Abstract
Given the complexity and dynamism of nomadic pastoralism in eastern Tibet, this chapter suggests that contemporary changes unfolding among nomadic pastoralists of eastern Tibet are more clearly understood through an additional examination of shifts in relationships. The effects of implemented and observed changes are analyzed according to different kinds of change, namely adaptations as ways in which relationships remain similar in kind although varying by degree and transformations as ways in which relationships alter into other kinds of relationship. Ethnographic evidence is provided through the lens of one community of nomadic pastoralists in Kham with respect to their interactions with yaks, other pastoralists, and territorial deities. Additionally, a boarding school for children of nomadic pastoralists constructed in this community highlights how relationships are dependent on broader influences and other sets of relationships. This interconnected framework presents change as highly varied, requiring an expanded vocabulary of orders and kinds of change to reflect the complex and dynamic realities of nomadic pastoralism in eastern Tibet.
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- 1.
This accords with Dwyer and Minnegal’s (2010) definition of adaptation.
- 2.
Moreover, this last point highlights wealth inequalities and suggests they are inevitable in pastoralist systems.
- 3.
In some places of Amdo , as documented by Yeh (2003), conflicts have arisen because the demarcation by fences has fixed what had been less than clear borders in terms of traditional tenure/territoriality.
- 4.
In Inner Mongolia , houses should be no less than 50 m2.
- 5.
Presumably, some hereditary leaders did step into these administrative roles.
- 6.
Pollution and sin are not the same and their distinction reveals the difference in understandings of negative action based on a folk cosmology and a Buddhist framework.
- 7.
Another example of creative adaptation is Makley’s presentation (2013) of a Lurol festival in a farming village in Rebgong County, Qinghai Province , which examines how the village–deity relationship emerged in the nineteenth century as a result of intensifying competition over land rights. In this sense, creative adaptations have historical precedent in a diachronic structure of ongoing changes.
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Tan, G.G. (2018). Contemporary Adaptations and Transformations. In: Pastures of Change. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76553-2_6
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