Housing projects in the nomadic areas of China's eastern Tibetan plateau: representation, market logic, and governmentality

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the Chinese government's efforts to develop housing projects in Sichuan Province, and to encourage Tibetan herders to settle and enter the market economy. The paper uses primary sources to analyse how media and government reports provide a constructed image of Tibetan herders and their cultural landscape. These reports depict Tibetan traditions, including Buddhism, as impediments to modernisation, secularisation, market-oriented logic, materialism, and governmentality. Finally, the reports are contextualised in a larger governmental effort to continue with housing and economic projects in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau.