States, anthropological complicity, and theorizing the political

Editor’s preface to the Hau Book Symposium on Price, David H. 2016. Cold War anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the growth of dual-use anthropology. Durham: Duke University Pres

Mao in Tibetan disguise: History, ethnography, and excess

What does ethnographic theory look like in dialogue with historical anthropology? Or, what does that theory contribute to a discussion of Tibetan images of Mao Zedong? In this article, I present a renegade history told by a Tibetan in exile that disguises Mao in Tibetan dress as part of his journeys on the Long March in the 1930s. Beyond assessing its historical veracity, I consider the social truths, cultural logics, and political claims embedded in this history as examples of the productive excesses inherent in and generated by conceptual disjunctures

Arrested histories: Between empire and exile in 20<super>th</super> century Tibet.

This dissertation is an ethnohistorical study of twentieth century Tibet as experiences and narrated by Khampa Tibetans. It is based on ethnographic participant-observation and interviews with Tibetan refugees in multiple communities in South Asia, and archival research with Tibetan and British colonial documents. My focus is on three interrelated histories: first, a series of boundary disputes between the governments of Tibet, China, and British India in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham; second, the story of a Khampa trading family, the Pangdatsangs, members of which challenged social, political, and economic aspects of the Tibetan status quo; and third, the Tibetan resistance movement, begun in Kham as a series of independent uprisings, and later transformed into an organized guerrilla army supported by the CIA. I focus on the Tibetan region of Kham in order to explore the arrest of regional pasts from national Tibetan history as produced in exile. Despite this exclusion, Tibetan refugees continue to remember and narrate marginalized pasts, and do so as part of a national history, not just as local or personal histories. These narrations comprise a new historical genre in exile---the new lo rgyus, which combined with the Tibetan practice of historical arrest raise questions regarding the weaknesses in hegemonic political projects (such as the nation), the flexible parameters of historical truth, and the always contested nature of shared cultural formations. Tibet also offers the opportunity to rethink the idea of history as a modern project from the edges of nation and empire: Tibet was not quite a modern nation-state at the time of the Chinese invasion, and in exile is but a virtual nation-state. In addition, while Tibet was never colonized by Europe, it did have relations with agents of British India, was colonized by the People's Republic of China in the 1950s, and was drawn into U.S. imperial politics through the CIA's cold war support of the Tibetan resistance. In sum, this dissertation is about Tibetan attempts to forge a modern nation-state as constrained by external conditions of empire and exile, and internal problems of the place of the region within the nation.Ph.D.Asian historyCultural anthropologySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128222/2/3029394.pd

In Rapga's Library: the Texts and Times of a Rebel Tibetan Intellectual

Que signifie « être moderne » dans le Tibet des années 40 ? Dans cet article, j'analyse cette question à travers l'ethno-biographie de Rapga Pangdatsang (1902-1974). Rapga Pangdatsang était un intellectuel tibétain laïque qui désirait une réforme démocratique et moderne du Tibet. Intéressé par les projets nationalistes de la Chine et de l'Inde, il lut beaucoup et chercha des idées politiques applicables au Tibet. Une lecture attentive des textes qu'il a rassemblés et écrits nous permet de saisir de nouveaux aspects du Tibet des années 40, principalement (1) une critique de l'idée selon laquelle le Tibet est isolé des développements politiques mondiaux ; (2) un exemple d'idées progressistes et nationalistes tibétaines relatives à l'État moderne ; et (3) le regard sur le monde d'un intellectuel incompris et de sa famille considérés comme d'effrontés parvenus provinciaux par la société compassée de Lhasa. Associés à l'histoire sociale et à l'ethnologie historique de la famille Pangdatsang, révélés par les sources contemporaines et documentaires, les textes de la bibliothèque de Rapga offrent des traces tangibles d'un sentiment politique différent et engagé à cette période cruciale de l'histoire tibétaine.McGranahan Carole. In Rapga's Library: the Texts and Times of a Rebel Tibetan Intellectual. In: Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 15, 2005. Conception et circulation des textes tibétains. pp. 253-274