Between Tibetanization and Tribalization: Towards a New Anthropology of Tibeto-Burman Highlanders in Arunachal Pradesh
Final Report Abstract
• Since the thorough scientific documentation of highland societies throughout the far eastern Himalaya has been virtually at a standstill since the 1940s due to political reasons, the results of this project represent a major breakthrough in production of knowledge about what types of societies live in this remote and little-known mountain zone, and how they are changing in response to exogenous influences. • Our descriptive results now allow for comparison of the sampled populations with other communities in the region, and this has already revealed high degrees of diversity between groups who where previous treated as being more or less uniform. • Our results, especially a large archival and oral history database, also now enable a detailed analysis of modern state formation processes in these highland areas that were completely "stateless" until just 50 years ago. They can demonstrate how the ensuing enclosure movement by India has transformed local lives in complex and often dramatic ways. One major change the data shows is a complete cultural and economic shift away from relations with the Tibetan plateau to the north, towards the newly present Indian state arriving from the south. The project results can illustrate in detail several important consequences of this shift. For example, now that actual contacts with Tibetans have largely ceased due to a militarized border, the idea of connection with Tibet has grown in importance due to its strategic value as a cultural resource for identity construction, and also in negotiations with a controlling, modern state by people living right at its critical border zone. Furthermore, while the state has systematically sought to "tribalize" Himalayan highlanders in the region by applying categorical tribal identities, legal procedures, and cultural manipulations, they have made virtually no impact on how people think about themselves and relate to each other at the local level. • The large ethnographic database generated by this project has further importance due to rapid and thoroughgoing changes now sweeping through the far eastern Himalayan highlands. It now preserves the only accounts of social, cultural and materia! phenomena that have literally died out in many communities during the 3 years of the research period. Strong conversion to evangelical Christianity, for example, has almost totally displaced indigenous shamanic-type ritual, cosmological and social systems in many areas, the only tangible record of which is now captured in our data set. The sheer speed with which local communities can collectively act to change their own lives when they find it expedient to do so: deep-seated notions of the resilience of cultural forms and social structures must be challenged with good theories of agency. Results of the sub-project Konstruktion ethnischer Identität von Gesellschaften im östlichen Himalaja. Die Memba in West Siang (Arunachal Pradesh, Indien) by scientific assistant Grothmann have just been presented to the Berlin public in the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften in Berlin, June 5/6, 2010.
Publications
- 2010: "Relating to Tibet: Narratives of Origin and Migration among Highlanders of the Far Eastern Himalaya", In: Saadet Arslan & Peter Schwieger (eds.), Tibetan Studies. An Anthology. Proceedings of the 11th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Königswinter 2006. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 39pp
Huber, T.
- 2010: "Blutrache", In: Heike Zappe (ed.). Von der Lust am Unbekannten. Humboldts Forschungsreisende des 21. Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 8pp
Huber, T.
- 2010: "Pushing South: Tibetan Economic and Political Activities in the Far Eastern Himalaya, ca. 1900-1950", In: Alex McKay and Anna Balikci Sikkim (eds.), Sikkim Studies: Proceedings of the Namgyal Institute Jubilee Conference, 2008. Gangtok: Namgyal Institute, 31pp
Huber, T.
