Taming Tibet - by Emily Yeh (Paperback)

About the Book

Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power.

Book Synopsis

The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans' apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life.The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han's "little brothers." Arguing that development is in this context a form of "indebtedness engineering," Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to--and negotiations with--development, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China's modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question.

Review Quotes

In Taming Tibet, Emily Yeh offers a new twist to current paradigms of Chinese development, presenting a trove of new evidence from China's politically unstable western periphery. Drawing on 16 months of intensive fieldwork undertaken between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces the devastating effects of China's recent state-subsidized and state-led land development campaign in Lhasa and its peri-urban regions.... Yeh's fieldwork, coming during a period of rapid transformation in China's land regime, provides a valuable counterpoint to a development literature that has focused for decades on China's coastal regions to the neglect of its hinterland.

In her masterful new book, Taming Tibet, Emily Yeh discusses the gift of development in modern Lhasa in a critical fashion, providing an excellent and informative examination of Chinese development projects over the last sixty plus years.... It will be of use to scholars from a variety of fields including ethnicity in China, development studies, and geography, and is also a welcome addition to the Tibetological field.

This is an important and authoritative analysis of contemporary socio-economics and politics in Tibet and does require some understanding of the academic discipline involved. However, the technical jargon is offset to a great extent by the numerous first-hand accounts of the author's time in and around Lhasa, which are invariably insightful, often entertaining, and help to bring a touch of light relief to what is essentially a dark and sombre subject.

About the Author

Emily T. Yeh is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.