Nomads of Western Tibet: The Survival of a Way of Life - Hardcover

Goldstein, Melvyn C.; Beall, Cynthia M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0906026237 ISBN 13: 9780906026236

Publisher: Serindia Publications, 1990

Synopsis

Melvyn Goldstein and Cynthia Beall of Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University were the first anthropologists to be granted permission to conduct extensive field research in Tibet after China launched its "open-door policy" in the early 1980s. After protracted negotiation with officials in Lhasa, Goldstein and Beall proceeded to Pala, a remote district on the vast Changtang Plateau, to study the little-known nomadic pastoralists. For 16 months the authors, who speak fluent Tibetan, shared the traditional lifestyles and cycles of the nomads, living at altitudes above 16,000 feet in yak-hair tents, at temperatures frequently well below zero, and subsisting on the nomad's diet of butter-salt tea, "tsampa" (roasted barley) and mutton. They accompanied the nomads on the daily trips between the home-base encampment and the grazing grounds, seasonal migrations to distant pastures and satellite camps, yearly hay-cutting and salt-collecting, as well as hunting expeditions with ancient matchlocks and dogs. They participated in the milking, shearing, and butchering of the pastoralist's sheep and goats and recorded and measured a family's daily food and drink intake. Census and grazing-enclosure data were collected that testify how the nomad's traditional pastoral system maintains the crucial ecological balance in the region, as it has for countless centuries. And in the most poignant and disturbing section, the authors relate how the radical changes of the Cultural Revolution turned the nomads' life upside down for a decade, when their religion, traditional means of production and world view were threatened with extinction. The economic reforms of the 1980s have reestablished much of the old culture and allowed the nomads to return, for the time being at least, to their ancient ways. This book is an account of these remarkable people - their traditional way of life and their struggle for cultural survival.

About this title

Review

"Goldstein and Beall have produced another spectacular book . . . . Photography depicting the lives of Mongolia's herding nomads who have survived for centuries in one of the harshest environments on this planet adds a studding effect. The text comes alive as it is illustrated with colorful scenes of nomadic life on nearly every page. But what makes this work more than a mere picture book is substantial ethnographic investigation. . . . The essential contribution of this book is its insight into how national policy changes play out in the lives and livelihood of a little-known people who were remote and inaccessible to observers from Western countries."--"Journal of Political Ecology

Edition details

• Publisher: Serindia Publications
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0906026237
• ISBN 13: 9780906026236
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192
• Illustrator: Goldstein Melvyn C., Beall Cynthia M.