Gendered Space and Identity

Gendered Boundaries in Motion: Space and Identity on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier
Author(s): Charlene E. Makley

Source: American Ethnologist , Nov., 2003, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 2003), pp. 597-619
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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CHARLENE E. MAKLEY
Reed College
Gendered boundaxies in motion:

Space and idendty on the Sino-Tibetan fronder
Every ambitious exercise in critical geographical description, in translating

A B S T R A C T
into words the encompassing and politicized spatiality of social life, pro-
In this article I explore the gendered nature of re- vokes a . . . linguistic despair. What one sees when one looks at geographies
ligious revitalization in the Tibetan Buddhist mon- is stubbornly simultaneous, but language dictates a sequential succession,
astery town of Labrang in southwest Gansu Province, a linear flow of sentential statements bound by the most spatial of earthly
China. Post-Mao reforms in China allowed Tibetans constraints, the impossibilityoftwo objects (orwords) occupyingthe same
to resume religious practices and rebuild Buddhist precise place.
institutions proscribed during the Cultural Revolu-

Edward Soja (1989)
tion, and by the early 1990s Tibetans in Labrang
were rapidly revitaLizing the famous monastery that
spent much of my time during fieldwork in the Tibetan Buddhist
had once ruled this region along the Sino-Tibetan
T monastery town of Labrang in southwest Gansu Province, China,
frontier. I draw on the work of recent theorists of
| walking in circles. From the beginning of my stay there, I entered the
space, place, and identity to analyze the complex
* flow of local Tibetans' lives by joining the near-constant flow of foot
identity politics surrounding this project by con-
traffic along what was arguably the most important course of move-
ceptualizing spatial, ethnic, and national bounda-
ment for Tibetans in the entire surrounding valley: the three-mile-long cir-
ries as emergent intersections of gendered prac-
cumambulation path tracing the perimeter of the monastery grounds (see
tices among differently positioned actors. I focus
Figure 1).
on the Tibetan practice of circumambulation as the
In this article I examine circumambulation (Tib. skor ba 'gro pa, skor ba
key activity that reproduced the sacred centricity
byed pa, lit. to encircle) as a gendered spatial practice, to map out some ofthe
and power of the monastery. I demonstrate that in
processes by which important boundaries were continuously remade, con-
contemporary Labrang, women, as principal circu-
tested, or breached in this multiethnic border town, which had seen particu-
mambulators and household laborers, were doubly
larly massive changes since the Chinese Peoplets Liberation Army (PLA)
burdened with shoring up the core of the Tibetan
marched in and occupied it in the autumn of 1949. My focus on the con-
community in the midst of intense assimilation
tested production of gendered space in contemporary Labrang illustrates
pressures. [gender, identity, ethnicity, space, bor-
how the grounds for a sex-gender hierarchy locating differently empowered
ders, China, Tibet, religion, ritual, Buddh7sm]
male and female bodies within a sacred landscape and in karmic time were
being (re)laid, despite ideologies advocating Buddhist or modern feminist
forms of gender equality and in the midst of countervailing practices under
the press of the globalizing state and economy. The analysis thus demon-
strates that gender difference was actually fundamental in the ongoing con-
struction of certain boundaries Tibetans considered essential for the survival
of a Tibetan ethnic identity under siege by a variety of intensifying assimila-
tion pressures.
As a locale historically defined by the cultural and political junctures at
the edge of Tibetan settlement to the east and Chinese (Han) and Muslim
American Ethnologist 30(4) :597-619. Copyright (C) 2003, American Anthropological Association.

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American Ethnologist * Volume 30 Number4 November 2003
Figure 1. Prayer wheels on the outer circuit circumambulation path at Labrang monastery, summer 1995.
Chinese (Hui) settlements to the west, Labrang is ideally "notorious dualisms" (Asad 1983:252) of structure versus in-
situated for a reconsideration of the significance of "bor- tentioned action or all-determining domination versus
ders" or "boundaries." That is, it is a site well suited for con- creative resistance that continue to haunt recent theories of
sidering "interstitial zones" (Gupta 1992:18), not as insig- the relationships between sociocultural meanings and
nificant margins but as the creative grounds for the making power. Following William Hanks (1990, 1996), I take "par-
and unmaking of often competing sociocultural worlds. A1- ticipation frameworks" to be the subtle metacommunica-
though this perspective arguably has informed much recent tive contexts in which interlocutors deploy locally salient
social theory on the "performance" or practices of "post- linguistic and bodily cues to negotiate their alignments with
modern" or "postcolonial" subjectivities, spaces, and power, respect to each other and to a range of other social contexts
my analysis takes its inspiration from a line of work that, be- and agencies that always transcend any moment of encoun-
cause of disciplinary boundaries, such theories have largely ter. As a starting point for analysis, this concept locates the
ignored.l In this article, I draw on analytic tools developed in emergence of apparently stable or hegemonic sociocultural
sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology since the 1970s forms in the essential dynamics-and politics of embod-
to demonstrate the fundamentally intersubjective and con- ied social lives (cf. Mannheim and Tedlock 1995; Silverstein
tingent nature of meaning production among gendered 1997). Further, such an approach highlights the intersubjec-
agents in Labrang, agents that are always positioned as par- tive and often unconscious ways differently positioned
ticipants in shifting, culturally specific "frameworks" of rela- agents bring various cultural constraints to bear and thus
tionships within (potentially hazardous) "scenes of encoun- demonstrates the historically specific mechanisms through
ter" (Keane 1997:7; cf. Bauman and Briggs 1990; Hanks 1996; which meaning and context, action and structure, or resis-
Irvine 1996). tance and domination are in reality mutually produced. The
I argue that the spatial concept of "participation frame- concept of participation frameworks, then, provides a ground-
works," first elaborated by Erving Goffman (1981), is one of ing methodology for grasping the complex simultaneity of
the most powerful tools researchers have for avoiding the space-time the "cultural work" by which participants
598

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Gendered boundariesin motion * American Ethnologist
mark off and construct arrangements of subjects, places, 1709, Labrang has been both at the edge of empires and a
and nations amidst the actually messy and recently intensi- powerful center of religious and political-economic life. It is
fying interconnectedness of people and spaces (cf. Alonso now located in Labuleng town, the seat of the county of
1994; de Certeau 1984; Gupta 1992; Lefebvre 1991; Massey Xiahe, one of seven counties that constitute the Gannan Ti-
1992; Soja 1989). betan Autonomous Prefecture in the southwesternmost
I find this perspective very helpful in attempting to corner of Gansu Province bordering on Qinghai Province
avoid understanding sex and gender as structures of fixed (see Figure 2). But these modern boundaries are just the
and binary relations between already-defined men and most recent in a long history of contending "maps of power"
women.2 The concept of "participation frameworks" allows over the region (cf. Sun Zhenyu 1993:2).
me to emphasize instead the irreducibly intersubjective and By the late l9th and early 20th centuries (the latteryears
thus contingent nature of meaningful action or agency by of the Chinese Qing dynasty), Labrang was peculiar in this
grounding gendered performance in the "vital borders" at frontier zone in the extent to which its monastic center was
which participants engage in the everyday politics of space- able to resist or render ineffective the boundary claims of
making (Hanks 1996:162).3 That is, here I focus on local Ti- Chinese jurisdictions-including those of the Chinese Com-
betan notions of sexed bodies and circumambulation ritual munists until the mid- 1950s. The reach of the monastery as
as particularly crucial, intersecting participation frame- a political, economic, and religious power in the region was
works that people accessed to negotiate the reach of effec- in turn predicated on the extent to which its Geluk sect Bud-
tive agencies within a particularly contentious social field.4 dhist founders were able to appeal to a particularly Tibetan
During the Maoist years, the unprecedented reach of sense of gendered and ritualized space and establish the
the Chinese state into citizens' lives was accomplished in monastery as a sacred "power place." This process under-
part through a radical reconstitution of lived space and a pinned for the laity the ritual efficacy of their crucial roles as
forced reorientation of ("scientifically") sexed bodies to supporters (Tib. sbyin bdag) of the monastery and its sacred
serve a socialist nation, including the periodic proscription hierarchs, or lamas.
of all gendered ethnic difference (cf. Evans 1997; Hanks A gendered liberation path emphasizing male renun-
1996:162; Mueggler 2001:4; Schein 2000). Following that pe- ciation of the mundane world in monastic fraternities (os-
riod, Tibetans in Labrang had entered an era of restoration tensibly) separate from the distractions and temptations of
(Ch. huffu). Since the reforms of the 1980s easing regula- household contexts underwrote the "cultural nexus of
tions on the monastery, individual households, and the power" (Duara 1988) that resulted in the ascendancy of the
market economy, Tibetans' heightened awareness of and Geluk (lit. practitioners of virtue) sect in central and eastern
insistence on ethnic boundaries in town also served to ac- Tibetan regions by the 17th and 18th centuries and pro-
centuate the gap between ideally stable, internal realities duced a particularly intricate synthesis of religious and
and the unprecedented intermingling of peoples and con- secular landed authority (cf. Danzhu and Wang 1993).6
texts under Chinese rule. In this fray, perhaps the most Thus, in the Labrang region, the great prestige of a monastic
charged participation frameworks were those produced career based on an ideal of lifelong celibacy resulted in an
through the state-local politics accompanying the develop- ethic of "mass monasticism," which, as Melvyn Goldstein
ment of the tourism industry focused on the revitalizing (1998a:15) emphasizes, was unique to Tibetan contexts in
monastery, which since the mid-1980s had drawn tens of the relatively large percentage of men it drew to life in mo-
thousands of foreign and Han Chinese visitors (Yang Ming nastic communities.7
1992:14).5 Chinese observers in the early 20th century were horri-

Amidst the powerful reductive pressures of the com- fied at the peculiarity of the sex-gender system that conse-
modification of Tibetanness, a process that was tying the quently developed in the region and complained about the
frontier town ever closer to the needs and demands of the social "chaos" apparent in the juxtaposition of celibate mo-
Chinese nation-state, I found that Tibetan residents' asser- nasticism in Labrang with the relatively open sexuality in
tions about the nature of males versus females helped them the teeming market town next to the monastery (Gu
to identify familiar relationships between body and mind, Zhizhong and Long Zhi 1935; Yu Xiangwen 1943; cf. Makley
household and monastery, and to reorient bodies to the es- 1997). Historically, however, the juxtaposition of asceticism
sential centricity of the sacred spaces encompassed by the and sexuality did not represent a ludic chaos. Instead, what
monastic community. most fundamentally constructed the boundary between lay
and monastic worlds were practices that produced a basic
and grounding gendered bodyspace vis-a-vis the monastery.
Gender and the production of empowered
The ongoing coherence and efficacy of this bodyspace relied
centricity
on the practical links locals forged between ritual and every-
Since the founding of the famous monastery of Labrang day activities and discourses that placed sexed bodies rela-
Tashi Khyil in the narrow Sang (Ch. Daxia) River valley in tive to spaces in a gendered social hierarchy vis-a-vis ritual
5,,

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American Ethnologist * VoLume 30 Number4 November2003
Figure 2. Location of Labrang in the People's Republic of China.
power and bodily (and hence moral) purity, with lamas at its with Buddhist doctrine (cf. Bishop 1989; Epstein and Peng
pinnacle and laywomen at its base (cf. Huber 1994a, 1999). 1994; Germano 1998; Karmay 1994). In his insightful work
Tibetologists have often remarked on Tibetans' in- on Tibetan pilgrimage practices, Toni Huber (1994b:25,
tensely ritualized relationships with natural or constructed 1999: 10) argues that ordinary Tibetans' sense of efficacious
environments relationships that do not always accord space is shaped by intimate relationships between humans
glo

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Gendered boundaries in motion * American Ethnologist
and deities seen as inhabiting matter and bodies as well as The terminology used in the proverb reflects spatial
space. Deities' abodes are called gnas in Tibetan, meaning categories in everyday use in the Labrang region. Signifi-
"place" or "abode" or, as an involuntary verb, "to be" or "to cantly, the word gnas, used in other contexts to refer to sa-
abide." These layers of connotations point to a pervasive cred power places, appears here in its meaning as "home" or
"everyday ontology," operative among Tibetans across re- "abode." Tibetans used this word, however, to refer almost
gions and social statuses, that emphasizes the substantial or exclusively to the natal home of a man, so that the phrase
embodied nature of their relationships with powerful, tran- used to refer to the preferred and still most widespread type
scendent agencies and foregrounds contiguity as the princi- of marriage was gnas la 'gro pa, literally "to go home" or "to
pal means by which individuals or collectives interact with go to a husband's natal home." A spatialized division of la-
those agencies.8 Thus, in Labrang, as elsewhere, practition- bor that associated women with affairs "inside" the house-
ers entered into beneficial relationships with deities-gnas hold and men with prestigious ritual and political affairs
primarily through rituals of "worshipful encounter" (Tib.
"outside" the household was widely justified by appeals to a
mja[) focused on bringing the body into close contact with
law of embodied karma, what I call a sexual-karmic polar-
the divine.
it.l° When the issue of essential differences between men
Importantly, part of the wide appeal of Buddhism was
and women came up in my conversations with them, Tibet-
the emphasis on the efElcacy of a gnas as a function of em-
ans across the community (men and women) tended to ar-
bodied moral purity (Tib. dag pa). Committed contact with
gue that the male body was the result of greater stores of
a gnas could then cleanse (Tib. sel ba) the "pyschophysical
merit (Tib. bsod nams) from past lifetimes and that this un-
person" (Huber 1999:16) of his or her accumulated bad
derlay men's ability to transcend bodily limitations and to
deeds (intentional or not), deeds indexed by the unclean
succeed in pursuits of the mind. Meanwhile, the female
(Tib. mi gtsang) state of the ordinary body, and clear the way
to desired outcomes in this or future lifetimes. Such purify-body was considered to be a lower rebirth (Tib. skye dman),
ing power places were constructed spatially as having, in more hampered than male bodies by physiological proc-
Huber's words, "a central focus atwhich resides the . . . deity esses and thus suited to household labor.ll
of a gnas; the closer or more directly oriented one is to this Females, inherently peripheral and karmically impure,
center the stronger the empowerment and more intimate were thus the entailed other for the male ability to both pur-
the encounter" (1994b:46). Thus, the social construction of sue and embody the sacred. Their labor and worship sup-
space among Tibetans is generally characterized by the pri- ported a system that placed monks at its center, especially
ority given to (purified) centrality over (impure) periphery. incarnate lamas (Tib. sprul sku)-men considered to be in-
Circumambulation, in which the worshipper performed cir- carnations of deities or previously enlightened lamas, a
cuits around an empowered place, object, or person, was status that lent them miraculous powers to transcend space
the practice par excellence for bringing the body into sus- and time, to tame demons to the service of Buddhism, and
tained and close contact with a sacred center, thereby ab- to teach Buddhist knowledge. By the early 20th century, in-
sorbing into oneself some of the physically manifest bene- carnate lamas, particularly the founding lineage of Jamyang
fits of the center's power (cf. Ekvall 1964). Shepa lamas, were at the center of a ritual nexus that sacral-
The centrality of Labrang monastery as an unadulter- ized the landscape in a cohesive regional identity linked to
ated power place, or gnas, was primarily established and an array of translocal religico-political and Buddhist cosmo-
maintained through the everyday performance of a logical spatial orders, giving residents a sense of their terri-
sex-gender binary that kept women in appropriate support-
tory as a center between threatening powers, not as an insig-
ing roles at its periphery. In that region, a monastic career
nificant and subjugated margin (cf. Aris 1992:13).
was the ideal place for aspiring young men, whereas the
Labrang monastery was established in this way as a
ideal place for women was a patrilocal marriage and a lay
great power place and pilgrimage site (Tib. gnas mchog).
career of responsibility for most subsistence labor and child
The complex grew outward from a core group of buildings
rearing in the husband's natal household. A well-known
until it was a veritable city housing over 3,000 monks and
proverb in the region succinctly expresses this fundamental
occupying the whole width of the valley to the river (see Fig-
gendered spatial polarity:
ure 3).12 In its heyday, the tightly integrated religico-political
ban de 'gro sa sgar red/ system preserved loyalty to the Buddhist order over regional
byis mo 'gro sa gnas red and even ethnic difference. Thus, throughout the Republi-
can period in the early 20th century, Labrang remained ef-
[The place where a young boy goes is a monastery;
The place where a young girl goes is her new husband's fectively "outside the fortresses" (Ch. saiwalD of the Chinese
home]9 frontier.
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Figure 3. Labrang monastery, winter 1947. (Photo by Wayne Persons, used with permission.)
Contested circuits monastery both more threatening to the state in recent

years and more precarious as a Tibetan power place.
In his discussion of ritual practices among Tibetans, Robert
The "outer circuit," or shikor, had special importance as
Ekvall (1964:253) remarked that the importance of circu-
a transitional space between monastic and layworlds. Itwas
mambulation often went unnoticed by foreign travelers. I
both a boundary that separated ritually restricted spaces for
found this to be the case in Labrang, where the unceasing
the reproduction of the Buddha Dharma (Tib. chos) from
flow of Tibetans turning the prayer wheels around the mon-
the mundane world (Tib. Jig rten) and a public space in
astery seemed to get lost in the bustle of state-sponsored
which all Buddhist practitioners-men and women, young
tourism and commercial activity focused on the great mo-
and old, lay and monastic shared a practice and an orien-
nastic buildings and festivals. I argue, however, that it was
tation toward the monastic center. Importantly, as Ekvall
this quotidian activity, at the peripheries of the tourist lens
(1964:239) points out, such outer circuits were not actually
and the state gaze, that was most important for the recon-
circular but followed the ground plan of the monastic com-
struction of the monastery as a center of Tibetan commu- plex. Hence, at Labrang, the path outlined a center that in-
nity. For Tibetans, the resumption of circumambulation cluded all monastic buildings. It formed the perimeter
during the restoration period was not just a return to tradi- within which monastic spatial regulations were in effect-
tion; the practice had new meanings in a transformed soci- beyond the prayer wheel sheds monks could not freely go,
ety far from what most referred to as the " old world" (Tib. jig women could not enter, and laymen had to dismount and
rten rnying pa). Under the authority of a Chinese state Tibet- disarm (see Figure 4). At the same time, the huge oval traced
ans experienced as an alien, unitary agency essentially hos- by the path was considered the most efficacious circumam-
tile to Buddhism, circumambulation became a form of re- bulation space for the laity because it encircled all of the
sistance.l3 Yet in my conversations with locals, many also monastic buildings, deities, and lamas, thereby combining
expressed awareness that the monastic center it outlined the efficacy of the various power places, or gnas, within its
had a changed relationship to the community, making the confines (Ekvall 1964:244).
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Figure 4. View of Labrang monastery from a village east of it, winter 1947. (Photo by Wayne Persons, used with permission.)
After the overthrow of the monastic leadership in 1958, For those who could remember those days, the image of the
inhabitants of the valley experienced a fundamental reori- empty monastery, its outer circuit motionless, encapsulated
entation of social space that saw the center of power shift to the ascendance of the state's secular power over the region.
the secular space outside the monastery. By desecrating the The culmination of that power came during the Cultural
monastery and establishing the Weixing People's Com- Revolution, when all but the core group of monastic build-
mune in the town formerly referred to in Tibetan as the ings were destroyed, materials carted away, and work units
"edge" of the monastery, the Chinese Communists con- and residences built in their place.
structed a new center with extraordinary power to regulate In contemporary Labrang, the impress of state power
people's everyday lives. Even though the monastic authori- could still be felt in the organization of monastic space (see
ties had not participated in the revolts that had spread Figure 5). Whereas before 1958, all traffic had been routed
throughout the region in the mid-1950s, Labrang was sur- around the monastery on the shikor, under Communist con-
rounded by PLA troops, shelled, and looted.l4 Buddha im- trol the Lanzhou-Gannan National Highway cut straight
ages were dragged in the streets, and high lamas and monks through the monastic grounds, bifurcating the original oval-
were arrested or forced to marry (International Commission shaped complex and taking all manner of secular traffic
of Jurists 1960:35; Smith 1996:442). Lay worship was banned, through it. Further, monastic leadership was drastically re-
and within a few months villages and encampments were organized under the (ostensible) authority of the state-su-
organized into a commune system that carved up the region pervised Democratic Management Committee that con-
and effectively funneled all wealth to the state (Li Shang- vened in the former estate headquarters of an important
cheng 1987:112) . The ten-year-old sixth Jamyang Shepa was incarnate lama. But the gamble the state chose to take at
separated from his tutor and detained, and he became the Labrang in supporting its revitalization as a tourist site re-
first of Labrang's ruling lineage of incarnate lamas who did sulted in a newly dangerous situation. After the mid-1980s
not study in the great monasteries in Lhasa.l5 The "moving and the reinstatement of the policy of Freedom of Religious
boundary" of circumambulation that had continually con- Belief, there were two competing centers at opposite ends of
structed the monastery as center was forcibly disintegrated. the valley the rapidly revitalizing monastery, which had
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American Ethnologist * Volume 30 Number 4 November 2003
Figure 5. Panorama of Sang River valley, with new highway construction through the monastery, summer 1995.
the highest concentration of larnas in the region and was at- and reconstruction progressed at a rapid pace. From the
tracting hundreds of young monastics and lay worshippers, mountains above the valley, the perimeters of the monastic
and the headquarters of the party and the government of complex could be seen to revolve once more (see Figure 6).
Xiahe County.
The revitalization of the lay-monastic relationship among The tour: Fear and loathing in the monasteFs center
Tibetans critically involved the reassertion of the relation-
When I first arrived at Labrang for my third stay in March
ship between the sacred power generated by the monastic
1995, I took the standard tour ofthe monasteryto get a sense
community and the space it formerly occupied. As soon as
of what had changed. As a foreigner, I had to buy a ticket (at
open worship was once again permitted, Tibetan circumam-
21 yuan or around $3 each for foreigners, the price was up
bulators reclaimed the boundaries of the monastic center
from 8 yuan in 1992) at the "reception hall" in the newly
by persistently tracing the original shikor. With the reopen-
paved main courtyard of the monastery. Along with the few
ing of the monastery in 1981, the provincial and county gov-
Han tourists there that cold day, I followed our l9-year-old
ernments formally agreed to return all land originally occu- monk tour guide toward the great whitewashed walls and
pied by monastic buildings to the monastery. The upheaval gold-plated bronze rooftop of the monastery's main assem-
and resources involved in such a move and in reconstruct- bly hall (see Figure 7). Tibetans have traditionally consid-
ing buildings to match as closely as possible their original ered this hall the center of the monastery. It is the largest
appearances were evidence of Labrang's (perhaps unique) building and the seat of the Tisamlang or Tshanyi "college"
clout with state authorities and of the steadfast conservatism of to which the majority of the monastery's inmates belonged.l6
monastic authorities. The reconstruction was, as Marshall It was also the meeting place of the monastic councils that,
and Cooke (1997:1430) reported, one of the "great success under the ultimate authority of Jamyang Shepa, governed
stories" of Tibetan religious and cultural revival under the the monastery and the surrounding region. In the large court-
Chinese Communist Party (CCP). By the early nineties, the yard in front, monastery-wide religious dances were (and
space within the shikor "almost seethed with animation" still are) annually held for all to see, and the main roads in-
(Marshall and Cooke 1997:1457) as monastic life resumed side the monastery all emptied into it.
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Figure 6. Tibetans circumambulating the stupa marking the northeast corner of the monastery on the outer circuit, winter 1995.
Our tour guide, who had been casually telling me in Ti- tour and take the opportunity to worship. The two women
betan that he hated tour-guiding and especially disliked seemed surprised and embarrassed, as this was not a festival
Chinese tourists, marched us to the side door of the assem- period in which women were traditionally allowed to wor-
bly hall.l7 I was struck by the careless ease with which he ship in monastic buildings. Hesitating for a momentt they fi-
moved his body and openly talked Sino-Tibetan politics nally shuffled forward, eyes down and giggling as they said
with me as we walked. Just outside the door of the hall, he again and again, "ngo tsha gi, ngo tsha gi!" (we're embar-
paused and turned to address two young Tibetan women rassed, lit. [our] faces are hot).
acquaintances in Labrang Tibetan dress who had been on I stayed at the back of the group with the two women as
their way to circumambulate one of the temples. Calling to our monk guide led us into the dim interior of the huge hall
them in Tibetan, he invited them to come along with the and began his tour in Chinese. We slowly moved along the
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American Ethnologist * VoLume 30 Number 4 November 2003
Figure 7. Main assembly hall at Labrang monastery, summer 1995.
