Beyond Resistance: Tibetans and ethnic minority place-making in the contemporary Chinese City
As part of China’s continued transformation into an urban society, the contemporary Tibetan Plateau is becoming increasingly urbanized. This poses difficulties for Tibetans who face futures in cities that are overwhelmingly Han Chinese in terms of language, legal coding of urban territories, and the everyday urban landscape. This talk will focus on Tibetans living in Xining City in eastern Qinghai Province and their experiences making places in city. I focus on the multisensory environment to reveal how Tibetans are creating a rhizomatic network of places that bind together a Tibetan urbanism. These places interpenetrate and co-exist with the Chinese city. I argue that most Tibetan places built in contemporary Xining have been created through the appropriation and channeling of dominant urban sensibilities rather than through resistance to or refusal of them.
Andrew Grant, Visiting Scholar CU-Boulder Department of Geography and Tibet Himalaya Initiative, is a political geographer whose research has appeared in journals on geography and Asian Studies. His research interests include the geography of ethnicity and migration as they relate to urbanization and infrastructure development in Asia.
Thursday, March 22nd at 12:30pm in CAS Conference Room (1424 Broadway Street Boulder, CO)
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies.