Khams pa Histories: Visions od People, Place and Authority, ed. by Laurence Epstein

AS AN INDISPENSABLE INTRODUCTION to local history of the Khams region of Eastern Tibet/Western China (with due attention for contemporary thinking about frontier regions), this book (being the fourth volume of the Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the iats, 2000), contains seven papers on Khams pa (Eastern Tibetan) local history, representing politics, and agency and their historiographical representations on the Khams frontiers. The articles have been arranged to reflect common themes. Wim van Spengen, William Coleman and Peng Wenbin locate Khams in a broader political history, exploring the fluidity of the frontier and its turbulent dislocations, as Khampas encountered and responded to Tibetan and Chines national projects in the early part of the twentieth century. Fabienne Jagou and Carole McGranahan shift their gaze to individual figures and their engagement with Chinese and Tibetan social politices. Peter Schwieger\'s analysis of history as oral narrative, positions Khams in relation to Central Tibet, as does the subject of Tsering That\'s paper, which concerns the influence of a Bonpo lama in religious innovation.