Seminar – 20 October – Benno Weiner

ALL WELCOME

Tuesday 20 October

4.30–6.00 ZOOM

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

Unforgivable Crimes and Open Wounds: 

Rebellion, Repression and Remembrance on a Tibetan Borderland of Early-Maoist China

When in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party “liberated” the ethnocultural frontier region known to Tibetans as Amdo, rather than immediately implement socialist reforms it pursued relatively moderate “United Front” policies meant to “gradually” persuade Tibetans and Amdo’s other non-Han inhabitants of their membership in the new Chinese nation. At the outset of 1958’s Great Leap Forward, however, United Front gradualism was jettisoned in favor of rapid collectivization. This led to large-scale rebellion, overwhelming state repression, and widespread famine. Rather than a “voluntary” and “organic” transformation, Amdo was incorporated through the widespread and often indiscriminate deployment of state violence. In this talk, Dr. Weiner discusses 1958’s Amdo Rebellion and explores ways in which the violence of 1958 and its aftermath continue to cloud the state’s efforts to integrate Tibetans into the modern Chinese nation-state.

Please reply to miasu-admin@socanth.cam.ac.uk by midday Monday 19 October to book a space.