Taming the Khampas

The Republican Construction of Eastern Tibet

Bibliographic Data

ID6008089
AuthorsYudru Tsomu (Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, USA, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume39
Issue3
Pages319-344
Publication date2013-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern China (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0097700412464127
OpenAlexW2127145081
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited4

Issues of insecurity and unruliness on the Kham frontier forced the government of Republican China to adopt a policy of integration. They also provided the impetus behind the work of Republican intellectuals to re-imagine a new geo-space in which frontier peoples were inscribed as co-nationals. As represented by Ren Naiqiang, these intellectuals set out to introduce the Kham periphery to policy makers and Chinese citizens such that the contested Kham region appeared an inalienable part of Chinese national space. To legitimate the civilizing projects sponsored by the state, Ren’s narrative strategies gave new meaning to the Kham periphery. By representing the culture and traditions of Kham as a historical remnant of China’s past, it was no longer an alien “other.” By employing the “rhetoric of privation,” together with elements of the “rhetoric of primitivism,” Ren presented the Khampas as stuck at a lower state of development, deprived materially, culturally, and morally

China · Frontier · Government (linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Rhetoric · Sociology · State (computer science · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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