Geoff Childs
Biographic Data
| ID | 86703 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Geoff Childs |
| GIVEN NAMES | Geoff |
| FAMILY NAME | Childs |
| SIGNATURE | CHILDS G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5910-0298 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Diverging migration patterns in Nepal: Demographic analysis and local reflections on social change
Do Not Even Think about Giving Me Less Chang: Notes on Fermented and Distilled Beverages in Tibetan Societies
In the Himalayas every household has a still. Fermented and distilled beverages are integral to community rituals and gatherings, and play a central role in economies of labor exchange and systems of local taxation that go back centuries. In this paper we outline the history of these practices across Tibetan cultural areas to contextualize our ethnographic work learning the process of brewing and distilling from a local matriarch in Nubri, Nepal.…
Resistance to Marriage, Family Responsibilities, and Mobility: A Turbulent Life Story from Kyidrong
Tsering, the eldest of three daughters in a sonless household, was designated to perpetuate the family by marrying a matrilocally resident husband. She did not like the chosen man and thus decided, against her family's wishes, to remain single. Tsering was subsequently caught up in the destruction of Tibet's religious institutions and social order during the Cultural Revolution. As border dwellers, her family escaped to Nepal when persecution bec…
Repeatability of adaptive traits among ethnic Tibetan highlanders
OBJECTIVES: Connecting traits to biological pathways and genes relies on stable observations. Researchers typically determine traits once, expecting careful study protocols to yield measurements free of noise. This report examines that expectation with test-retest repeatability analyses for traits used regularly in research on adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia, often in settings without climate control. METHODS: Two hundred ninety-one ethnic Ti…
A Tibetan Porter's View of the 1960 Chinese Everest Expedition
not needed
The Tibetan stem family in historical perspective
Despite decades of scholarly interest in the Tibetan marital practice of fraternal polyandry, very little is known about how the Tibetan family system operated in historical contexts. This study, based on a 1958 household register from Kyirong, a former district in Tibet, reconstructs nuances of family dynamics through the aid of interviews with people who were listed in the document. Kyirong’s family system is shown to be very flexible. Although…
This Is the End: Earthquake Narratives and Buddhist Prophesies of Decline
This Is the End' presents findings from research in which the authors asked survivors of Nepal's 2015 earthquakes to describe what they know about earthquakes based on their lifelong cultural and environmental experiences, how they responded to the devastating events, and how they view these earthquakes and their aftermath in terms of cause and consequence. The research settings of Tsum, Nubri, Manang, and Mustang were in the midst of rapid socio…
Trekking and toddlers: Towards a biocultural analysis of growth among infants and young children in a rural region of the Himalayas
OBJECTIVES: Rapid socioeconomic change, associated with development and a growing tourism industry is occurring across the Himalayas. The health impact of this rapid economic development is poorly understood, especially for infants and young children. This study investigated the associations between village level economic differences as indexed by economic development and tourism engagement on infant and young child growth and health in a populat…
When women work: Endocrine reactivity in women during everyday physical activity at high altitude
OBJECTIVES: This study explores the acute endocrine reactivity of testosterone and cortisol in women engaging in everyday physical activity in a high altitude environment. METHODS: Data were collected from 35 women living in the Himalayas, with women recruited from both high (>10 000 ft.) and low altitude villages (<10 000 ft.). Saliva samples were collected at 3 time points (pre-activity, 30 and 60 minutes) and women wore the wGT3X-BT Actigraph …
Narrating Disaster through Participatory Research: Perspectives from Post-Earthquake Nepal
This essay describes Narrating Disaster, a collaborative research project that the authors designed in response to Nepal's 2015 earthquakes in order to document survivors' nuanced and diverse experiences of living through a natural disaster. The time-sensitive research conducted in four highland valleys of Nepal (Mustang, Manang, Nubri, and Tsum) in a chaotic, post-catastrophe environment required the development of multi-layered participatory el…
Closing the Womb Door: Contraception Use and Fertility Transition Among Culturally Tibetan Women in Highland Nepal
Ecological pressures and milk metabolic hormones of ethnic Tibetans living at different altitudes
Milk leptin and adiponectin were not associated with infant growth in the rural Nubri sample, but were both inversely associated with infant WAZ in the Kathmandu sample. It appears that, in ecologically stressful environments, associations between milk hormones and growth during infancy may not be detectable in cross-sectional studies
Milk at altitude: Human milk macronutrient composition in a high‐altitude adapted population of tibetans
OBJECTIVE: The physiological challenges of high altitude have led to population-specific patterns of adaptation. These include alterations to child growth and reproduction, including lactation. However, while breastfeeding has been investigated, nothing is known about milk composition in high altitude adapted populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Here, we investigate milk macronutrient composition, volume, and energy in a sample of 82 Tibetans livi…
Depopulating the Himalayan Highlands: Education and Outmigration From Ethnically Tibetan Communities of Nepal
Communities that have thrived for centuries in Nepal's rugged mountain environments are facing rapid population declines caused by the outmigration of youths, both males and females in nearly equal numbers, who are sent by parents to distant boarding schools and monasteries for secular and religious education. This paper documents the magnitude of outmigration, migration destinations, migration's impact on the age–sex composition of sending commu…
Externally-Resident Daughters, Social Capital, and Support for the Elderly in Rural Tibet
Dynamics of Indigenous Demographic Fluctuations: Lessons from Sixteenth-Century Cusco, Peru
Reconstruction of the local impacts of imperial expansion is often hindered by insufficiently detailed indigenous demographic data. In the case of Spanish expansion in the Americas, native population declines are widely observed, but underlying dynamics are still incompletely understood. This paper uses a 1569 survey of more than 800 nontributary indigenous households in the Yucay Valley (highland Peru) to investigate demographic changes occurrin…
Beijing's "People First" Development Initiative for the Tibet Autonomous Region's Rural Sector—a Case Study From the Shigatse Area
Demographic Modeling of a Predator-Prey System and Its implication for the Gombe Population of Procolobus rufomitratus tephrosceles
Going for Income” in Village Tibet: A Longitudinal Analysis of Change and Adaptation, 1997–2007
Rural Tibet is in the throes of a major paradigm shift from a predominately subsistence agricultural economy to a new mixed economy in which non-farm income plays a dominant role. This paper examines this change, comparing longitudinal data collected through direct fieldwork in rural Tibet in 1997–98 and 2006–07
Reproducing Identity: Using Images to Promote Pronatalism and Sexual Endogamy among Tibetan Exiles in South Asia
In this paper the authors analyze images from publications, produced by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile during the 1990s, that were used to educate Tibetan exiles living in India about health issues. The purpose is to show how the images promote pronatalism and ethnic endogamy–objectives that Tibetan exiles view as essential steps toward stemming a perceived threat, perpetrated by China, to their existence as a distinct ethnic group. The authors …
Tibetan Fertility Transitions in China and South Asia
The own-children method, an indirect technique, is used to estimate fertility rates for two populations of Tibetans during the 1980s and 1990s: a sample of rural villages in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and exiles living in India and Nepal. The analysis provides evidence that these two populations underwent remarkably similar fertility transitions in both timing and magnitude. In both cases total fertility rates declined from over six bir…
Tibetan Diary: From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal
In this rich and deeply personal account of life in the highlands of Nepal, Geoff Childs chronicles the daily existence of a range of people, from venerated lamas to humble householders. Offering insights into the complex dynamics of the ethnically Tibetan enclave of Nubri, Childs provides a vivid and compelling portrait of the ebb and flow of life and death, of communal harmony and discord, and of personal conflicts and social resolutions. Part …
Demographic Analysis of Small Populations Using the Own-Children Method
This article discusses the own-childrenmethod, a reverse-survival techniquedevised by demographers to estimate Total Fertility Rates in the absence of detailed data on reproduction. The method is useful for researchers such as anthropologists since the basic data requirements can be met through a household survey. It can help researchers answer key questions concerning population processes within well-delineated social, cultural, economic, and po…
Polyandry and population growth in a historical Tibetan society
Despite considerable speculation virtually nothing is known about the empirical relationship between traditional Tibetan administrative systems, household processes, and demographic trends in historical Tibetan populations because indigenous data sources have never been systematically analyzed. This article examines a 1958 tax register from Kyirong, formerly a district-level political division in southern Tibet, and demonstrates the significance …
Old-age security, religious celibacy, and aggregate fertility in a Tibetan population
Tibetan Diary: From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal
In this rich and deeply personal account of life in the highlands of Nepal, Geoff Childs chronicles the daily existence of a range of people, from venerated lamas to humble householders. Offering insights into the complex dynamics of the ethnically Tibetan enclave of Nubri, Childs provides a vivid and compelling portrait of the ebb and flow of life and death, of communal harmony and discord, and of personal conflicts and social resolutions. Part …
Milk at altitude: Human milk macronutrient composition in a high‐altitude adapted population of tibetans
OBJECTIVE: The physiological challenges of high altitude have led to population-specific patterns of adaptation. These include alterations to child growth and reproduction, including lactation. However, while breastfeeding has been investigated, nothing is known about milk composition in high altitude adapted populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Here, we investigate milk macronutrient composition, volume, and energy in a sample of 82 Tibetans livi…
Going for Income” in Village Tibet: A Longitudinal Analysis of Change and Adaptation, 1997–2007
Rural Tibet is in the throes of a major paradigm shift from a predominately subsistence agricultural economy to a new mixed economy in which non-farm income plays a dominant role. This paper examines this change, comparing longitudinal data collected through direct fieldwork in rural Tibet in 1997–98 and 2006–07
Tibetan Fertility Transitions in China and South Asia
The own-children method, an indirect technique, is used to estimate fertility rates for two populations of Tibetans during the 1980s and 1990s: a sample of rural villages in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and exiles living in India and Nepal. The analysis provides evidence that these two populations underwent remarkably similar fertility transitions in both timing and magnitude. In both cases total fertility rates declined from over six bir…
Beijing's "People First" Development Initiative for the Tibet Autonomous Region's Rural Sector—a Case Study From the Shigatse Area
Demographic Dimensions of an Intervillage Land Dispute in Nubri, Nepal
The demographic basis for a land dispute between two Tibetan villages in Nubri, Nepal, is examined in relation to family systems. Despite close proximity and sociocultural ties, the villages experience divergent population growth rates resulting from different frequencies of marriage. In one, old-age security concerns induce parents to retain female labor within the household by designating daughters to be nuns, a practice that has the unintended…
Dynamics of Indigenous Demographic Fluctuations: Lessons from Sixteenth-Century Cusco, Peru
Reconstruction of the local impacts of imperial expansion is often hindered by insufficiently detailed indigenous demographic data. In the case of Spanish expansion in the Americas, native population declines are widely observed, but underlying dynamics are still incompletely understood. This paper uses a 1569 survey of more than 800 nontributary indigenous households in the Yucay Valley (highland Peru) to investigate demographic changes occurrin…
Reproducing Identity: Using Images to Promote Pronatalism and Sexual Endogamy among Tibetan Exiles in South Asia
In this paper the authors analyze images from publications, produced by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile during the 1990s, that were used to educate Tibetan exiles living in India about health issues. The purpose is to show how the images promote pronatalism and ethnic endogamy–objectives that Tibetan exiles view as essential steps toward stemming a perceived threat, perpetrated by China, to their existence as a distinct ethnic group. The authors …
Externally-Resident Daughters, Social Capital, and Support for the Elderly in Rural Tibet
Demographic Analysis of Small Populations Using the Own-Children Method
This article discusses the own-childrenmethod, a reverse-survival techniquedevised by demographers to estimate Total Fertility Rates in the absence of detailed data on reproduction. The method is useful for researchers such as anthropologists since the basic data requirements can be met through a household survey. It can help researchers answer key questions concerning population processes within well-delineated social, cultural, economic, and po…
Narrating Disaster through Participatory Research: Perspectives from Post-Earthquake Nepal
This essay describes Narrating Disaster, a collaborative research project that the authors designed in response to Nepal's 2015 earthquakes in order to document survivors' nuanced and diverse experiences of living through a natural disaster. The time-sensitive research conducted in four highland valleys of Nepal (Mustang, Manang, Nubri, and Tsum) in a chaotic, post-catastrophe environment required the development of multi-layered participatory el…
This Is the End: Earthquake Narratives and Buddhist Prophesies of Decline
This Is the End' presents findings from research in which the authors asked survivors of Nepal's 2015 earthquakes to describe what they know about earthquakes based on their lifelong cultural and environmental experiences, how they responded to the devastating events, and how they view these earthquakes and their aftermath in terms of cause and consequence. The research settings of Tsum, Nubri, Manang, and Mustang were in the midst of rapid socio…
Old-age security, religious celibacy, and aggregate fertility in a Tibetan population
Demographic Modeling of a Predator-Prey System and Its implication for the Gombe Population of Procolobus rufomitratus tephrosceles
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity. Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. + 207 pp., illustrations, notes, bibliography, list of contributors, index
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity. Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. + 207 pp., illustrations, notes, bibliography, list of contributors, index
Old-age security, religious celibacy, and aggregate fertility in a Tibetan population
Demographic Dimensions of an Intervillage Land Dispute in Nubri, Nepal
The demographic basis for a land dispute between two Tibetan villages in Nubri, Nepal, is examined in relation to family systems. Despite close proximity and sociocultural ties, the villages experience divergent population growth rates resulting from different frequencies of marriage. In one, old-age security concerns induce parents to retain female labor within the household by designating daughters to be nuns, a practice that has the unintended…
Polyandry and population growth in a historical Tibetan society
Despite considerable speculation virtually nothing is known about the empirical relationship between traditional Tibetan administrative systems, household processes, and demographic trends in historical Tibetan populations because indigenous data sources have never been systematically analyzed. This article examines a 1958 tax register from Kyirong, formerly a district-level political division in southern Tibet, and demonstrates the significance …
Tibetan Diary: From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal
In this rich and deeply personal account of life in the highlands of Nepal, Geoff Childs chronicles the daily existence of a range of people, from venerated lamas to humble householders. Offering insights into the complex dynamics of the ethnically Tibetan enclave of Nubri, Childs provides a vivid and compelling portrait of the ebb and flow of life and death, of communal harmony and discord, and of personal conflicts and social resolutions. Part …
Demographic Analysis of Small Populations Using the Own-Children Method
This article discusses the own-childrenmethod, a reverse-survival techniquedevised by demographers to estimate Total Fertility Rates in the absence of detailed data on reproduction. The method is useful for researchers such as anthropologists since the basic data requirements can be met through a household survey. It can help researchers answer key questions concerning population processes within well-delineated social, cultural, economic, and po…
Tibetan Fertility Transitions in China and South Asia
The own-children method, an indirect technique, is used to estimate fertility rates for two populations of Tibetans during the 1980s and 1990s: a sample of rural villages in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and exiles living in India and Nepal. The analysis provides evidence that these two populations underwent remarkably similar fertility transitions in both timing and magnitude. In both cases total fertility rates declined from over six bir…
Reproducing Identity: Using Images to Promote Pronatalism and Sexual Endogamy among Tibetan Exiles in South Asia
In this paper the authors analyze images from publications, produced by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile during the 1990s, that were used to educate Tibetan exiles living in India about health issues. The purpose is to show how the images promote pronatalism and ethnic endogamy–objectives that Tibetan exiles view as essential steps toward stemming a perceived threat, perpetrated by China, to their existence as a distinct ethnic group. The authors …
Demographic Modeling of a Predator-Prey System and Its implication for the Gombe Population of Procolobus rufomitratus tephrosceles
Going for Income” in Village Tibet: A Longitudinal Analysis of Change and Adaptation, 1997–2007
Rural Tibet is in the throes of a major paradigm shift from a predominately subsistence agricultural economy to a new mixed economy in which non-farm income plays a dominant role. This paper examines this change, comparing longitudinal data collected through direct fieldwork in rural Tibet in 1997–98 and 2006–07
Beijing's "People First" Development Initiative for the Tibet Autonomous Region's Rural Sector—a Case Study From the Shigatse Area
Externally-Resident Daughters, Social Capital, and Support for the Elderly in Rural Tibet
Dynamics of Indigenous Demographic Fluctuations: Lessons from Sixteenth-Century Cusco, Peru
Reconstruction of the local impacts of imperial expansion is often hindered by insufficiently detailed indigenous demographic data. In the case of Spanish expansion in the Americas, native population declines are widely observed, but underlying dynamics are still incompletely understood. This paper uses a 1569 survey of more than 800 nontributary indigenous households in the Yucay Valley (highland Peru) to investigate demographic changes occurrin…
Depopulating the Himalayan Highlands: Education and Outmigration From Ethnically Tibetan Communities of Nepal
Communities that have thrived for centuries in Nepal's rugged mountain environments are facing rapid population declines caused by the outmigration of youths, both males and females in nearly equal numbers, who are sent by parents to distant boarding schools and monasteries for secular and religious education. This paper documents the magnitude of outmigration, migration destinations, migration's impact on the age–sex composition of sending commu…
