Tibet Center

Minorities Studies and Tibet Research in the PRC

A Seminar on Minzuxue with Professor Liu Zhiyang

On January 28, Visiting Professor Liu Zhiyang led a seminar on minorities studies and Tibet research in the PRC. Hosted by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, the seminar provided UVa students and faculty a opportunity to learn about a research and scholarly field that has undergone a significant transition over the past generation.

A professor at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, Liu Zhiyang himself specializes in Tibetan studies and has conducted extensive field research, both in Lhasa and in the Tibetan-Yi corridor of Pingwu county and elsewhere on the Sino-Tibetan frontier. He has been resident at the University of Virginia through the Tibet Center over the past academic year.

In his seminar, Professor Liu discussed the meaning and direction of minzu xue in China. He also spoke on the direction that China’s Tibetan studies (zang xue) are heading. In particularly, he discussed the complexity of the term minzu. The concept has denoted different meanings at different times. Its translation into English has, correspondingly, led to some confusion. Today, according to Professor Liu, it is a politicized concept.

Liu Zhiyang contrasted the development of minorities studies with the discipline of anthropology (renleixue). Considered politically suspect, anthropology was eliminated as a field of study in China in favor of minorities studies. Today, the two fields have converged, with the one clear distinction that Chinese anthropology also includes within its purview the study of cultural difference among the “Han” nationality, while minorities studies does not.

Professor Liu recently returned to Guangzhou where he will continue teaching anthropology, minorities studies and Tibetan studies.

Liu Zhiyang
Zhongshan University

Tashi Rabgey
University of Virginia

On January 28, Visiting Professor Liu Zhiyang led a seminar on minorities studies and Tibet research in the PRC. Hosted by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, the seminar provided UVa students and faculty a opportunity to learn about a research and scholarly field that has undergone a significant transition over the past generation.

A professor at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, Liu Zhiyang himself specializes in Tibetan studies and has conducted extensive field research, both in Lhasa and in the Tibetan-Yi corridor of Pingwu county and elsewhere on the Sino-Tibetan frontier. He has been resident at the University of Virginia through the Tibet Center over the past academic year.

In his seminar, Professor Liu discussed the meaning and direction of minzu xue in China. He also spoke on the direction that China’s Tibetan studies (zang xue) are heading. In particular, he discussed the complexity of the term minzu. The concept has denoted different meanings at different times. Its translation into English has, correspondingly, led to some confusion. Today, according to Professor Liu, it is a politicized concept.

Liu Zhiyang contrasted the development of minorities studies with the discipline of anthropology (renleixue). Considered politically suspect, anthropology was eliminated as a field of study in China in favor of minorities studies. Today, the two fields have converged, with the one clear distinction that Chinese anthropology also includes within its purview the study of cultural difference among the “Han” nationality, while minorities studies does not.

Professor Liu recently returned to Guangzhou where he will continue teaching anthropology, minorities studies and Tibetan studies.

Tangut Legends and Legacies in Tibet

By Elliot Sperling, former chair of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, director of the department’s Tibetan Studies Program

The Tanguts, a Tibeto-Burman people, were a major presence on the Sino-Tibetan frontier for centuries, ultimately establishing a strong dynastic state known as Xixia in Chinese. The state’s destruction by the Mongols led to a migration of many Tanguts back onto the Tibetan Plateau where, under their Tibetan appellation, Mi-nyag, they appear as components of lineages stretching from Khams and A-mdo in Eastern Tibet, to Sikkim, in modern India, and even into Western Tibet. Claims of descent from the Tangut imperial clan appear in several Tibetan clan
histories; indeed in the lineage of Sikkim’s traditional rulers as well. Although the Tangut state still looms as little more than a bit of arcane lore for most Tibetanists, the fact is its impact on the Tibetan and Himalayan world-and particularly on the way that world imagined itself-was greater than many have long assumed

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and the Tibet Center at the University of Virginia.

• location: Clark Hall 108, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States

Sustainable Development in Practice: Education, community development and urban planning

Panelists:

Gitile Naituli: Associate Professor of Business Management at the Department of Business Management, Multimedia University, Kenya. The presentation will focus on the significance of education to sustainable development.

Shuaib Lwasa: PhD Candidate in Geographic Information Systems for Urban Planning and management at Makerere University, Uganda. The presentation will focus on the relationship between urban poverty and environmental burdens in the context of sustainable development and how communities, researchers and civil society organizations have teamed up to find local solutions to local problems.

Thupten : Field staff at Winrock International working in community development on the Tibetan plateau. The presentation will focus on community development and a case study of Eco-tourism service and waste disposal in Tibet.

Sponsored by Machik at UVa.

• location: Minor Hall 125, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA