Seminar – 23 April – Kerry Brown

April 11th, 2019 by anna.c
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ALL WELCOME

Tuesday 23 April 2019

4.30–6.00 Mond Building Seminar Room

Kerry Brown

Lau China Institute, Kings College London

China at the Borders: Xi Jinping’s Ambition and the Role of the Margins

Xi Jinping’s era since 2012 has been one of grand narratives, international ambitions, and the emergence in word and act of a global China. And yet the same issues that have troubled the country for decades, involving important border areas around Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, have not disappeared. Management of both Tibet and Xinjiang in particular have involved the implementation of deeply contentious security processes. The Belt and Road Inititiave also ties China’s geopolitics into its domestic situation. This lecture will discuss the way these long standing challenges around autonomous regions figure in the politics of the Xi era, and how they present old, and new, issues for the leadership in Beijing.’

 

Easter Term – Seminar Programme

April 11th, 2019 by anna.c
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Please see below for this term’s programme which begins on Tuesday April 23 2019.

Research Seminars are held in the Mond Building Seminar Room, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RF from 4.30–6.00

EASTER 2019

Lunchtime seminar – 8 March – Dan Smyer-Yü

February 28th, 2019 by anna.c
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Mond Building Seminar Room, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF

Friday 8 March 2019, 12.00–1.00

Dan Smyer-Yü

Centre for Trans-Himalayan Studies, Yunnan-Minzu University

A Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Modernism:  Religious Marketplace, Constellative Networking and Urbanism

As an increasing number of Tibetan lamas reach out to non-Tibetan populations in contemporary China, Tibetan Buddhism is undergoing various transformations especially in urban settings. As its engagement with many aspects of the Chinese society, such as higher education, social morality, philanthropy, environmental conservation, and modern science, the pattern of its transregional and trans-ethnic expansion shows itself as an urban lay Buddhist movement. Based on the author’s ethnographic work, this chapter discusses how the politics, economics, and practices of Tibetan Buddhism are deeply entangled with each other in contemporary Chinese society. Situated in this sociopolitical context, this chapter, by treating Tibetan Buddhism as a world religion, argues that a Sino-Tibetan Buddhist modernism emerges in urban China as a Buddhist urbanism possessing both transcendental orientation and worldly function regarding the Buddhist sense of enlightenment and practical techniques for human worldly wellbeing under the fast changing, precarious conditions of livelihood making in contemporary China. The organizational manifestation of this Sino-Tibetan Buddhist modernism is what the author calls the “constellative networks,” which, sustained by material resources donated from affluent Buddhist individuals and businesses, diffuse the lineage-based Buddhist teachings from Tibetan regions to its receivers in different cities of China.

 

 

Seminar – 5 March – Robert Barnett

February 21st, 2019 by anna.c
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Tuesday 5 March 2019

4.30–6.00 Mond Building Seminar Room

Robert Barnett

Visiting Scholar, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge

Relocating the Masses: Exploring the Linkages Between Environmental Protection, Poverty Relief and Mass Re-Settlement in Tibet

China’s modernization policies in Tibet are constantly evolving and taking on new forms, and as they do so, the rhetoric of justification shifts too. I’m interested in exploring the language used to explain the latest phase in social transformation in Tibet, which now appears to have shifted focus from the much-discussed settlement of nomads to the mass relocation of farming communities. Information about these projects is almost entirely limited to reports in official Chinese media, so that in most cases language is all that outside observers have to go on; even locals may have limited information about the rationales behind these policies. In this presentation I hope to explore possible ways to decrypt that language and what it represents.

Lent Term – Seminar Programme – further amendment

February 12th, 2019 by anna.c
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Please see below for this term’s revised programme – please note there has been a further change to the final seminar of the term.  The speaker, Robert Barnett remains unchanged but the date has been moved back by one week to 5 March 2019.

Research Seminars are held in the Mond Building Seminar Room, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RF from 4.30–6.00

LENT 2019