Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)
"Taming Tibetis a highly original book; no one else is capable of doing the kind of research and analysis that Emily T. Yeh has done among Tibetans in the People's Republic of China. She incorporates an unprecedentedly wide regional and comparative scope of experience, even as the book focuses on the Lhasa valley. This is a timely book, and increasingly so with Tibet's rising geopolitical importance and the recent protests and military crackdown."—Charlene E. Makley, Reed College, author ofThe Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China"Emily T. Yeh'sTaming Tibetis one of the best analyses of the contemporary socioeconomics and politics of development of Tibet. The book is based on powerful ethnographic details and strong theoretical analysis and situates the current sociopolitical milieu within the context of the larger issues of the state’s goal of 'development’ and local subjectivity in transforming the Tibetan landscape. Yeh shows that the issue is not a simple dichotomy between state action and local resistance. The ‘gift of development’ produces an asymmetrical relationship between donor and recipient: the Chinese state’s desire to make an imprint on the territory while at the same time creating ‘internal others’ and ‘objects of suspicion.’Taming Tibetshould be required reading for anyone interested in understanding contemporary Tibet and China’s relations with periphery regions."—Tsering Wangdu Shakya, Canada Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia, University of British Columbia, author ofThe Dragon in the Land of Snows