Amazon.com: Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison or Exile (9780893817947): Steven Marshall, Orville Schell, Elliot Sperling, Mickey Spiegel: Books

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison or Exile
 
See larger image
 
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison or Exile [Hardcover]

Steven Marshall (Author), Orville Schell (Author), Elliot Sperling (Introduction), Mickey Spiegel (Contributor)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)


Available from these sellers.


Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --  

Book Description

May 15, 2000
Through a diverse selection of photographs, personal interviews, and historical information, Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison, or Exile, a collaboration between Aperture and Human Rights Watch, looks beyond the Shangri-la image of Tibet to the impact of political repression by the Chinese government on Tibetan lives.

The Tibet Autonomous Region as well as the area known as "eastern Tibet," has been shaped by fifty years of direct Chinese government control. The impact of that control is evident in Tibetan culture, politics, economic activity, and religious practice. It is manifest in the extensive prison network used to detain those perceived as challenging Chinese rule and in the extreme measures used to keep protests in check. This publication contains rare photographs of Chinese government crackdowns on Tibetan demonstrations and riveting first-hand accounts from Tibetans living in exile. It examines the physical damange inflicted upon Tibetan religious institutions in the past and the more subtle destruction still going on today.

Tibet Since 1950 offers a new perspective on the complicated subject of recent Tibetan history, avoiding the standard clichés of Tibet as a land defined by the search for spiritual enlightenment and as an exotic paradise. The real Tibet is far more complex. This book examines the bleak banality of repressive control that is as much a part of Tibet as is its scenic beauty.

The richly varied photographs are accompanied by an introduction by Tibet expert Elliot Sperling; accounts by Mickey Spiegel of Human Rights Watch with Tibetans who were detained in prison and are now living in exile; a discussion of Tibetan prisons by Steven Marshall; and a consideration of Tibet, myth and reality, by Orville Schell.

Photographers include: Jeffrey Aaronson, John Ackerly, Diane Barker, Kevin Bubriski, Kathryn Culley, Ian Cumming, Carl de Keyzer, Raphaele Demandre, Guy Dinmore, Stuart Franklin, Richard Gere, Alberto Giuliani, Catherine Henriette, Lynn Johnson, Russell Johnson, Steven Marshall, Marcos Prado, Matthieu Ricard, Galen Rowell, Michael Springer, and Franz Stich.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steven Marshall was born in 1951 in the United States. He has paid numerous visits to Tibetan areas inside and outside the Tibet Autonomous Region since 1986. His book Hostile Elements: A Study of Political Imprisonment in Tibet: 1987-1988 was published by the Tibet Information Network. He is also the coauthor, with Dr. Susette Cooke, of a CD-ROM entitled Tibet Outside the TAR.

Orville Schell has written fourteen books, nine of them about China. His most recent is Mandate of Heaven published by Simon & Schuster. He has also served as a television commentator for ABC-TV, CBS-TV, and NBC-TV and has worked both as a correspondent and consultant for a number of PBS Frontline documentaries and an Emmy award-winning program for 60 Minutes.

The winner of several writing fellowships and numerous prestigious awards, he is a long time contributor to the New Yorker, as well as to such magazines and periodicals as the Atlantic, Granta, Newsweek, the China Quaterly, and the New York Review of Books.

Mr. Schell has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and traveled widely in China. He serves on the boards of the Yale-China Association and Human Rights Watch and is a member of the Pacific Council and the Council of Foreign Relations. He is currently Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley where he is also Research Associate at the Center for Chinese Studies.

Elliot Sperling is Associate Professor of Tibetan Studies in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. He has written widely on Tibetan history and Sino-Tibetan relations and has received MacArthur and Fulbright fellowships. From 1996 to 1999 he served on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad.

Mickey Spiegel has been with Human Rights Watch since 1990 with responsibilities for work on China and Tibet. Among the reports she has authored and coauthored are a series on religious freedom in the People's Republic of China, a directory of political prisoners, and profiles of Tibetans in exile. An anthropologist by training, she holds a Masters of Philosophy from Columbia University. She is a trained social worker who has implemented programs in rural Alaska, among Native Americans, and in inner city areas in the U.S. Ms. Spiegel is a member of the Association of Asian Studies, the American Anthropological Association, and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 184 pages
  • Publisher: Aperture; 1st edition (May 15, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0893817945
  • ISBN-13: 978-0893817947
  • Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #499,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this now! Read it twice!, June 22, 2000
This review is from: Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison or Exile (Hardcover)
This book is an excellent introduction to Tibet, especially Elliot Sperling's candid and daring introduction, "Exile and Dissent". The pictures compel you to read; the reading rewards.

It is especially refreshing to see a moderate human rights organization like Human Rights Watch endorse Sperling's accurate and unrestrained discussion of Tibetan nationhood. Sperling never goes so far as to explicitly endorse statehood for Tibet--that would certainly compromise Human Rights Watch's ability to advocate for human rights from a non-partisan position--but he comes close:

"A strong case can be made that prior to 1951, Tibet was at best part one part of the empires built by the Mongol and later Manchu emperors who conquered China, but never an "integral" part of China itself" (32).

The best moment in the book, in my mind, is Sperling's paragraph on 'cultural preservation':

"Tibetan culture, like any other, is dynamic. Calling for its "preservation" automatically brings forth the need for it to be defined, which which in turn evokes a stuffed-and-mounted item fit for a museum. Tibetan culture does not need to be frozen in time, but Tibetan cultural life needs to be protected from measures that repress literary and artistic expression...The contours of dissent in Tibet and its repression by China are not shaped by calls for cultural preservation or cultural autonomy, but by calls for Tibetan independence" (36).

Tibetan dissidents, Western supporters, Western journalists, US diplomats, members of the Tibetan government: read this paragraph twice! Cultural preservation is not freedom; it is the opposite of freedom. This is why Beijing contributes money to cultural preservation efforts in Tibet: the more the culture is 'preserved', the more it is frozen, and the less threatening it becomes. Not only is the threat removed; with the threat disappears the culture's ability to sustain and give solace to its people. Culture, once preserved, becomes emasculated, of little use to anyone. I think few more important passages have been written on Tibet than this one.

Shocking and beautiful photographs, and powerful testimony, follow; by the end, any intelligent reader will be compelled to action.

Hopefully, the reader will at least be well-armed against the unfortunate note on which the book ends. Orville Schell's pusilannimous and meandering essay, the last in the book, is the worst kind of contrast to Sperling's clarity and gutsiness.

Schell's essay ranges from offensive to simply odd. What, for example, could motivate anyone to write "Of course, China's President Jiang Zemin, like many of his countrymen, tends not to romanticize Tibet as Westerners do..." (175)?

Worse is Schell's inability to distinguish Hollywood's brief fascination with Tibet from the global social justice movement which has arisen to protest China's brutal occupation. His drastically misguided assertion that "Tibet's new Western persona [was] consigned to Hollywood's custody" denies both the authenticity and strength of the freedom movement and the possiblity that celebrities are capable of sincere feeling and political work. Hollywood made two movies about Tibet. The movies mythologized it. Of course they did; that's what Hollywood does. But it is insulting to deny the work and influence of the Tibet movement by conflating it with a Hollywood trend.

And then there is Schell's weird analysis of the severity of the occupation:

"To foreigners looking on from afar, the Chinese occupation and the dismantling of traditional culture and society seemed similar ...................."(175-6).

"To foreigners"? "Seemed"? "Represented"? This is either the height of timidity (Beijing, after all, is more than capable of revoking the visas on which Schell, a Sinologist, depends for his livelihood) or simple ignorance. Given the other essays and the testimony in this book, it is difficult to believe that Schell can really be unaware of the severity of the occupation--indeed, he mentions it at various points. Why then such timidity?

Eventually, one grows tired of wondering--and returns to Sperling, and the freedom struggle.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Words and Pictures, July 3, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Tibet Since 1950: Silence, Prison or Exile (Hardcover)
The book has an excellent selection of quite shocking photographs. The graphic design and production values are exceptional. The text articles are largely very informative. Elliot Sperling presents a thoughtful analysis of the dynamic nature of Tibetan culture and identity, dispelling the rather silly historical myths of feudal hell vs. high altitude nirvana. Mickey Spiegel's reporting of the stories of individual recent Tibetan exiles brings home the concrete, human reality of how awful things are for those Tibetans unwilling to kowtow to China's colonialist and racist policies. Orville Schell's final article is a bizarre piece of writing in this context. I can only conclude that it was included for some form of "balance". His direct comments on Tibetans are that their cuisine is "inedible" to Westerners, they engage in only "the most modest kinds of personal hygiene", and they have shown themselves "capable of considerable savagery against one another". Schell's big thing is the romanticization of Tibet by others. He admits he once was so eneamoured, and his shame and anger about this seem to dominate his analyis. Its a real pity that this self-loathing makes him blind to the issues of justice and legitimacy that the Tibetan problem presents. These issues are the fundamental attraction for many if not a majority of Tibet's foreign supporters.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews



Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums


Listmania!


Create a Listmania! list

So You'd Like to...


Create a guide


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject