Development Discourses on the Tibetan Plateau: Urbanization and Expropriation of Farmland in Dartsedo

The term ‘development’ defines the Chinese official discourse on Tibet and Tibetans. The ideology of development has been articulated in relation to what development symbolically means, and how it should be practiced within the frame of representation and implementation of development projects and programs. The aim of this paper is thus to investigate what development come to mean for the grassroots community of development subjects in light of the official versus counter-official development discourses. Specifically, I examine how the relocated villagers in Kangding (Tib. Dartsedo) experience, and respond to, one official development project, namely \u27New Kangding Town\u27 construction (kangding xincheng) project. I discuss, first of all, how the project has affected the lives of local villagers in Kangding, and the ‘coping’ strategies the villagers have adopted as the process of urbanization unfolds. Then, I argue that in contrast to the conventional representation of village life as ‘backward’ and ‘poor’, the immediate economic conditions and livelihood in general has, ironically, deteriorated compare to the \u27subsistent\u27 economy prior to the development. Despite invocation of the glittering language of ‘people first’ and ‘scientific’ development, implementation of this development project in reality stands in sharp contrast with what has been otherwise portrayed in public discourse. In other words, the notion of development has been by and large taken for granted in the discourses of development. On the other hand, when deployed, whether officially or unofficially, the concept of development has come to carry multiple meanings depending on the context within which it is being constructed. One of the contentions of the new town plan has been its ‘inability’ to address the villagers’ livelihoods in the post-relocation period. In fact, there seems to have been an underlying assumption that the construction of a new town would automatically create opportunities and prosperity for the villagers in the future, but without much concrete proposal at present to achieve such an objective. I further argue that the official development discourse tends to construct the villagers as “backward” and “passive”, and in need of state intervention in order to develop them. In the process, it thus fails to take into account of the dynamic agency and proactive participation of the villagers in the construction of their own counter-discourse of development. Finally, I will discuss the interface between the development officials and the villagers in the light of the Fergusonian ‘side effects’ of the project. One notable implication has been, in addition to, an immediate decline of household income, loss of economic freedom or income stability. In other words, the production of ‘economic dependency\u27 on state institutions, in spite of lack of sustained livelihood support or compensation, has been the major ‘unintended’ outcome due to the dispossession and the displacement of their farmland and home, respectively. Furthermore, as the village has transformed into a new town, the administrative apparatus of the state mechanism has also expanded into rural social spaces, infringing on traditional institutions

<Typology> Evidential system of copulative and existential verbs in Lamo

This article describes the evidential system of Lamo (Kyilwa dialect), focusing on the copulative and existential verbs and referring to the model of the evidential system of Tibetic languages. Lamo is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in lDongpa and Zhonglinka Townships in mDzogong County, Chamdo Municipality, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. The article examines the evidential system of Lamo by employing the questionnaire designed for Tibetic languages. Some striking features are the following: The same framework on evidentiality functions in both copulative and existential verbs; different independent stems are used according to evidential categories; animacy for existential verbs is not distinctive; inferential evidentials distinguish sensory inferential from logical inferential in the morphological aspect; and egophoric verb stems are principally used in inferentials. The results demonstrate that the system of core evidentials (egophoric, statemental, sensory) is highly similar to the framework, as well as the morphology of Tibetic languages in Khams, especially Lhagang Tibetan. The morphological strategy of sensory and logical inferentials is partially common to Tibetic languages, but Lamo has its unique evolution which does not correspond to Tibetic. The article concludes that Lamo's the evidential framework corresponds to that of Tibetic languages of which inferential categories have been on a developing stage

Transcriptome Sequencing in a Tibetan Barley Landrace with High Resistance to Powdery Mildew

Hulless barley is an important cereal crop worldwide, especially in Tibet of China. However, this crop is usually susceptible to powdery mildew caused by Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei. In this study, we aimed to understand the functions and pathways of genes involved in the disease resistance by transcriptome sequencing of a Tibetan barley landrace with high resistance to powdery mildew. A total of 831 significant differentially expressed genes were found in the infected seedlings, covering 19 functions. Either “cell,” “cell part,” and “extracellular region” in the cellular component category or “binding” and “catalytic” in the category of molecular function as well as “metabolic process” and “cellular process” in the biological process category together demonstrated that these functions may be involved in the resistance to powdery mildew of the hulless barley. In addition, 330 KEGG pathways were found using BLASTx with an E-value cut-off of <10−5. Among them, three pathways, namely, “photosynthesis,” “plant-pathogen interaction,” and “photosynthesis-antenna proteins” had significant matches in the database. Significant expressions of the three pathways were detected at 24 h, 48 h, and 96 h after infection, respectively. These results indicated a complex process of barley response to powdery mildew infection

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Historical relationship among three non-Tibetic languages in Chamdo, TAR

[ICSTLL 51] 26th-28th September 2018 ; Kyoto University, Kyoto, JAPAN主催 : 第51回国際漢蔵語学会実行委員会 ; 共催 : 京都大学白眉センタ

Weighted-elite-memory mechanism enhances cooperation in social dilemmas

The issue of how to enhance cooperation has been a hot topic of research in evolutionary games for a long time. A mechanism is proposed to facilitate the cooperation behavior of evolutionary groups on networks in three game models, including prisoner's dilemma, snowdrift game, and stag hunt game. The core of the mechanism lies in: 1) Each player has a length of memory and uses the information of the elite in the memory span to update its strategy. 2) Each player has the chance to game with a certain neighbor more than once in each round. 3) The accumulative payoff of a player consists of two parts, one from playing with elites in memory length and another from playing with current neighbors, and a weight is introduced to adjust these two parts. The findings of the simulation demonstrate that a small weight can significantly enhance cooperation in three typical social dilemmas. Furthermore, the level of cooperation increases at first and then stays stable as the memory length increases

Understanding land use, livelihood and health transition of Tibetan nomads : case from Gangga Township, Dingri County, Tibetan Autonomous Region of China

Due to copyright restrictions, this item cannot be sharedThe Tibetan Nomads in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China have undergone profound transitions in recent decades with important implications for conservation, livelihood and human health. The changes from traditional nomads to agro-pastoralists to permanent agriculture, a sedentary village life (known as ‘sendentarisation’) has been associated with a remarkable change in the dietary diversity and lifestyle with decline in space mobility, increase in food production and emergence of both infectious and chronic diseases. The overarching response of the government has been to emphasize on the infrastructure and technological solutions. The local adaptation strategy of Tibetan nomads through maintaining the balanced mobile herding, reindeer husbandry as well as off-farm labor and trade would cause both the environmental degradation as well as improving the well-being of the local people. Drawing on transdisciplinary approach a preliminary fieldwork in Gangga Township of Dingri County at the foothills of Mt. Everest, was conducted. A pertinent linkage between land use and human health, and spatial and temporal mismatch of livelihoods and healthcare services was identified in transition to sedentary village life. We suggest the emerging imperatives by using ecosystem approach to human health to help improve Tibetan livelihood in transition from nomads to sedentary life