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WORKING PAPERS SERIES TWO | no. 38 Re-examining human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet Gillian G. Tan

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Page 1: Ethnology and Buddhism

W O R K I N G PA P E R S S E R I E S T W O

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no. 38 Re-examining human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet

Gillian G. Tan

Page 2: Ethnology and Buddhism

W O R K I N G PA P E R S S E R I E S T W O |

no. 38 Re-examining human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet

Gillian G. Tan

SERIES EDITOR Peter Kelly

ALFRED DEAKIN RESEARCH INSTITUTE Deakin University

Geelong VIC 3217 AUSTRALIA

ISBN 978-1-921745-38-9 ISSN (online) 1837-7440

ISSN (print) 1837-7432

NOVEMBER 2012

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© Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Deakin University

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Tan, Gillian.

Re-examining human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet

Bibliography

ISBN 978-1-921745-37-9

1. Ethnology--China--Tibet Autonomous Region. 2. Nomads--China--Tibet Autonomous Region--Social life and customs. 3. Domestication--China--Tibet Autonomous Region. 4 Human-animal relationships--China--Tibet Autonomous Region. 5 Social sciences--China--Tibet Autonomous Region. 6 Tibet Autonomous Region (China)--Social life and customs. I. Tan, Gillian. II. Alfred Deakin Research Institute. III. Title. (Series: Alfred Deakin Research Institute; Working Paper No. 38).

306.09515

DisclaimerThis article has been written as part of a series of publications issued from the Alfred Deakin Research Institute. The views contained in this article are representative of the author only. The publishing of this article does not constitute an endorsement of or any other expression of opinion by Deakin University. Deakin University does not accept any loss, damage or injury howsoever arising that may result from this article.

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The Alfred Deakin Research Institute Working PapersSERIES TWO

The Alfred Deakin Research Institute (ADRI) is a specialised research unit that was established at Deakin University in 2009. From its foundation in the humanities and social sciences, the Alfred Deakin Research Institute promotes research that integrates knowledge generated from a broad range of disciplines in ways that address problems of local, national and international importance.

This series of working papers is designed to bring the research of the Institute to as wide an audience as possible and to promote discussion among researchers, academics and practitioners both nationally and internationally on issues of importance.

The working papers are selected with the following criteria in mind: To share knowledge, experience and preliminary findings from research projects: To provide an outlet for research and discussion papers (some of which have a policy focus): To give ready access to previews of papers destined for publication in academic journals, edited collections, or research monographs, and: To present this work in a form that is scholarly, well written and which has a clear sense of particular purpose and context.

Series EditorPeter Kelly

Series Editorial TeamSantosh Jatrana Tanya King Samuel Koehne David Lowe Mark McGillivray Jonathon Ritchie Gillian Tan

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No. 01 Lowe, D. The Colombo Plan and ‘soft’ regionalism in the Asia-Pacific: Australian and New Zealand cultural diplomacy in the 1950s and 1960s. April 2010.

No. 02 Murphy, K. and Cherney, A. Policing ethnic minority groups with procedural justice: An empirical study. April 2010.

No. 03 Ritchie, J. ‘We need one district government to be set up to replace other district governments’: The beginnings of provincial government in Papua New Guinea. April 2010.

No. 04 Murphy, B. and Murphy, K. ‘The Australian Tax Survey of Tax Scheme Investors’: Survey methodology and preliminary findings for the second stage follow-up survey. April 2010.

No. 05 Feeny, S. and McGillivray, M. Scaling-up foreign aid: Will the ‘Big Push’ work? April 2010.

No. 06 Murphy, K. and Gaylor, A. Policing Youth: Can procedural justice nurture youth cooperation with police? July 2010.

No. 07 Brown, T.M. The Anglican Church and the Vanuatu Independence Movement: Solidarity and Ambiguity. August 2010.

No. 08 Moore, C. Decolonising the Solomon Islands: British Theory and Melanesian Practice. August 2010.

No. 09 Hayes, M. Re-framing Polynesian Journalism: From Tusitala to Liquid Modernity. August 2010.

No. 10 Dickson-Waiko, A. Taking over, of what and from whom?: Women and Independence, the PNG experience. August 2010.

No. 11 Hancock, L. and O’Neil, M. Risky business: Why the Commonwealth needs to take over gambling regulation. August 2010.

No. 12 Bryant-Tokalau, J. The Fijian Qoliqoli and Urban Squatting in Fiji: Righting an Historical Wrong? August 2010.

No. 13 Murphy, B., Murphy, K. and Mearns, M. The Australian Tax System Survey of Tax Scheme Investors: Methodology and Preliminary Findings for the Third Follow-up Survey. September 2010.

No. 14 Hancock, L. How ‘responsible’ is Crown Casino?: What Crown employees say. November 2010.

No. 15 Murphy, K. and Cherney, A. Understanding minority group willingness to cooperate with police: Taking another look at legitimacy research. November 2010.

No. 16 Murphy, K., Murphy, B., and Mearns, M. ‘The 2007 public safety and security in Australia survey’: survey methodology and preliminary findings. November 2010.

No. 17 Murphy, K., Murphy, B. and Mearns, M. ‘The 2009 Crime, Safety and Policing in Australia Survey’: Survey Methodology and Preliminary Findings. November 2010.

