Experimenting with Craft: Small Business Artmaking and Indigenous Spirituality in Tibet
Publication information:
Abstract
Our research focuses on issues related to Chinese developmentalism and Indigenous endeavors for cultural and ecological preservation in eastern Tibet. Bringing together Alfred Gell’s “enchantment” of art and Nancy Munn’s “spacetime” within the same framework, we look at how environmental activists and community leaders, through the form of small businesses, leverage the artmaking process as a foundation for maintaining Indigenous lifeways. Our presentation explores how Indigenous Tibetan spirituality—often obscured by conventional and decontextualized interpretations of texts and artefacts—is actively experimented with through the art-making practices of local environmental activists in pastoral Tibet.
Presenter Biographies
Helina He, M.Sc. visual, material, and museum anthropology from the University of Oxford; B.F.A. industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has field experience in the circular economy through craftmaking in East Tibet, with a keen interest in interdisciplinary studies of heritage and creativity.
Xiao Schutte Ke is a linguistic and environmental anthropology PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work examines Indigenous-science(s) collaboration and rapport between (agro-)pastoralist communities and conservation scientists in Amdo Tibet.