Closing the Womb Door: Contraception Use and Fertility Transition Among Culturally Tibetan Women in Highland Nepal
Ecological pressures and milk metabolic hormones of ethnic Tibetans living at different altitudes
Milk leptin and adiponectin were not associated with infant growth in the rural Nubri sample, but were both inversely associated with infant WAZ in the Kathmandu sample. It appears that, in ecologically stressful environments, associations between milk hormones and growth during infancy may not be detectable in cross-sectional studies
Milk at altitude: Human milk macronutrient composition in a high‐altitude adapted population of tibetans
OBJECTIVE: The physiological challenges of high altitude have led to population-specific patterns of adaptation. These include alterations to child growth and reproduction, including lactation. However, while breastfeeding has been investigated, nothing is known about milk composition in high altitude adapted populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Here, we investigate milk macronutrient composition, volume, and energy in a sample of 82 Tibetans livi…
Narrating Disaster through Participatory Research: Perspectives from Post-Earthquake Nepal
This essay describes Narrating Disaster, a collaborative research project that the authors designed in response to Nepal's 2015 earthquakes in order to document survivors' nuanced and diverse experiences of living through a natural disaster. The time-sensitive research conducted in four highland valleys of Nepal (Mustang, Manang, Nubri, and Tsum) in a chaotic, post-catastrophe environment required the development of multi-layered participatory el…
When women work: Endocrine reactivity in women during everyday physical activity at high altitude
OBJECTIVES: This study explores the acute endocrine reactivity of testosterone and cortisol in women engaging in everyday physical activity in a high altitude environment. METHODS: Data were collected from 35 women living in the Himalayas, with women recruited from both high (>10 000 ft.) and low altitude villages (<10 000 ft.). Saliva samples were collected at 3 time points (pre-activity, 30 and 60 minutes) and women wore the wGT3X-BT Actigraph …
Trekking and toddlers: Towards a biocultural analysis of growth among infants and young children in a rural region of the Himalayas
OBJECTIVES: Rapid socioeconomic change, associated with development and a growing tourism industry is occurring across the Himalayas. The health impact of this rapid economic development is poorly understood, especially for infants and young children. This study investigated the associations between village level economic differences as indexed by economic development and tourism engagement on infant and young child growth and health in a populat…
The Tibetan stem family in historical perspective
Despite decades of scholarly interest in the Tibetan marital practice of fraternal polyandry, very little is known about how the Tibetan family system operated in historical contexts. This study, based on a 1958 household register from Kyirong, a former district in Tibet, reconstructs nuances of family dynamics through the aid of interviews with people who were listed in the document. Kyirong’s family system is shown to be very flexible. Although…
This Is the End: Earthquake Narratives and Buddhist Prophesies of Decline
This Is the End' presents findings from research in which the authors asked survivors of Nepal's 2015 earthquakes to describe what they know about earthquakes based on their lifelong cultural and environmental experiences, how they responded to the devastating events, and how they view these earthquakes and their aftermath in terms of cause and consequence. The research settings of Tsum, Nubri, Manang, and Mustang were in the midst of rapid socio…
Repeatability of adaptive traits among ethnic Tibetan highlanders
OBJECTIVES: Connecting traits to biological pathways and genes relies on stable observations. Researchers typically determine traits once, expecting careful study protocols to yield measurements free of noise. This report examines that expectation with test-retest repeatability analyses for traits used regularly in research on adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia, often in settings without climate control. METHODS: Two hundred ninety-one ethnic Ti…
A Tibetan Porter's View of the 1960 Chinese Everest Expedition
not needed
Resistance to Marriage, Family Responsibilities, and Mobility: A Turbulent Life Story from Kyidrong
Tsering, the eldest of three daughters in a sonless household, was designated to perpetuate the family by marrying a matrilocally resident husband. She did not like the chosen man and thus decided, against her family's wishes, to remain single. Tsering was subsequently caught up in the destruction of Tibet's religious institutions and social order during the Cultural Revolution. As border dwellers, her family escaped to Nepal when persecution bec…
Sociology (19 works) · Demography (15 works) · Geography (15 works) · Population (12 works) · Fertility (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Demography (9 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Biology (7 works)