No. 18 Kelly, P. ‘A Social Science of Risk: The Trap of Empiricism, the Problem of Ambivalence? September 2011.

No. 19 Campbell, P., Kelly, P. and Harrison, L. ‘Social Enterprise: Challenges and Opportunities’, September 2011.

No. 20 Lowe, D. ‘Old Wine, New Bloggers: Public Diplomacy, India and Australia’, November 2011

No. 21 Foster, J. E., McGillivray, M. and Seth, S. ‘Composite Indices: Rank Robustness, Statistical Association and Redundancy’, November 2011.

No. 22 Turner, M. ‘Historians as Expert Witnesses: How do Holocaust Perpetrator Trials Shape Historiography?’, November 2011.

No. 23 Turner, M. ‘The Irving-Lipstadt Libel Trial: Historians as Expert Witnesses and the Shaping of Post-Trial Publications’, November 2011.

No. 24 Campbell, P., Kelly, P. & Harrison, L. ‘Transitional Labour Market Programs: Challenges and Opportunities’, December 2011.

No. 25 Robinson, G. ‘American liberalism and capitalism from William Jennings Bryan to Barack Obama’, December 2011.

No. 26 Koehne, S. ‘“Peaceful and Secure”: Reading Nazi Germany through Reason and Emotion’, December 2011.

SERIES 2No. 27 King, T. J. & Murphy, K. Procedural Justice as a

component of the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome: Understanding opposition to the building of a desalination plant in Victoria, Australia, June 2012.

No. 28 Jackson, R. Birthing Kits, NGOs and reducing maternal and neonatal mortality in Ethiopia, June 2012.

No. 29 Speldewinde, C. & Verso, M. Winchelsea: A Health and Wellbeing Profile, June 2012.

No. 30 Speldewinde, C. & Verso, M. Lorne: A Health and Wellbeing Profile, June 2012.

No. 31 Campbell, P., Kelly, P. & Harrison, L. The Problem of Aboriginal Marginalisation: Education, Labour Markets and Social and Emotional Well-Being, July 2012.

No. 32 Jackson, R., Jatrana, S., Johnson, L., Kilpatrick, S. & King, T. Making connections in Geelong: Migrants, social capital and growing regional cities, July 2012.

No. 33 Jones, P., Managing Urbanisation in Papua New Guinea: Planning for Planning’s Sake? August 2012.

No. 34 Phillips, S., Widening Participation in Higher Education for People from Low SES Backgrounds: A Case Study of Deakin University’s Existing Community Partnerships and Collaborations, August 2012.

No. 35 Charles, C., Constructions of Education and Resistance within Popular Feminist Commentary on Girls and Sexualisation, August 2012.

No. 36 Graham, M. & Rich, S., What’s ‘childless’ got to do with it? August 2012.

No. 37 Migdalek, J., Aesthetics of Gender Embodiment, August 2012.

No. 38 Tan, G., Re-examining human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet, November 2012.

The Alfred Deakin Research InstituteWorking paper series

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Re-examining human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet

AbSTRAcT

In this paper, I explore how human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet may be understood within the framework of a four-fold ontological system proposed by anthropologist, Philippe Descola. In what follows, I provide an account of Descola’s theoretical system, present ethnographic data on human-nonhuman relations from fieldwork with two nomadic communities in Eastern Tibet, and analyze these in light of Descola’s system. I argue that deep ethnographic engagement with and analysis of human-nonhuman relations not only furthers our understanding of specific communities but also informs the politics around policies concerned with ‘the environment’.

Gillian G. TanAlfred Deakin Research Institute

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Introduction

In a current climate of change and uncertainty over the sustainability of natural resources and loss of various plant and animal species, increased efforts have been made towards addressing problems that, despite different degrees of urgency, different causes and interpretations, and different plausible solutions, have been placed together under the homogenizing banner of an ‘environmental crisis’. This crisis has particular salience on the Tibetan plateau. Miehe et al have argued that ‘the Tibetan pastoral ecosystem gains supra-regional importance due to its importance as a huge, intensive and elevated heat source…Any changes in surface properties thus affect the radiation feedbacks of the plateau, with global consequences’ (Miehe et al 2009: 130). Klein et al have argued that the rangelands of the Tibetan plateau provide essential regulation of ecosystem health by regulating ‘climate, soil erosion, the quantity and quality of freshwater resources and nutrient retention and cycling’ (Klein et al 2011: 424). Marked degradation in some parts of the Tibetan plateau have prompted researchers to urge a systematic analysis of the causes of degradation, while realizing that the driving forces behind the modifications are varied: ‘some may be attributed to natural phenomena and cycles; some result from human activities far beyond the margin of the Tibetan plateau; and some may result from dynamics within the region itself’ (Klein et al 2002). Dynamics within the region itself undoubtedly refer to the grazing practices of Tibetan nomads as well as the reform policies of the Chinese state although preliminary studies also point to the negative impacts of the expansion of warming-induced shrubs. These less-digestible shrubs lower the productivity and nutritive quality of rangelands.

Notwithstanding these important concerns, this paper proposes another way of understanding and addressing the problems associated with the ‘environmental crisis’. It starts with the question of what ‘the environment’is. Can a reconceptualization of ‘the environment’ inform efforts aimed at addressing the crisis so that policy-makers, both in government and in the development industry, may be more engaged with on-the-ground realities? Following this, can policies be more reflexive and effective? This paper explores these questions by engaging with the theoretical works of the anthropologist, Philippe Descola. I use Descola’s concepts to analyze my own ethnographic data with Tibetan nomads and to argue that greater research attention needs to be given to groups in specific times and places in order to understand specific human-nonhuman relationships. Consequently, actions addressing ‘environmental problems’ might fare better if they were directed more at relationships, namely the politics around policy creation and subject-object domination, than at continued objectification of the local and indigenous. The conclusion of this paper will elaborate further on what this entails, but first, an introduction to the ideas and concepts that frame this research.

Descola’s four-fold system of ontologies

In his various works, Descola (1994, 1996, 1997, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2009) systematically builds on detailed ethnographies of human-nonhuman relations, not only in his own fieldsite among the Achuar of Ecuador but also from others who work in the Amazon (Weiss 1975, Viveiros de Castro 1992, Belaunde 1994, Arhem 1996); North America (Speck 1935, Lips 1947, Feit 1973, Tanner 1979, Hallowell 1981 [1960], Brightman 1993); Central Asia (Barth 1961, Hamayon 1990, Humphrey and Onon 1996, Pedersen 2001); East Asia (Berque 1986); South Asia (Malamoud 1989, Bird-David 1999, Dove1992); Southeast Asia (Howell 1984); and the Pacific (Strathern 1980, Brunois 2007). One of the aims in this effort in ethnographic conglomeration is to demonstrate that the notion of an apparently universal divide between the concept of ‘Nature’ and the concept of ‘Culture’ is in fact not universal.

What is this divide? Practically, it manifests as nature reserves and national parks, it rears its head in debates over resource use, land rights and even climate change, and it is found in any conversation that views ‘the environment’ as an objectified, and distinct, zone of activity separate from human social interactions. In short, it is any commodification of nature, which stems from the conceptual objectification of Nature. Probing this divide conceptually, we find that it is supported by the assumption that there is one underlying and foundational Nature,

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composed of matter and physical atoms, which is the basis of the earth and everything it comprises. Superimposed on this one Nature are various Cultures – Western, modern, traditional – and each Culture is seen to have its own way of engaging and interacting with this common physical foundation. Descola does not argue that this perspective is wrong, only that it is not universal, or universally shared, as many would believe.

To state that this perspective is neither a universal concept nor universally shared is not to negate its existence. Indeed, Descola maintains that his aim is always to foreground the anthropological project, namely the concomitant avowal to difference and similarity, and on this position he distances himself from Viveiros de Castro (Kohn 2009: 139-140). Furthermore, questioning the Nature/Culture divide does not mean questioning the premise that there is a universal of some kind from which we – as academics – can proceed. Yet rather than place this universal within a specific knowledge tradition, Descola derives it from ethnographic evidence, furnished not only by anthropology but also by the natural sciences. The universal that Descola proceeds from is the duality of the physical and the interior, first suggested by Husserl in his philosophy of phenomenology, which counters the Cartesian duality of body and mind (Husserl 1965: 79-81, 90-91) and then later corroborated by research in neuroscience and child development (Descola 2006: 139). The presence of interiority and physicality in the human species is the universal foundation that he assumes when an indeterminate alter, or Other, is encountered:

Whatever the diversity of the conceptions of the person that anthropologists have encountered, it seems that the duality of physicality and interiority is universally present, although with an infinite variety of modalities of connection and interaction between the two planes (Descola 2009: 150).

At this point, the two planes of interiority and physicality are heuristic tools, and as such, descriptively vague. Interiority is any attribute that is normally associated with mind, consciousness, morality, intentionality while physicality refers to form, substance, and sensory-motor perception. From these two planes, Descola constructs a grid in which the variety of modalities and connections may stabilize into four possible combinations, each relating to a distinct ontology. They are naturalism, animism, totemism and analogism.

It is important to remember that Descola is defining the word, ontology, in a particular way, namely as ‘systems of properties that humans ascribe to beings’ (Descola 2006: 138). In this sense, ontology is taken out of its philosophical abstraction and immediately concretized. Furthermore, he states that the ‘four types of ontologies [are] systems of distributions of properties among existing objects in the world, that in turn provide anchoring points for sociocosmic forms of aggregation and conceptions of self and non-self’ (Descola 2006: 139). In other words, all over the world, humans give certain properties to entities in the world around them. The ways that the properties are distributed tell us something about how humans understand themselves and the world around them. The properties are stabilized into aggregates that reveal what the system of properties (or ontology) is and, crucially, the underlying ontology itself gives humans the propensity to favor or inhibit one system of properties over another.

The properties that Descola refers to include, for example, how some peoples interact in ways that establish social relationships with entities, such as animals and plants. Therefore, animals, plants and spirits ‘live in villages, abide by kinship rules, engage in ritual activity and barter goods’ (Descola 2006: 140). People do this because they have endowed these entities with a subjectivity that is similar to their own. By comparison, other people may regard animals, plants and spirits to be either of a different subjectivity or to not have any subjectivity at all. The properties that are present in one group of people may be inhibited in another group of people, or they take on different forms. In animist societies, for instance, people attribute subjectivity to the elements of the world around them even while they observe physical distinctions between themselves and the elements. Conversely, in naturalist societies, people understand physicality as common between themselves and all elements of the world around them (we are all made of the same ‘stuff’). However, subjectivity exists only with people who are believed rational, symbolic beings distinct from nonhuman Others.

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For Descola, totemism is another stabilized form, where both physicality and interiority are continuous. Finally, there is analogism, where both physicality and interiority are discontinuous.

Animism

Morally continuous

Physically discontinuous

Totemism

Morally continuous

Physically continuous

Naturalism

Morally discontinuous

Physically continuous

Analogism

Morally discontinuous

Physically discontinuous

Table 1. Descola’s four-fold system of ontologies

Now I will caution those of us who are generally wary of tables that the nuances in language and formulation are extremely important to keep in mind. Descola is not positing a table in which the concepts are hardened into rigid categories, where the observable is distributed between substances, processes and presentations. Rather – and this is important – entities, with respect to each other and what is around them, are constantly stabilizing themselves across the two planes of physicality and interiority. This means that the choice of one system of properties, or even a few properties within the system, is favored over another system of properties. And ‘choice’ in this regard is the actualization of premises that we do not think about. Therefore, the ontologies are best understood in comparison with each other, revealing the propensity of one set of instituted expressions of relations over another. These instituted expressions become anthropologically significant when we consider the human-nonhuman relations themselves: reciprocal exchange, predation and protection are just some of the modes of relations that exist. Coupled with modes of identification – or ‘the elementary mechanisms through which [a] subject will detect differences and similarities between himself and the objects in the world’ (Descola 2006: 140) – we have strategies by which to analyze one’s ethnographic data.

Nomads of Eastern Tibet

The nomads with whom I have lived and worked are located in the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau, in a region historically known as Kham. Since the Chinese takeover of 1959, the region itself has been partitioned into various Chinese provinces and prefectures. The two communities I have worked with are both located in Sichuan Province, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The first community is in Dartsedo County, Lhagang Township and I conducted fieldwork over a year in 2006 and the summer of 2010. The second community is in Sershul County, Deshungma Township where I conducted a month of fieldwork in the summer of 2010.

The following account sketches the daily lives, movements and social organization of these two communities. I have written a more detailed description of nomadic livelihood and movement, particularly on the first community, in other writing (Tan 2009a, 2009b, 2010) and for more details on the general area of the second community, refer to works by Gelek (2002) and Thargyal (2007). Furthermore, there are significant variations in the practices and situations of nomadic pastoralists across the Tibetan plateau so this account should not be taken to immediately apply to all Tibetan nomads. Communities of people called drogpa in Tibetan, which translates roughly as ‘peoples of the pasture’, have a defining characteristic, namely that their primary method for sustaining life refers to animals and to movement. They lead their animals to fresh pasture rather than bring fodder to animals and this necessitates

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moving with their animals. Thus, the rongpa, or farmers, also herd animals, such as yaks, but their primary method for sustaining life refers to their fields and their fixed stone houses. Even the rongmadrog, or semi-nomads, have animals and will move with them to fresh pastures, but again their primary reference is the agricultural focus of their larger community. The drogpa on the other hand, live at an altitude – often above 4000 meters – that excludes the possibility of sustainable agriculture. They rely on the products of their animals and they move with their animals in order to search for fodder. They dwell in black tents woven from yak hair. The tents are taken down and put up during each move to fresh pasture. This mode of sustenance entails close relationships with their animals and physical environment as well as to mobility. In their patterns of subsistence, the drogpa may be considered nomadic pastoralists (Dyson-Hudsons 1980).

Mobility is important both practically and conceptually because it not only emphasizes a strategy of making life – leading their animals to fresh pasture rather than bringing fodder to their animals – but also to the social relations and structure of Tibetan nomadic society. This is particularly striking as it has been demonstrated that movements according to latitudinality, or north-south movements, have insignificant effects if considered only from the perspective of fresh pasture (Goldstein and Beall 1990). In addition to being a means of livelihood, nomadism is a strategy of escaping political control (Irons 1974, Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1980). Ekvall (1964) has observed that even within the group, the opportunity to leave at a time of conflict is significant, and not infrequently, it is taken up. Tapper, who worked with nomads of Iran, notes the characteristic of a ‘tribe’ in terms of their segmentary opposition is inherently opposed to the social organization of a state (1990: 56-68). Thus, where states operate in order to bring outliers into control, segmentary tribes tend to be inherently unstable and constantly splitting up. Among nomads of Eastern Tibet, Pirie (2005a, 2005b) has worked on issues of mediation and conflict and has effectively applied the idea of segmentation to understand the structure of social relations among Tibetan nomads.

Movement for nomads of Eastern Tibet is as much dictated by physical influences as by social, political and psychological reasons. Further details of specific communities also reveal the influence of religion and cosmology on the intricacies of their pastoral movements. It is not within the scope of this paper to analyze the primacy of one set of influences over another although this is an important step in the eventual development of this argument. For now, it is only important to note that Descola’s system of ontologies works primarily from the premise that relational processes materialized in institutions are derived from the ontological properties ascribed to beings in the world. With this in mind, I will now turn to my ethnographic data on nomads’ relations with their physical surroundings and nonhuman Others.

Eastern Tibetan nomads, their physical surroundings and nonhuman Others

My fieldwork with nomads in the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau has helped me to understand a dimension of how they interact with and perceive their physical surroundings, such as pastures, stones, rivers, lakes, and mountains. Nomads with whom I have lived and worked with refer to their pastures by name. Taraka, Kuchin Ngunbu: these are all localized areas, without definite boundaries, yet clearly lineated in their minds because the places have distinct meanings, topographical landmarks, oral histories and personal as well as communal interactions. Nomads will send their animals to graze in Kuchin Ngunbu over the summer. Its name means, a covering of blue, perhaps alluding to the blue wildflowers that cover this particular area of pastures in that season. Taraka is another pasture with an oral history that is linked to the horse of Ling Gesar, warrior king of Eastern Tibet. The horse itself is believed to be an incarnation of a deity that is sent to aid Gesar in his adventures against ogresses and monsters. What this suggests is that, far from being a homogeneous mass, an expanse of undifferentiated land for which one portion is synonymous with another, the vast pastures are heterogeneous places that are as varied in meanings and histories as the suburbs of Melbourne or New York. Similar arguments have been made, of course, for the Australian ‘Outback’ that is as rich with meanings and histories for Aboriginal groups.

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Stones on the Tibetan grasslands are said to have gender, with round smooth stones being feminine and rough jagged stones being masculine. These stones are then given different practical uses in everyday life. As well, the attributes of gender invoke certain characteristics that reveal the imaginative dimension of nomads: feminine stones are nurturing, these are used around the stove, they protect and enhance. Masculine stones are powerful, they are jagged and used to penetrate or cut – entailing a threat to the circle of life. If a certain place has many jagged stones, nomads hold a degree of fear and respect for the place, such as Ngula Thang, which is also known as the Crying Grasslands. The story that accompanies this place is that Aku Dretung, uncle to Ling Gesar, was lost in these pastures and was so confused and desperate for a way out that he cried and pled to the gods to show him the way.

Rivers and lakes are said to be the residences of guardian water beings, known as Lu, or Naga in Sanskrit. They are portrayed and described as serpentine beings that protect the life-giving waters of the world. Any acts that are disrespectful to the rivers and lakes themselves – thus, polluting them, throwing in waste – are acts that are disrespectful to the Lu and therefore capable of inciting their anger. When these beings are angered, trouble occurs with the weather: drought, severe and unexpected thunderstorms, terrible ice and snowstorms. Even though Powers (1995: 434) has noted that Lu are part of the lower regions of the world and they hoard treasures and are believed to bring leprosy, thus making it important to keep them away from human habitations, I did not encounter this interpretation in Kham. Interestingly, in one of my fieldsites, these beings had transmorphed into dragons (a different word in Tibetan) and the dragons then became the guardian deities of water in this particular area.

Narratives about and interactions with mountains on the Tibetan plateau reveal that even human interactions with, and perceptions of, mountains are not homogenous (across time and space) within a cultural group. Some mountains are believed to be residences of territorial deities – sadag – whereas others are believed to be the deities themselves. Thus, in one area, a small hill is believed to be the residence of a local territorial deity. Ritual practices of circumambulation, placing of prayer flags, and offerings of tsa tsa, are given to the deity and placed on and around the hill. Other, mainly larger snow-capped, mountains involve slightly different practices and narratives. Amne Machin – a high peak in the traditional Tibetan region of Amdo – is believed to be a deity that spawns sons across the plateau. One of them resides as the peak Zhara in one of my fieldsites. Tibetans circumambulate these peaks as well as place prayer flags along the way, but they have a different relationship to these larger mountains. They are not as much local protective deities residing in a particular locale as translocal embodied beings that contribute to a larger and shared imaginary of ‘being Tibetan’.

It can be seen, then, that pastures have specific histories and meanings that allow nomads to interact as part of a particular community and to belong to particular places; stones have gender and influence the imaginary of nomads with respect to male-female relations, place and oral history; rivers and lakes are residences of water spirits and nomads understand elements of the weather in terms of the emotional state of these spirits; some mountains are residences of territorial spirits that protect local areas, and other mountains are themselves deities that are part of a kinship system that extends across the Tibetan plateau. Modes of identification, in the way that Descola has defined them as ‘the boundaries between self and otherness’ (Descola 1996: 87), reveal that while relations between nomads and nonhuman Others are interlocking and manifold, there is a clear distinction – in the present – between the entities, such that each entity occupies a level, or category, of being that is separate from the rest. Of course, as Buddhists who believe in fortunate or unfortunate incarnations, one can never be sure – in the future – of one’s potential category of being. Nevertheless, the levels exist as conceptual templates of existence. On the other hand, the modes of relations that nomads have with their physical surroundings and nonhuman Others suggest close relationships based on protection and worship. Descola has alluded to the fact that protection exists predominantly in societies where human-nonhuman interactions include the domestication of plants and animals, such as cattle for pastoralists or yaks for Tibetan nomads.

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Among the domesticated animals that may be found in nomad communities of Eastern Tibet are yaks, sheep, horses, and dogs. In this paper, I will limit my examination of animals to domesticated animals because of the frequent interactions that are entailed between human and domesticated animal in everyday life. Furthermore, I will focus exclusively on the male yak and its female, dri, for the following reasons. Products from the yak are central to the sustenance and continuation of the nomadic way of life, particularly in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham. Their milk is converted into a variety of dairy products that form the basis for sustenance and trade for grain. Their hair and fur are used to make ropes and ties as well as threads of yarn that are then woven into various panels of cloth used in making black tents, the mode of dwelling that enables nomads to move with their animals. Their dung is collected and dried before it becomes the primary source of fuel for the stove. Numerous other uses of the yak, such as the occasional source of protein, the use of body heat, and the use of stomachs to store cheese and butter, are also important.

The animal is a beast of burden that is well-suited to carrying heavy loads in the oxygen-poor high-altitude environment of the Tibetan plateau. This is particularly important when nomads move their households from pasture to pasture and also when they have to carry large loads of butter and cheese to market points, usually located in towns on the plateau.

The animal itself is adapted to the high-altitude and harsh conditions of the Tibetan plateau with higher haemoglobin levels (Lalthantluanga et al 1985, Wiener 2003), high compensatory growth (Xue et al 2005), and has itself co-evolved to graze with a particular kind of sedge (Kobresia pygmaea) on the pastures (Cincotta et al 1991).

The scientific name for the yak is Bos grunniens and three varieties are found on the Tibetan plateau in China. These are the Valley type, the Plateau Grassland type and the White yak. In Sichuan, two varieties, the Valley type and the Plateau Grassland type have been identified (Cai 1989:85), and according to Wu (1998), the prevalent type in Kham is the Valley type. In Tibetan, yag refers to the male of the species. The female of the species is called a dri. The gestation period for a yak is around thirty-six weeks, or nine months (Wiener 2003). The domesticated animal lives to an age of around twenty years. Females of the species may start breeding at three years old. Dora Karmo nomads have different names for yak calves of different ages. In the first year, they are called we’u. By the age of fifteen days, these young yak calves are able to eat grass, although they continue to suckle until over three years old. Suckling is encouraged because it prolongs the milk production of the dri. Yak calves in the second year are called yaruh; in the third year, yasum, and in the fourth year, sozhe. The young are not given names; the process of naming begins only after they have had their first young or when they have passed four years of age.

In addition, nomads of Dora Karmo will herd dzo. The dzo is a hybrid between either a male yag and female cow (Bos taurus) or a male bull and female dri. Female hybrids are more desired than males because of their ability to produce milk. They are highly-prized, sometimes even more than dri, because of their plentiful milk production. As a breeding animal, however, the dzo is less valuable because the offspring of a dzo and a yag or dri, called aku in the Dora Karmo vernacular, is a stubborn animal. I was told that an aku is the most difficult of the herd. If the herd goes up the mountain, the aku will always head down. If the herd comes down, the aku will go up. They are difficult, temperamental and unpredictable. Males akus are killed at birth to avoid potential disturbance to the herd and also because they are not used for breeding.

The size of herds varies significantly between households and also between communities. The limit for the size of herds, while dictated by Chinese state policies, is practically influenced by the ability of households to purchase or acquire more yak and their skill in managing the existing herd. Included in skilful management are the abilities to breed resilient animals, to stave off illness and disease, to access fertile pastures, and so on. However, there is also a correlation between the size of the herd and the number of able-bodied nomads, particularly females, in the household. The presence of infirm or weak nomads in the household will negatively impact it by simultaneously decreasing the number of those able to work and increasing the number of mouths to feed, even though care is provided

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for any ill relative. Wealthy households will almost always have several good workers and few dependents. In late winter, household I lived with in Dora Karmo, Dartsedo County had over a hundred head of yak, of which about forty were lactating dri. This was similar to the household in Deshungma County. By the end of spring in Dora Karmo during my fieldwork year, we had acquired an additional ten animals from the profits of caterpillar fungus sales, and by the start of summer, the number of lactating dri increased by eight. Not all the new calves survived, of course, and there were quite a number of deaths among the older animals from accidents and the stresses of a harsh winter. In early winter, at the end of my fieldwork in Dora Karmo, the total number of animals in the herd was again fairly close to what it had been when I started fieldwork 10 months earlier.

Female dri are milked once a day in Dora Karmo, in the morning, and twice a day in Deshungma, in the morning and evening. In Dora Karmo, the calves are tied away from their mothers (who are not tied up) and kept inside the winter house or black tent overnight. In the morning, they are released and each calf is allowed to suckle for a short while before it is pulled away and tied up at a short distance from its mother. After milking, both mother and calf are released and the herd is led out to graze for the day. In Deshungma, similar methods are used, although the calves are tied up, in a line, outside the house or tent, close to their mothers who are also tied up. In both communities, nomad women milk the animals and a close familiarity is fostered between woman and animal. Often, the women will speak to the animal, addressing it either by its name or calling it malo, or dear one. A woman will sometimes rub the right hind leg of the animal as she prepares to kneel down and milk it. Sometimes she scolds the animal if it is too frisky, or too impatient to go to its calf. In Dora Karmo, where they do not milk in the evening, other methods are used to lure the mothers to the house or tent so that the calves may be tied up in the evening. Imitative sounds are made, wo ae wog, wo ae wog, to call the mothers to the house or tent, and salt is offered. The mothers usually come running because they love salt and will lick and suck the salt from an outstretched hand while the other hand swiftly catches their calves at the rope collar to be tied up indoors.

In these daily interactions, women and animals develop close bonds. Protection, therefore, does not just entail a guarding of wealth for utilitarian purposes (although this is certainly the case among Tibetan nomads who, in fact, call their herds of yaks, nor, or wealth). It also entails a degree of responsibility to the care and well-being of what one is protecting. A brief story will illustrate what I mean in raising this issue of responsibility and care. Once, in late spring, a calf had been born in the middle of the night in Dora Karmo. Nomads do not typically assist with birthings, although Dako and Palko had hovered over the pregnant dri just after nightfall to make sure that the mother was warm. The baby had been born weak and, by morning, had not yet learned to stand or suckle. Palko carried it into the winter dwelling, sat down by the stove and placed it on her lap. Its umbilical cord was still attached and, though the blood and birthing fluids had dried on its fur, it was still slightly damp. She held it close to her to keep it warm and wiped its face with a dirty green rag. Dako had started to warm up some milk on the stove and before it started to boil, poured it into a bowl and left it beside Palko. Palko drank a mouthful of milk and held it in one side of her mouth, cheek blown out. With her left hand, she turned up the calf’s head and with her right index finger, she gently prised open the calf’s mouth and waited until it started to suck. Then slowly, she lowered her head and placed her mouth onto the calf’s, dribbling in milk while the calf suckled on her finger. The calf suckled a bowl of milk this way. However, it never fully learned to suckle on its mother’s teat and after five days, it died.

Now, the obvious care that Palko took towards the calf is itself interesting. By highlighting this example I do not mean to suggest that Palko did not appreciate a physical boundary between herself and the animal. The boundary was certainly there, and I would suggest that this is both a physical and interior discontinuity, using Descola’s terms. But what her care and method of care suggests is that the boundary between her and the animal was of the same kind as the boundary between mother and child, not even of carer and patient (can you imagine your doctor mouth-feeding you. Of course not, that’s what intravenous tubes are for!). There was no species boundary between her and the animal, with all the cultural

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prohibitions that this boundary entails in a Western rational imagination. Care was provided to the animal as necessary; granted, it is not the primary means of care – as nomads acquire different things, such as milk bottles and teats, these are used instead. Overriding any notion of species boundary was the offering of care towards a nonhuman Other in need.

Analogism on the Tibetan Plateau

The previous section sketched brief ethnographic data on human-nonhuman relations among nomads of two communities in Eastern Tibet and pointed to an analysis framed by the modes of identification and relation that Descola has laid out. The physical environment for nomads of Eastern Tibet is composed of entities, such as pastures, that are given names associated with shared histories and culture. Entities, such as stones, have gender that both inform and are influenced by gender relations between nomad men and women. Nomads also attribute emotions to the nonhuman guardians of waterways and mountains, such as anger and pacification of Lu, guardian water beings, and ritual offerings to territorial deities that reside in mountains. Some mountains are deities themselves and they have kinship networks that extend across the plateau, linking places of great distances through a shared imaginary. And finally, animals, particularly female dri, are given names, they are stroked or slapped, they are cared for and milked, they are the wealth of a nomad household. These interactions are all based on relationships of care towards the animals and of worship towards deities, and they have a unifying relationship of protection, towards animals on the part of nomads and towards nomads on the part of deities.

Inasmuch as these relationships of care, worship and protection denote close and familiar ties with the physical environment and nonhuman Others, nomads of Eastern Tibet do not immediately give these elements the same kind of subjectivity that societies of animism or totemism give to their environment and nonhuman Others. This is despite the fact that the influence of the pre-Buddhist animist folk religion in Tibet is still quite powerful among nomads of Eastern Tibet; indeed many of the interactions described above may be traced to this pre-Buddhist folk religion, often called Bön (Kvaerne 2001, Karmay 1998). Notwithstanding this, it has also been argued (Powers 1995, Dotson 2008) that when Buddhism came to Tibet from India, it adopted many of the on-going folk religious practices and combined them into its own doctrines. Thus, we find that in more or less standard conversations among Tibetan Buddhists, not only nomads, they will refer to the order of beings of the world. According to one source, the eight classes of gods and demons are: devas, nagas, yakshas, gandharvas, asuras, garudas, kimnaras, and mahoragas.1 These are also referred to as the eight classes of gods and demons, lha srin sde brgyad and Karmay (2003), in tracing its origins, lists this alternative to the eight classes: lha, btsan, bdud, gza’, dmu, srin po, rgyal po, ma mo.

This order, partly derived from Bön demons and spirits, has been incorporated into Tibetan Buddhism and has immediate application to Buddhist beliefs in karma, favorable incarnations and enlightenment, notable principles in Buddhist cosmology. In this system, there are six realms within cyclic, or samsara, existence: 1) Hell, 2) Hungry Ghosts, 3) Animal, 4) Human, 5) Semi-celestial and 6) Celestial. The first five realms belong to desire. In the sixth (celestial) realm, beings may be part of the desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm.

The existence of these ‘orders of being’ points to the fact that, for nomads of Eastern Tibet, there is a set of multiple essences, forms and entities, ordered along a graded scale (from higher to lower). These essences are distinguished from each other, even though their relationships with these others suggest close networks of care, protection and worship. Care, protection and worship are analogous to each other, in that the care and protection that nomads display towards their animals is analogous to the care and protection that deities display towards nomads, who in turn, worship these deities for continued protection and analogously ‘release’, not sacrifice, animals to the deities in order to appease them. In

1 (The Rangjung Yeshe Glossary of Vajrayana Buddhist Terminology, http://www.rangjung.com/rootfiles/ryp-glossary.htm#E, accessed online 19 September 2012).

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sum, it appears that nomads of Eastern Tibet relate to nonhuman Others according to the ontology of analogism, where both physicality and interiority are regarded as discontinuous between self and other, humans and nonhumans; and where humans and nonhumans are understood to be made up of fragmented essences, essences whose relationships can be mapped onto similarly linked essences possessed by other entities. According to Descola, analogism is ‘the mode of identification that splits an existing set of a multiplicity of essences, forms and substances separated by small deviations, sometimes ordered along a graded scale, so it becomes possible to reconstruct the system of initial contrasts into a dense network of analogies connecting the intrinsic properties of distinct entities’ (Descola 2005a: 280).

Analogism differs from naturalism, where physicality is continuous and interiority is discontinuous. Having both discontinuous physicality and interiority, analogism requires the constant reformation of relationships to maintain itself. Thus, the relationships between nomads and animals are reinforced by the relationships between nomads and deities, the relationships between nomads themselves are reinforced by their relationships with different nonhuman Others. Taken singularly, these relationships are fragile but as a dense network of interlocking and reinforcing relationships, they form a stable foundation for making life on high-altitude pastures.

Conclusion

Having located human-nonhuman relations among nomads of Eastern Tibet within the ontology of analogism as outlined by Descola, the question remains of how this analysis may inform understandings about ‘the environment’, particularly as it is formulated through the perspective of naturalism. That naturalism is the dominant perspective of the rational, modern ‘West’ has been demonstrated by Descola and Viveiros de Castro (1998, 2004). In these arguments, ‘the environment’, which is taken by some to be universally self-evident, is in fact a complex network of relationships that differ markedly from group to group and place to place. There is room, as well, to argue that naturalism is not a universally shared perspective even within the rational and modern ‘West’. Appreciating the fact that naturalism is not a universally shared perspective and that human-nonhuman relations differ from place to place can be a first step towards more reflexive and more effective efforts aimed at ameliorating the ecological crisis.

The language of environment degradation has undoubtedly entered into the vocabulary of the Chinese state as it creates new policies, aimed at protecting the environment on the basis of those same reasons listed above. Tuimu huancao, or restoring grasslands converting pastures, is one such policy (Cerny 2008, Yeh 2005). Yet writers, such as Yeh (2005) and Bauer (2005), have argued that tuimu huancao policy is, in fact, a way for the state to extend its control over its nomadic subject by settling them away from the pastures. ‘Green governmentality’, as it is proposed, shares much with the concept of environmentality, proposed by Agrawal (2005), as a technology of governmentality. Notwithstanding these points, lurking even further in the background of Chinese state policies towards nomads of Eastern Tibet is the fact that these policies assume a Nature/Culture divide, they are predicated on the perspective of naturalism as outlined in this paper, and when implemented, are an attempt at imposing one ontology on another. There is neither an easy nor palatable way of articulating such impositions; the impositions negate the conciliatory language of environmental protection, they go beyond the polite criticisms made by green governmentality and environmentality. In the past as in the present, wars have been fought on such grounds because the imposition of one ontology on another exposes the situation for what it is: the declaration that my way of being is going to eradicate yours.

It should be clear that I am concerned with the practical ramifications of what is unfolding in nomadic communities of Eastern Tibet. The question remains: what is all of this for? Accepting that environmental policies, at least in China, stem from the perspective of naturalism, and that the implementation of these policies threatens the continued existence of nomads of Eastern Tibet within the ontology of analogism, a more productive way forward

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in this situation would take multiple, but complementary paths: first, taking seriously Klein et al’s argument that there are various causes of degradation, more research should be aimed at articulating and pulling apart these causes, in different places. A deeper, and wider, understanding of these processes will aid the second, albeit more important, path, namely the recognition that debates on environmental policies, particularly when they involve, not different stakeholders, but different ontologies are necessarily political debates. In this regard, I refer to Latour’s critique of Beck’s peaceful cosmopolitanism (2004). The negotiation of common ground is impossible without a mutual, and explicit, understanding of what is common. Articulating what this is, by expressing those difficult differences, is the first step on a road that, however challenging, is one that may be the only one worth taking.

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