Gerald Roche
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 92578 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Gerald Roche |
| PRENOMES | Gerald |
| SOBRENOME | Roche |
| ASSINATURA | ROCHE G |
| AFILIAÇÕES | La Trobe University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2410-351X |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 143 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2008 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Securing the right to assimilate
This article focuses broadly on the problem of global language loss, and the underlying political dynamics that drive it. Noting that the United Nations currently promotes a rights-based approach to addressing this problem, I explore why language rights mechanisms are currently weak and fragmented. To do this, I focus on the tensions that exist between language rights and the sovereign rights claimed by states, based on a genealogical analysis of…
Towards a sociolinguistics of deglobalization
This article advocates for a 'sociolinguistics of deglobalization' that focuses on the sociolinguistic impacts of major shifts in the world system that have taken place since 2008 and have become particularly salient amidst the covid pandemic. Drawing on case studies of China, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, we describe the period after 2008 as an emerging post-neoliberal epoch characterized by the intensifying of state power, constrained resis…
The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet
In The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet , Gerald Roche sheds light on a global crisis of linguistic diversity that will see at least half of the world's languages disappear this century. Roche explores the erosion of linguistic diversity through a study of a community on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau in the People's Republic of China. Manegacha is but one of the sixty minority languages in Tibet and is spoken by about 8,000 people who …
The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet
This book sheds light on a global crisis of linguistic diversity that will see at least half of the world's languages disappear this century. The book explores the erosion of linguistic diversity through a study of a community on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau in the People's Republic of China. Manegacha is but one of the sixty minority languages in Tibet and is spoken by about 8,000 people who are otherwise mostly indistinguishable from the Ti…
An interview with Leena Huss
Leena Huss was born in Sweden but grew up in Finland.After studying at the Helsinki School of Economics, where she obtained a Master of Science in Economics, she moved to Sweden and shifted to studies in Finnish and Finno-Ugric Languages at Uppsala University.Raising a (Finnish-Swedish) bilingual family of her own in Sweden inspired her to pursue studies in child bilingualism which in 1991 led to a dissertation called Simultan tvsprkighet i svens…
We need a global language rights movement
Since the late 1980s, academics and activists have been drawing attention to a slow-moving global crisis: the ongoing destruction of global linguistic diversity. Despite this attention, language loss has proceeded unabated, and conservative estimates now suggest that around half the world’s languages will no longer be in use by the end of this century. In this provocation, I argue that only a global mass movement has the capacity to change the co…
Conquered Primitives Have No Written Language
Indigenous people in settler colonies such as Australia, the United States, and Canada are currently engaged in a range of projects to revitalize their languages: to reclaim and restore them in the wake of colonial destruction. Such language revitalization is frequently met with fierce backlash. This article examines the relationship between language revitalization backlash and genocide. I argue that language revitalization is part of broader eff…
The politics of fear and the suppression of Indigenous language activism in Asia
This article discusses how state suppression of human rights activism and restrictions on civil society are likely to impact the implementation of the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032, hereafter “the Decade”). We focus on China, India, and Indonesia, the three most populous and linguistically diverse countries in Asia. Drawing on a range of reports from human rights organizations and materials from academic …
State Racism and Surveillance in Xinjiang (People's Republic of China)
Racism, as a truly global phenomenon, requires a comparative approach that can account for its diverse forms and their commonalities. Despite the prevalence and relevance of racism throughout Asia, much scholarship on the topic remains parochially focussed on the north Atlantic world. This article aims to help address this issue in two ways. First, it discusses surveillance and racialisation practices in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in C…
Urbanizing Minority Minzu in the PRC
This article provides a synthesis and critical review of the literature on urban minority minzu 民族 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The vast majority of the Chinese-language literature on minorities in cities adopts a state-centric view through the lens of stability and integration, focusing on how minorities can adapt to urban life for the purpose of creating a “harmonized” society. This statist narrative not only denies the subjectivity…
The Necropolitics of Language Oppression
This article explores how language oppression-coerced language loss-contributes to physical death. The context for this investigation is the ongoing crisis of global linguistic diversity, which sees approximately half the world's languages facing language oppression. It is also a crisis of bodies and lives. This article proposes the necropolitics of language oppression as a decolonial anthropological approach for theorizing and confronting this g…
Global civil society must promote linguistic rights for China’s Indigenous peoples
No description supplied
The bus doesn’t stop for us”
This paper draws on song texts from two corpora of Syuba, a Southern Tibetic language of Nepal. The songs have rich, interlinking themes relevant to language, identity and the situated context of Syuba people. We draw upon the texts to illustrate themes of identity, relationship, language, development and space. This analysis is grounded in an interdisciplinary approach bringing together linguistic, anthropological and historical perspectives. Th…
Lexical necropolitics
China’s Second-generation Ethnic Policies Are Already Here
In early June this year, officials in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) released a new policy that would drastically undermine the use of the Mongolian language in schools, effectively replacing it as a language of instruction with Chinese (Baioud 2020).In response to this unwelcome imposition, petitions began circulating, calling for the repeal of the policy and eventually leading to street demonstrations, school boycotts, and other pr…
The Epidemiology of Sinophobia
Editorial essay
International relations and the Himalaya
This article examines international relations (IR)'s approach to the Himalaya. We argue that the possibility of violent conflict over contested international borders is not the region's primary international challenge. Rather, slow violence inflicted by state-building and militarisation, intimately connected to geopolitical tensions, threaten the region's ecologies, cultures and languages. The Himalaya is home to three biodiversity hotspots and a…
Tibetan Language Rights and Civil Society in the People’s Republic of China
One of the hallmarks of the Xi Jinping era in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been a sustained attack on civil society, coupled with discursive shifts that attempt to undermine the universality of human rights. This article examines Tibetan language activism in this context, looking at challenges both for and of rights. I argue that the challenge for rights – namely, the state’s increasing hostility – is offset somewhat by the slow growt…
Urbanizing Tibet
This article examines the urbanization of Tibet. We argue that urbanization is a new technique of colonial governance for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and is characterized by what Yen Le Espiritu calls ‘differential inclusion’: a form of forcible incorporation resulting in particular spaces and populations being ‘deemed integral to the nation ... only or precisely because of their designated subordina…
China Dreams
The year 2019 marked a number of significant anniversaries for the People's Republic of China (PRC), each representing different 'Chinese dreams'. There was the centennial of the May Fourth Movement - a dream of patriotism and cultural renewal. The PRC celebrated its seventieth anniversary - a dream of revolution and national strength. It was also thirty years since the
Abandoning Endangered Languages
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: 'Abandoning endangered languages: ethical loneliness, language oppression, and social justice', American Anthropologist 122.1 (2020): 164-69 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13372. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions
Articulating language oppression
Roche’s article discusses ‘language oppression’ as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of ‘race’, nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the ‘enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion’. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language d…
Does Ideological Clarification Help Language Maintenance? Exploring the Revitalization Paradox through the Case of Manegacha, a Tibetan Minority Language
Studies of language maintenance and revitalization have often demonstrated an apparent paradox: even when people have positive attitudes towards a language, they may not engage in behaviors that support it. It has been suggested that contradictory ideas hinder language maintenance and revitalization, so that ideological clarification is required before beginning such programs. I question these claims through a case study of Manegacha, a minoritiz…
Indigenous Efflorescence
Indigenous efflorescence refers to the surprising economic prosperity, demographic increase and cultural renaissance currently found amongst many Indigenous communities around the world. This book moves beyond a more familiar focus on ‘revitalisation’ to situate these developments within their broader political and economic contexts. The materials in this volume also examine
Agency in the peripheries of language revitalisation
Articulating language oppression
Roche’s article discusses ‘language oppression’ as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of ‘race’, nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the ‘enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion’. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language d…
Tibet's Minority Languages
Asia is the world's most linguistically diverse continent and its diversity largely conforms to established global patterns that correlate linguistic diversity with biodiversity, latitude, and topography. However, one Asian region stands out as an anomaly in these patterns-Tibet, which is often portrayed as linguistically homogenous. A growing body of research now suggests that Tibet is linguistically diverse. In this article, we examine this lit…
Lexical necropolitics
Tibetan Language Rights and Civil Society in the People’s Republic of China
One of the hallmarks of the Xi Jinping era in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been a sustained attack on civil society, coupled with discursive shifts that attempt to undermine the universality of human rights. This article examines Tibetan language activism in this context, looking at challenges both for and of rights. I argue that the challenge for rights – namely, the state’s increasing hostility – is offset somewhat by the slow growt…
The Necropolitics of Language Oppression
This article explores how language oppression-coerced language loss-contributes to physical death. The context for this investigation is the ongoing crisis of global linguistic diversity, which sees approximately half the world's languages facing language oppression. It is also a crisis of bodies and lives. This article proposes the necropolitics of language oppression as a decolonial anthropological approach for theorizing and confronting this g…
Urbanizing Tibet
This article examines the urbanization of Tibet. We argue that urbanization is a new technique of colonial governance for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and is characterized by what Yen Le Espiritu calls ‘differential inclusion’: a form of forcible incorporation resulting in particular spaces and populations being ‘deemed integral to the nation ... only or precisely because of their designated subordina…
Learning to be Tibetan
International relations and the Himalaya
This article examines international relations (IR)'s approach to the Himalaya. We argue that the possibility of violent conflict over contested international borders is not the region's primary international challenge. Rather, slow violence inflicted by state-building and militarisation, intimately connected to geopolitical tensions, threaten the region's ecologies, cultures and languages. The Himalaya is home to three biodiversity hotspots and a…
Abandoning Endangered Languages
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: 'Abandoning endangered languages: ethical loneliness, language oppression, and social justice', American Anthropologist 122.1 (2020): 164-69 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13372. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions
Introduction
Tibet's linguistic diversity is undergoing drastic transformations in the twenty-first century. In this article, I begin my examination of this issue by outlining the extent of Tibet's linguistic diversity, including not only its numerous Tibetic languages, but also its non-Tibetic minority languages. Using a "language ecology" approach, I examine the mechanisms that have produced and maintained this diversity, as well as the ways this diversity …
Urbanizing Minority Minzu in the PRC
This article provides a synthesis and critical review of the literature on urban minority minzu 民族 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The vast majority of the Chinese-language literature on minorities in cities adopts a state-centric view through the lens of stability and integration, focusing on how minorities can adapt to urban life for the purpose of creating a “harmonized” society. This statist narrative not only denies the subjectivity…
The Tibetanization of Henan’s Mongols
The Sino-Tibetan frontier is typically portrayed as a large, complex, and diverse transitional region between Tibetan and Chinese cultural realms. The concept of Tibetanization is often deployed to classify the ethnically ambiguous 'interstitial' populations of this area. This article critically examines the concept of Tibetanization through a study of the Mongols of Henan County, Qinghai Province, a population repeatedly described as Tibetanized…
Flows and Frontiers
This article investigates cultural dynamics on the northeast Tibetan Plateau with a case study of the Mangghuer people of the Sanchuan (Three Valleys) Region of Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County (Qinghai Province, China). I focus on ‘models of spatialisation’—the ways in which the physical landscape is perceived, conceptualised and made meaningful. In the Mangghuer context, such models basically construe the landscape as being enlivened by flows…
Towards a sociolinguistics of deglobalization
This article advocates for a 'sociolinguistics of deglobalization' that focuses on the sociolinguistic impacts of major shifts in the world system that have taken place since 2008 and have become particularly salient amidst the covid pandemic. Drawing on case studies of China, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, we describe the period after 2008 as an emerging post-neoliberal epoch characterized by the intensifying of state power, constrained resis…
The politics of fear and the suppression of Indigenous language activism in Asia
This article discusses how state suppression of human rights activism and restrictions on civil society are likely to impact the implementation of the United Nations’ International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032, hereafter “the Decade”). We focus on China, India, and Indonesia, the three most populous and linguistically diverse countries in Asia. Drawing on a range of reports from human rights organizations and materials from academic …
Does Ideological Clarification Help Language Maintenance? Exploring the Revitalization Paradox through the Case of Manegacha, a Tibetan Minority Language
Studies of language maintenance and revitalization have often demonstrated an apparent paradox: even when people have positive attitudes towards a language, they may not engage in behaviors that support it. It has been suggested that contradictory ideas hinder language maintenance and revitalization, so that ideological clarification is required before beginning such programs. I question these claims through a case study of Manegacha, a minoritiz…
State Racism and Surveillance in Xinjiang (People's Republic of China)
Racism, as a truly global phenomenon, requires a comparative approach that can account for its diverse forms and their commonalities. Despite the prevalence and relevance of racism throughout Asia, much scholarship on the topic remains parochially focussed on the north Atlantic world. This article aims to help address this issue in two ways. First, it discusses surveillance and racialisation practices in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in C…
The bus doesn’t stop for us”
This paper draws on song texts from two corpora of Syuba, a Southern Tibetic language of Nepal. The songs have rich, interlinking themes relevant to language, identity and the situated context of Syuba people. We draw upon the texts to illustrate themes of identity, relationship, language, development and space. This analysis is grounded in an interdisciplinary approach bringing together linguistic, anthropological and historical perspectives. Th…
Amdo Tibetan Learning Resources. A Review Article
Anthropos , Seite 229 - 232
Disappearing peoples? Indigenous groups and ethnic minorities in south and central Asia
Disappearing peoples? Indigenous groups and ethnic minorities in south and central Asia, by Barbara Brower and Barbara Johnston, Walnut Creek, Left Coast Press, 2007, $29.95, ISBN 978-1598741216 Di
The Monguors of the Kansu-Tibetan Frontier
Flows and Frontiers
This article investigates cultural dynamics on the northeast Tibetan Plateau with a case study of the Mangghuer people of the Sanchuan (Three Valleys) Region of Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County (Qinghai Province, China). I focus on ‘models of spatialisation’—the ways in which the physical landscape is perceived, conceptualised and made meaningful. In the Mangghuer context, such models basically construe the landscape as being enlivened by flows…
The Tibetanization of Henan’s Mongols
The Sino-Tibetan frontier is typically portrayed as a large, complex, and diverse transitional region between Tibetan and Chinese cultural realms. The concept of Tibetanization is often deployed to classify the ethnically ambiguous 'interstitial' populations of this area. This article critically examines the concept of Tibetanization through a study of the Mongols of Henan County, Qinghai Province, a population repeatedly described as Tibetanized…
Pad Yatra
In 2009 the Gyalwang Drukpa, the head of the Drukpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, led some 700 people on a trek through over 500 km of Himalayan terrain. Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey depicts these eve
Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet
Containing ballads of martial heroism, tales of tragic lovers and visions of the nature of the world, Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English is a rich repository of songs collected amongst the Mongghul of the Seven Valleys, on the northeast Tibetan Plateau in western China.
Learning to be Tibetan
Introduction
Tibet's linguistic diversity is undergoing drastic transformations in the twenty-first century. In this article, I begin my examination of this issue by outlining the extent of Tibet's linguistic diversity, including not only its numerous Tibetic languages, but also its non-Tibetic minority languages. Using a "language ecology" approach, I examine the mechanisms that have produced and maintained this diversity, as well as the ways this diversity …
Indigenous Efflorescence
Indigenous efflorescence refers to the surprising economic prosperity, demographic increase and cultural renaissance currently found amongst many Indigenous communities around the world. This book moves beyond a more familiar focus on ‘revitalisation’ to situate these developments within their broader political and economic contexts. The materials in this volume also examine
The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization
Efforts to revitalize languages are situated within the wider context of efforts to maintain and revitalize intangible expressions of culture more broadly, from music to dance to ritual and ceremonial traditions. In some ways, language revitalization efforts are considerably further advanced in both theory and practice than those relating to other cultural expressions. Taking music as a example, this chapter draws together the scholarly field of …
Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization
Tibet's Minority Languages
Asia is the world's most linguistically diverse continent and its diversity largely conforms to established global patterns that correlate linguistic diversity with biodiversity, latitude, and topography. However, one Asian region stands out as an anomaly in these patterns-Tibet, which is often portrayed as linguistically homogenous. A growing body of research now suggests that Tibet is linguistically diverse. In this article, we examine this lit…
Articulating language oppression
Roche’s article discusses ‘language oppression’ as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of ‘race’, nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the ‘enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion’. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language d…
Does Ideological Clarification Help Language Maintenance? Exploring the Revitalization Paradox through the Case of Manegacha, a Tibetan Minority Language
Studies of language maintenance and revitalization have often demonstrated an apparent paradox: even when people have positive attitudes towards a language, they may not engage in behaviors that support it. It has been suggested that contradictory ideas hinder language maintenance and revitalization, so that ideological clarification is required before beginning such programs. I question these claims through a case study of Manegacha, a minoritiz…
China’s Second-generation Ethnic Policies Are Already Here
In early June this year, officials in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) released a new policy that would drastically undermine the use of the Mongolian language in schools, effectively replacing it as a language of instruction with Chinese (Baioud 2020).In response to this unwelcome imposition, petitions began circulating, calling for the repeal of the policy and eventually leading to street demonstrations, school boycotts, and other pr…
The Epidemiology of Sinophobia
Editorial essay
International relations and the Himalaya
This article examines international relations (IR)'s approach to the Himalaya. We argue that the possibility of violent conflict over contested international borders is not the region's primary international challenge. Rather, slow violence inflicted by state-building and militarisation, intimately connected to geopolitical tensions, threaten the region's ecologies, cultures and languages. The Himalaya is home to three biodiversity hotspots and a…
Tibetan Language Rights and Civil Society in the People’s Republic of China
One of the hallmarks of the Xi Jinping era in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been a sustained attack on civil society, coupled with discursive shifts that attempt to undermine the universality of human rights. This article examines Tibetan language activism in this context, looking at challenges both for and of rights. I argue that the challenge for rights – namely, the state’s increasing hostility – is offset somewhat by the slow growt…
Urbanizing Tibet
This article examines the urbanization of Tibet. We argue that urbanization is a new technique of colonial governance for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and is characterized by what Yen Le Espiritu calls ‘differential inclusion’: a form of forcible incorporation resulting in particular spaces and populations being ‘deemed integral to the nation ... only or precisely because of their designated subordina…
China Dreams
The year 2019 marked a number of significant anniversaries for the People's Republic of China (PRC), each representing different 'Chinese dreams'. There was the centennial of the May Fourth Movement - a dream of patriotism and cultural renewal. The PRC celebrated its seventieth anniversary - a dream of revolution and national strength. It was also thirty years since the
Abandoning Endangered Languages
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: 'Abandoning endangered languages: ethical loneliness, language oppression, and social justice', American Anthropologist 122.1 (2020): 164-69 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13372. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions
Global civil society must promote linguistic rights for China’s Indigenous peoples
No description supplied
The bus doesn’t stop for us”
This paper draws on song texts from two corpora of Syuba, a Southern Tibetic language of Nepal. The songs have rich, interlinking themes relevant to language, identity and the situated context of Syuba people. We draw upon the texts to illustrate themes of identity, relationship, language, development and space. This analysis is grounded in an interdisciplinary approach bringing together linguistic, anthropological and historical perspectives. Th…
Lexical necropolitics
Sociology (28 obras) · Political science (25 obras) · Law (21 obras) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (18 obras) · Linguistics (16 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Multilingual Education and Policy (13 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (11 obras)