MIASU Seminar: Robert Barnett (Visiting Scholar, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge)

Relocating the Masses: Exploring the Linkages Between Environmental Protection, Poverty Relief and Mass Re-Settlement in Tibet with Robert BarnettChina's modernization policies in Tibet are constantly evolving and taking on new forms, and as they do so, the rhetoric of justification shifts too. I'm interested in exploring the language used to explain the latest phase in social transformation in Tibet, which now appears to have shifted focus from the much-discussed settlement of nomads to the mass relocation of farming communities. Information about these projects is almost entirely limited to reports in official Chinese media, so that in most cases language is all that outside observers have to go on; even locals may have limited information about the rationales behind these policies. In this presentation I hope to explore possible ways to decrypt that language and what it represents.