"Going for income" in village tibet: A longitudinal analysis of change and adaptation, 1997-2007

Asian Survey

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 514-534

  Goldstein, Melvyn C ^a   Childs, Geoff ^b   Wangdui, Puchung ^c  

^a CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c Tibet Institute of Medical Sciences   (China)

Author keywords

China; Migrant labor; Modernization; Rural change; Tibet

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS; INCOME; MIGRANT WORKER; MODERNIZATION; RURAL DEVELOPMENT; RURAL ECONOMY; VILLAGE;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; XIZANG;

EID: 48949116569     PISSN: 00044687     EISSN: 1533838X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/as.2008.48.3.514     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. China Daily, Beijing, , March 22, 2004.
2. In our research area, these include subsidies for a range of micro projects such as building new houses, starting chicken and sheep fattening businesses, and building greenhouses. These will be examined in a separate paper.
3. In this paper, we use the 2007 conversion rate for the yuan into U.S. dollars (7.6 yuan = 1 US$).
4. Xinhua News Agency, "Tibet's Economic Growth in 2006 Breaks Record," December 26, 2006.
5. "China's Western Development Strategy: Infrastructure Inappropriate to Tibetan Needs," Tibetan Bulletin Online 8:1 (January-February 2004), p. 1, .
6. For a detailed look at the issue of underdevelopment in Tibet, see also Wang Xiaoqiang and Bai Nanfeng, The Poverty of Plenty (N. Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1991)
7. and more recently, the work of Andrew Martin Fisher, State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet: Challenges of Recent Growth (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2005).
8. National Public Radio, All Things Considered, September 20, 2006.
9. Melvyn C. Goldstein, "Change and Continuity in Nomadic Pastoralism on the Western Tibetan Plateau," Nomadic Peoples 28:1 (1991), pp. 105-23
10. Melvyn C. Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall, "The Impact of China's Reform Policy on the Nomads of Western Tibet," Asian Survey 29:6 (June 1989), pp. 619-41
11. Melvyn C. Goldstein, "Change, Conflict and Continuity among a Community of Nomadic Pastoralists in Western Tibet, 1950-1990," in Resistance and Reform in Tibet, eds. R. Barnett and S. Akinar (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1994).
12. Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, Cynthia M. Beall, and Phuntsog Tsering, "Fertility and Family Planning in Rural Tibet," China Journal 47 (January 2002), pp. 19-40
13. and Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, Cynthia M. Beall, and Phuntsog Tsering, "Development and Change in Rural Tibet: Problems and Adaptations," Asian Survey 43:5 (September/October 2003), pp. 758-79.
14. This is analogous to the phenomenon of the "floating population" (Chinese: liudong renkou) or "farmer workers" (Chinese: nongmin gong) in the rest of China.
15. A few inconsistencies in the original data were rechecked on a field visit in 2000 and corrected in the data set.
16. Panam County was the site of a large European Union project from 1998 to 2005, but none of its programs impacted these two villages. Within Shigatse Prefecture, Panam ranked sixth of 18 counties in 2006 in per capita income.
17. A mu is a unit of land measurement used in China equivalent to 0.067 hectares.
18. The inflation conversion figures were obtained in a personal communication from Andrew Martin Fisher, 2007.
19. Goldstein, Jiao, Beall, and Tsering, "Development and Change in Rural Tibet."
20. This paradigm does not apply to the pastoral nomadic segment of rural Tibet, which will be discussed in a separate paper.
21. The widespread knowledge and easy availability of contraception, particularly the Pill, which can be obtained discreetly over-the-counter, has helped facilitate this.
22. Some migrant workers, in addition, used a small part of their wages to buy and bring home foodstuffs like barley and flour, but we have not quantified this.
23. Authors' interview, Shigatse Prefecture, TAR, November 2006.
24. The total fertility rate is a standardized measure of the average number of children that would be born to each woman in a population if age-specific fertility rates remain constant over time. It is used widely in demography to assess current levels of childbearing and to compare fertility across space and time.
25. Geoff Childs, Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, and Cynthia M. Beall, "Tibetan Fertility Transitions in China and South Asia," Population and Development Review 31:2 (2005), pp. 337-49.
26. Although current religious policy allows Tibetans to practice religion as they wish as individuals, there are still government limitations on the size and organization of monasteries and nunneries as well as on public displays of photos of the Dalai Lama.