalization 219 of farmers 33 and globalization 20 and landscapes 221 and niche 202 and peasants 190, 203 as processual 20 protection of traditional 279 reconstruction of 31

305

Index

and social relations 21, 50 studies 287 and symbiosis 22 and transborder effects 286 transformation of 191-193, 197, 255 and winemaking 212, 215 Lopon Gyurme 118 Ludden, David 131 Mae Sot 33 transformation of 171-172 Maha Bodhi Society 86 Mahmood, Sabah 288 Mandala model 57 Manchu Empire 14 Manchus 23 Mangyul Gungthang 107, 113 kingdom of 107-108 Mani bka’ ‘bum 112 Manipur 131-132 manuscripts 107 conditions of production 106 copying of 112 movements of 106 marginal peoples 52 marginality 45 marginalization of minorities 195 markets 131 in Burma 128 material culture 107 Mauss, Marcel 232, 238 McMahon Line 15 memory cultural 34 merit 229-242, 231 accumulation of 34, 237 as collective 238 landscape 34, 231-232, 237-239 making 237 as personal 238 rewards of 239 sharing of 237 and tea 231-232, 237 and texts 110-112 transfer of 232 Merry, Sally Engel 288 methodology anthropological 68-70 ethnographic 209, 233 and questionnaires 70 Michaud, Jean 17, 28 concept of “life projects” 20 concept of “selective modernity acceptation” 20 midland groups 49, 51 as intermediaries 58 migration of peasants 191 to/from Tibet 109 to urban areas 159

militarization of borderlands 176 minorities absorption of 55 culture of 55 fleeing 56 integration of 56-57 marginalization of 195 perceived favoritism toward 195 repression of 56 self-rule 55 in Yunnan 195 Mirabehn 154 missionaries 175 French 208-210 killing of 210 local 180 in Myanmar 180 Swiss 208, 210 and winemaking 211-212 mobility and territory 131 modernity 32 adaptations to 58, 200, 257 benefits and costs 59 Buddhist 96 and China 200 as contested 32 as contextual 287 dam building as 148-149 definition of 149 desires for and against 148 differentiation caused by 257 as embedded in place 162 and European Enlightenment 148 as existing in comparison 256 as experienced by farmers 199-200, 202 fragmentation of 150 independent of European influence 149 indigenization of 247, 257 and Laos 258 versus modernization 149 and niche 200 reactions to 159 regional 149 resistance to 159 and secularism 95 tactical selectiveness of 159 trans-Himalayan questioning of 150 vernacularization of 288-289 modernization 13, 25, 58, 291 of borderlands 33 and De’ang 35 definition of 149 destruction caused by 156 effects of 286 of highlands 244 and livelihood experimentation 247 versus modernity 149 navigation of 150 pressures of 48 villagers attitude toward 256

306  monetization 58 Mongols 23 Hoshuud 108 monks 237 monopolistic practices 141 monsoon climate 234 multiscalar inquiry 29 Myanmar 32 humanitarian work in 185 missionaries in 180 partial political opening of 179 Nandy, Pritish 156 nation-building 32 nation-state 15-16 creation of 25 demarcation of 28 and development 36 and flows 28 and human universals 88 identity discourse of 15 integration with 77 multiple 16 sanctified status of 88 sovereignty of 26 and territory 67, 73 understanding of citizens 68 national identity and trans-Himalaya 26-27 nationalism and humanitarian work 185 Karen 174-175 and sovereignty 87 natural world 19 nature harnessing of 149 Navayana (New Vehicle) 91 Nehru, Jawaharlal 151 Nepal 29, 65-83 districts of 69 languages of 70-73 traditional governance of 77-78 unification of 77-78 Nepali words for territory 70-72 networks across borders 254, 258 control of 140 faith-based 184 global 140 interconnectedness of 140 local 140 premodern 30 Silk Road 129 trade 51, 271 transregional 114 of villagers 182 Ngawang Tendzin Norbu 116 NGOs see humanitarian organizations niches 220-221 definition of 199

Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

ecological 51 economic 34 and globalization 245 and livelihood 202 and modernity 200 of peasants 199 and winemaking 219, 225 One Belt, One Road 33, 190, 200 Ong, A. concept of “experiments of freedom” 245 Ortner, Sherry concept of “agency as project” 288 Padmasambhava 107 paper production of 113 trade of 113 pathways 105-123 peasants 50-51 land-lost 189-206 livelihood transformation of 190, 203 migration of 191 relocation of 194-195 and state effects 190 pesticides 224 Pinus wallichiana 115 place and culture 157 and loss 158 modernity as embedded in 162 and wisdom 157 political awareness 253 poppies cultivation of 244 poststructuralism as Eurocentric 149 pothi 109, 113 prejudices against highlanders 57 printing in the 15th century 113 and the cult of bodhisattva Avalokitesvara 112 discovery of 111 houses 112 popularization of 112 supplies for 114-115 prosperity and rituals 34 protests 87 public sphere religion in the 89, 99 Tibetan Buddhism in 89 pustaka 109 questionnaire design 70 Rafael, Vincente 18 concept of “horizontal and vertical coordinates” 18-19, 26 Raffles, Hugh 157

307

Index

Red Cross political positions of 169 refugee camps 176 administration of 177-178 churches in 177 evangelization in 178 religious diversity of 178 refugees emigration of 185 Karen 185 settlement of 177 regional economic integration 246 modernity 149 regions autonomy of 56 comparative definition of 18 competition of 141 regulation intensification of 287 relic 109 text as 110 religion conflict based in 29 and ecology 239 and landscapes 32 political role of 87 in the public sphere 89, 99 and violence 170 religious identity 208 relocation compensation for 195 due to earthquakes 79 of farmers 33, 203 of highlanders 57 of peasants 194-195 of villagers 249 remittances by Karen people 168 remote dwellers 49-51 remoteness 45 connectedness of 120 as subordination 46 Renou, Charles 210 repression of minorities 56 by the Myanmar state 176 resistance 54 of local populations 21 resource extraction 35 revolution socialist 55 Rigdzin Godem 117 ritual expert 235-237 rituals Buddhist 235 and prosperity 34 and tea 235-237 tea-offering 34 river as place 157

roads 105-106 Royal Genealogy of Gungthang 111 rubber 35 Chinese investment in 249 cultivation of 243-244, 249 illicit trade of 252 and the Laotian government 252 and the Laotian military 249-250 as replacing poppy cultivation 248 risks of planting 258 Sadan, Mandy 141 Saklani, Virendra Dutt 154 Samdhong Rinpoche 95, 97 Samuel, Geoffrey concept of “galactic polity” 116, 120 Samye monastery 107 Sangay, Losang 95, 97 Sanskrit texts 109 Śāntaraksita 107 Schneiderman, Sara 17, 21, 26, 28-29 concept of “administrative boundaries” 29 concept of “affective boundaries” 29 concept of “territorial consciousness” 26 scholarship on non-human entities 152 Scott, James 17, 21-22, 25, 31, 170 The Art of Not Being Governed 52-54, 57, 67 concept of “friction of terrain” 30, 53, 286 concept of “runaways” 52-53 concept of “shatter zone” 28, 54, 201 concept of “state effects” 190, 201, 246 Seeing Like a State 67 scriptures digital 106 secularism definition of 86 Indian 87 lack of Tibetan word for 95 and modernity 95 state sanctioned 100 secularist thesis 89, 94-95 of José Casanova 94-95 secularity Buddhist 85-103 definition of 86 and geopolitics 86 global 96 as strategic 98 security financial 278 food 278 self-rule of minorities 55 separation of religion and state 86 settlers Han 52 Shah, Prithvi Narayan 77 Shangri-La creation of 218 as physical place in China 208

308  and terroir 217 and tourism-based development 218 Shangri-La Wine Company 222-223 Shimla Convention 15 shradda ritual 157 Sikyong 97 Silk Road and currency 130 networks 129 Smadja, Joelle 66 Smyer Yü, Dan 29-30, 238 social mobility 194 social relations and livelihood 21, 50 socialist revolution 55 Société des Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP) 209 Songtsen Gampo 107, 112 Southeast Asian Massif 17, 31, 45-63 contact with lowlands 49 geography of 47-48 and Zomia 53 sovereignty and borders 27, 31 of China 87 of India 87 and nationalists 87 Soviet Union influence of 54 spatial cohesion 17 state building 201 fleeing of 53-54 managing relations with 254 and villagers 254 state effects 15, 25, 27; see also Scott, James and peasants 190 stateless groups 50 stellera 113 stigmatization of low paying jobs 194 stupas 110 Sturgeon Janet concept of “landscape plasticity” 20, 31, 247 subsistence 22 suffering discourses on 172-173 of Karen people 177 suo chiu 239 surveying 136-137 opposition to 138 swiddening 51 as harmful 57 symbiosis and livelihood 22 Tamang, Mukta concept of “territorial consciousness” 68 Tambiah, Stanley 232 Tatmadaw 176 tax collection 135 Taylor, Charles 287 tea 229-242

Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

and ecology 240 economics of 240 effects of market economy on 231 farming 240 importance of 239 marketing of 235 and merit 231-232, 237, 239 noncommercial value of 230-231 picking 234-235 and ritual 235-237 trade of 130, 230 value of 233 in Yunnan 230, 240 tea-offering rituals 34 Tehri Dam 32, 148 benefits of 152 and changing subjectivities 159 damage caused by 156 environmentalist opposition to 153 government benefitting from 160 impact of 159 lifespan of 163 as manifestation of evil 155 media coverage of 151 as nationalist project 152 opposition to 154-155 religious concerns 151, 155 scholarship on 151 and seismic activity 153 territorial consciousness 79 deity 72 territory 65-83 autonomy of 29 and belonging 67-68 claiming of 138 concept of 28-29 connotations of 70 consciousness of 29, 68, 72 and earthquakes 79 Foucauldian approaches to 66 in Himalayan languages 66 and indigenous claims 68 local notions of 66 Marxian approaches to 67 meaning of 66 and mobility 131 multiple vocabularies of 78 and nation-states 67, 73 Nepali words for 70-72 political expressions of 66, 68 practices of 68 Tibetan words for 72-73 terroir 34, 208, 220 in China 217 and economic value 217 as response to globalization 216 and Shangri-La 217 and villagers 218

309

Index

textiles British 141 texts see also books digital distribution of 118-119 and merit-making 110-112 recitation of 113 trade of 115 travelling of 116 Thailand 32 Thailand Burma Border Consortium 171, 176; see also Border Consortium Thapa, Bhimsen 77 Thri Lhawang Gyaltsen 111-112 Tibet 14, 29-30 as buffer 88, 98 card 88-93 democratization of 94 as geopolitical instrument 90 and India 88 Indian civilization in 88-89 invasion by the British 113 reterritorializing of 93 secular government of 94 village development committees 74 Tibetan books 109 Catholics 34 dialects 73 villages 74 winemaking 33-34 Tibetan Buddhism and China 90 as geopolitical instrument 89, 99-100 and political frontiers 99 in the public sphere 89 secularity of 86, 91-92, 96 Tibetans in diaspora 100 in exile 89 in India 90, 100 preference for a Buddhist governing system 97 tourism 57, 208-209, 218, 221 and winemaking 213 trade 106 in Burma 129 changing patterns of 117 and colonial expansion 129 of goods 133 intermediaries 271, 274, 276 networks 51 overland 127, 141-142 of paper 113 of printing supplies 115 routes 26, 106, 126-127, 141 and social networks 271 of tea 130, 230 of texts 115 trades 139

Trakar Chokyi Wangchuk 118 Trakar Taso 112, 118 trans-Himalaya 17-18; see also Zomia corridors 108-109 geography of 17 and national identity 26-27 questioning of modernity 150 trans-Himalayan studies 13, 17; see also Himalayan studies as illegible 18, 21 transnational space 30 Himalayas as 120 travel restrictions 171 Treaty of Yandabo 133 tributary relationships 50, 52 and Akha 248 Tsangnyon Heruka 112 Tsing, Anna 120, 152 concept of “friction” 285 tsongdu 115, 117 Turner, Frederick Jackson 264 Turner, Sarah 35 U Thammanya 181 U Thuzana 181 uplands see highlands uprootedness 193 urban areas migration to 159 urbanization 33 of Chenggong 192-193 valleys 21-22, 25 value commercial 232 emotional 232 of tea 233 Van Schendel, Willem 12, 21, 246 concept of “cartographic surgery” 88 concept of “process geographies” 17 concept of “spatial strategy” of states 27, 92-93 Verelst, Harry 131 Vietnam economic liberalization of 264, 268 villagers agency of 280 agricultural calendar of 234 attitude toward modernization 256 Catholic 208 commercial relationships of 256 conversion of 210 disputes among 269 networks of 182 relocation of 249 self-protection of 270 and the state 254 and terroir 218 and winemaking 212

310  villages Akha 247 apartment complexes as 198 boundaries of 74-75 identification with 75 Tibetan 74 transformation of 202 violence and religion 170 Viswakarma 114 vulnerable people failure to protect 169 Wade, Jeff 190 waterways 19 Weber, Max 50 wholesalers 272, 277 wine cultural importance of 215 marketing of 218 religious uses of 213 winemaking and authenticity 220 as civilized 219 corporate 221 ecological concerns 223-224 economic benefits of 215, 223 economic concerns 223-224 and identity 216 introduction to Yunnan 210-211 and livelihood 212, 215 methods 214 and missionaries 211-212 and niche 219, 225 as policy initiative 222 promotion of 213, 215

Tr ans-Himal ayan Borderl ands

Tibetan 33-34, 207-228 and tourism 213 and villagers 212 Wu Gongdi 213 Wu Zetian 107, 111 Xi Jinping 190 xibu dakaifa 200 Yamdrog 114 Yang Cheng 33 concept of “circular livelihoods” 196-197 concept of “floating niche” 199 Yang, Bin 130 Yao 35 Yunnan 48, 207 cardamom in 272 ethnic groups in 191-192 minorities in 195 settlement of Han in 192 tea in 230, 240 Zhu Yuanzhang 192 Zomia 12, 17, 53, 120, 246; see also trans-Himalaya as concept 25 definitions of 53 enclosure of 54 greater 46 past and present 25 smaller 46 and the Southeast Asian Massif 53 theoretical fecundity of 21 Zurtsho 114