Urbanization and Tibetan Cultural Reservoirs
Presentation by Andrew Grant
Thursday, February 26, 201510:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Bunche 10383
The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is undergoing rapid urban and infrastructure development that is bringing Tibetans into contact with contemporary Chinese city environments. In China’s Qinghai Province, a growing number of Tibetan migrants are leaving Tibetan autonomous administrative units to live in Xining City. While Tibetans voluntarily move to the city in order to find work, attain education, purchase apartments, and to avoid harsh winters, life in a Han-dominated city is leading to anxiety about the loss of Tibetan culture in the next generation of urbanized youth. This paper, based on interviews conducted during fieldwork in 2013 and 2014, focuses on how Tibetan urban dwellers are responding to the perceived threat of Han acculturation of themselves and their children. Urban Tibetans are leveraging their family connections, the improved road infrastructure, and the expanding housing market to create and to access what I call strategic cultural reservoirs: reliably Tibetan places such as decorated Xining homes and parents’ hometowns. Such sites are valued for their potential to inculcate Tibetan culture. Even while using these places to maintain Tibetan culture, Tibetans are embracing aspects of urban life that threaten to undo this cultural labor. Han-centric services and other institutional realities therefore bear heavily against the success of the cultural reservoirs. This research speaks to the larger trend of urbanization and acculturation in Tibetan regions of China, and to the experiences of other minority populations moving to large Chinese cities.