I have just shelled out on a copy of Sun Shuyun’s “A Year in Tibet,” which is on all the new titles stands here in sunny Melbourne.

I know you can’t judge a book by its cover but the cover situates it in the same genre as “A Year in Provence,” “A Year in Tuscany” etc. I’m not sure if Provence and Tuscany are police states run by maniacs, because I don’t know much about European politics. However, I’ve got a feeling that Sun Shuyun might not be interested in uncovering the brutality of China’s occupation. This is because I previously read her “The Long March” and it was sickening CCP propaganda.

Anyhow, I have dipped into the book’s bibliography and it is chock-full of the running dogs mentioned in the blog, being proffered as experts on Tibet that interested readers could follow up.

Can’t wait to read the book and I hope Jamyang La will write a review of it.

BTW: The book is a companion piece of a BBC series that I think has already hit the screens in the UK.

Here are some URLs for consideration:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8673
http://fora.tv/2008/07/09/Earthquakes_and_Games_The_Economist_Covers_China

I understand you are irritated. But let’s try to keep things more on the plus around here. There are many engaging responses to Jamyang’s articles. Let’s focus on those if we can….and on the articles too.

Recently I read a review by George Fitzherbert of a book by one Dibyesh Anand, Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination, in the June 20th issue of TLS. Have you come upon that book and if so do you recommend it. Thanks. And I also would like to second the gentleman who was suggesting a darker font.

Dawa

I can list some ethnographies written by anthropologists who did do field work while living amongst the people they were researching. So, yes, there are some anthropologists who do actually write from first hand contacts and connections. The intelligent ones actually even admit their own biases and perceptions which come across in their accounts. This is good since it gives readers the space to make up their own minds.

I still stand by my premise regarding Herodotus. I do think it is imperative that we not be so quick to read modern motivations into ancient writers and thinkers. The ancient Greek take on such studies doesn’t seem to be what we modern people would think, even at first glance. For the ancient Greeks, it was about studying so better to know how to defend or attack other peoples. And much of the thinkers in Greek civilization would probably be highly offended at branding their explorations as “theology” since they viewed such things to be mythical at a time when they were going against myths.

And Herodotus did go to Libya. And yes, today all anthropologists talk about people they have never visited. Every last one of them. Herodotus made a big effort to make a systematic survey of a very large region. He apparently used something that might be called a ‘checklist,’ which might have been the first sociological survey form, I’m not sure about it.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at the first words of an article by a famous anthropologist of your modern times, James Redfield, who published in Classical Philology, 1985:

“Herodotus as we know is both Father of History and Father of Anthropology.”

But I’m sticking by my guns and maintaining that the first anthropologist was the first human who was aware of another. Nothing that has happened since then has really made all that much difference.

If you’ve got JSTOR you can read Redfield for yourself:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/270156

I recommend this book, which is widely considered one of the standards in the field of the history of anthropology: Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964. Chapter 1: The Classical Heritage.

Now go crawl back into your nominalist historicist hole.

I just re-read your comment from July 15th. I propose that your 3rd category be called “Lotus Eaters” since that would describe those westerners caught up in maintaining fantasies of Tibetan Buddhism while not caring for the situation of actual Tibetans, much like the mythical lotus eaters from ancient Greek stories who avoided any contact with reality.