The Battle for Fortune: State-Led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China

“56Nyima 2012; Makley 2018. sometimes,” are critical to the political and economic sustenance of township governments and the wide range of official and unofficial employees they support.”

“22Also see Makley 2018. methodologies.”

“In a related vein, Makley (2018) has explored how state-led development in north-east Tibet has unleashed a ‘battle for fortune’ that not only pits assimilatory authoritarian capitalism against Tibetan counter-development but also leads to increasing disparities and conflicts within and between…”

“…unprecedented outbreaks of unrest across the Tibetan Plateau that scholars of Tibet have characterized as expressions of long-held grievances exacerbated by increased militarization and accelerated state development in Tibetan areas (Barnett 2009; Fischer 2009; Makley 2009; Makley 2018; Yeh 2009b).”

“…and displacement (Tashi Nyima 2011; Hillman, 2013); the erosion of communal sovereignty and the role of authoritarian capitalism in urbanization (Makley, 2018); the ways urbanization places assimilatory pressures on Tibetans (Grant, 2018a), and exposes them to discrimination (Grant, 2017); and…”

“…“neoliberalization” of pastoralism in China (Yeh and Gaerrang 2011) or as “state-led development” which conflicts with local understandings of space (Makley 2018), I argue that these development initiatives must be seen, in the context of land use conflicts in Inner Mongolia, in part as…”

“20See Charlene Makley 2014, 2018 for analyses of the roles of spectacular development and spectacle time in promoting state sovereignty on the Tibetan Plateau.”

“41Hillman 2014, 121; Makley 2018.”

“Tibetan autonomous counties have also experienced shifting power relations caused by shequ governance away fromminority community leaders and towards the state (Kojima & Kokubun, 2002; Makley, 2018).”

“Wu (2015; 2018) uses the notion of planning centrality to describe the dominant role of the Chinese state in market transition and its ability to maintain power and pursue strategic goals based on novel governance practices, inter alia land use and planning.”

“…universalisation of compulsory nine-year schooling (Wright 2019), upgrading administrative ranks of rural places into urban territory (Yeh and Makley 2018), nomadic resettlement programmes (Cencetti 2015; Ptackova 2011, 2015; Bum 2018) and subsidised housing construction projects (Zhaxi…”

“Today, in Rebkong, and other counties throughout Qinghai, the urban – rural divide is blurring through processes of rapid economic and infrastructural development, settlement policies, and urbanization more broadly (Makley, 2018; Roche et al., 2020).”

“7 Over the period 2008 – 2015, Caple witnessed the ‘ modernisation ’ of villages through state-led redevelopment, rapid urbanisation, and a highly visible increase in wealth disparities (see also Makley 2018).”

“Nevertheless, Makley (2018) noted that even with the best of intentions, standardized development projects can starkly marginalize the very population they claim to benefit.”

“In discussing the status of Tibetans today, Makley (2012, 2018) describes what she calls a ‘silent pact,’ wherein Tibetans and non-Tibetans living in the People’s Republic of China have an unspoken agreement ‘not to publicly address the histories and political economic implications of specifically…”

“On “ fortune, ” see da Col (2012); Makley (2018).”

“The practice of worshiping sacred landscapes or objects is shared by many ethnic groups in China (see Luo et al., 2001; Makley, 2018; Smyer Yu, 2014; Williams, 2002; Xu, 2005).”

“Shaped by internal and external logics, contradictions, and conflicts across different time and space, these narrations variously centre the reincarnation of eminent lamas (Makley, 2018: 183), monastic moral development and decline (Caple, 2019), nature stories (Yeh, 2009) and so on.”

“This is rendered even more acute by the heightened mobility of Tibetan men who are pushed to travel further to China ’ s urban places to look for economic fortune (Fischer, 2013; Grant, 2022; Makley, 2018).”

“Emerging scholarship has been keen to explore the impact of state power on Tibetan social change, particularly in terms of economic subsidies (Fischer 2014), landscape transformation (Yeh 2013), the transformation of personhood (Makley 2018), and the oppression of languages (Roche 2019; 2020).”

“…aspects of memory, therefore, using examples from my long-term field research, exploring how relationships between gendered space expressed in housing and other material iconography convey local concepts of temporality and memory in new spaces of social practice (Herzfeld 2016, Makley 2018).”