periphery of the hall while the monks seated on cushions in five previous incarnations of Jamyang Shepa. While the Han
the middle chanted the morning assembly. The only light tourists watched at the door and our guide introduced the
came from the open doors, a few small windows high above, images, the Tibetan women hurriedly did several prostra-
and the butter lamps burning in front of the Buddha images tions in front of Maitreya and backed out of the temple. The
on the altar at the front of the hall. The younger monks on monk's brief monologue never mentioned the side room ac-
the edges of the assembly eyed us with amusement and cu- cessible only through a closed door from Maitreya's cham-
riosity as our guide described the two scarf-laden thrones in ber. We were ushered out without seeing the weapon-
which Jamyang Shepa and the abbot of the college sat above adorned abode, or gonkhang, of Bhairava, Mahakala, and
the assembly for important meetings. The Han men and Dharmaraja, or Yama, the fierce protector deities who guard
women whispered to each other, exclaiming that they could the internal affairs of the college.l8
not stand the smell of the butter lamps. Finally, moving clockwise around the chanting monks
Meanwhile, my Tibetan women companions could in the center, we made our way around to the door on the
east side of the hall and left the dim interior for the main
barely contain their fear and embarrassment. Their bodies
courtyard of the monastery. As we emerged, the two Tibetan
registered all the ways Tibetans display respect and status
women seemed pleased and relieved, and one wiped her
inferiority: Hats off, shoulders hunched and forward, eyes
brow and pointed to her chest, telling me that her heart was
down, they touched their foreheads to the walls at the feet of
still beating very fast. They hurried off then to continue their
every deity depicted there. They would not speak, except
circumambulation, leaving us and the Han tourists who,
when one of them, sweating profusely, whispered to me that
laughing and chatting among themselves, followed the
she was afraid. Their fear and discomfort visibly increased
monk guide to the next temple on the itinerary.
when our guide led us into the posterior temple, where the
higher ceiling and narrower space made one feel small in
front of the five-meter-high bronze statue of the future Bud-
dha Maitreya and the gold and silver reliquary stupas of the
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Bodily commitments various other supernatural authorities that had become em-
blematic of Tibetanness in the face of threatening social
I chose to describe this brief encounter, among hundreds
change (cf. Ekvall 1960:46; Nowak 1984).
like it occurring everyday in Labrang, because the complex
The performance of dapa was the measure by which
array of participation framevrorks produced during it en-
pilgrims to the monastery (of any ethnicity) were distin-
capsulated so well both the collaboration of Tibetan men
guished from tourists, and it was so closely associated with
and women in (re)producing gendered sacred spaces at the Tibetanness that often merely speaking (any dialect of) Ti-
very core of the Labrang Tibetan community and the un-
betan was enough to gain one entrance to (appropriate)
equal possibilities for their social mobility in relation to
monastic buildings sans ticket and tour. I witnessed and ex-
those spaces. Drawing on the insights of Goffman, theorists perienced this on many occasions, and many monk tour
now increasingly recognize the complexity of participation guides I met over the years, including our guide that day in
frameworks within speech events, in that different roles and March 1995, told me this explicitly. Apparently, the proac-
responsibilities of interlocutors vis-a-vis the contexts and tive function of ticketing and restricted guided tours in sup-
agents they project can be embodied concurrently by one porting Tibetan monasteries financially, as well as in pre-
person or shift quickly with minute changes in linguistic and serving sacred spaces and the efficacy of Tibetans' faith in
bodily cues. Hanks (1996:169) argues that the best way to relation to them, is lost on many foreigners, who depict such
capture this complexity is to consider the ways in which practices as foisted on Tibetans by the Chinese state (i.e.,
multiple participation frameworks are embedded in an en- Buffetrille 1989; Marshall and Cooke 1997).2° As this en-
counter as participants position themselves, within the cul- counter illustrates, dapa was not a primordial orientation
tural constraints of locally salient discourse genres, as uniformly shared. Instead, Tibetan men and women were at
speakers or addressees at degrees of distance from an as- base differently positioned vis-a-vis sacred authority. And
sumed original interaction or framework (cf. Goffrnan 1981; importantly, this difference became most salient for Tibet-
Irvine 1996). In the encounter described above, all involved ans in ritual contexts involving respect for the most sacred
negotiated the newly emergent cultural politics at Labrang and central of spaces, the very spaces that, to them in the
in which the basic framework of Tibetan ritual efficacy re- transformed political economy of contemporary Labrang
quiring bodily proximity to a sacred center had been dan- most strongly exemplified Tibetanness under siege.
gerously interwoven with that produced in Chinese state- During my circuits of the monastery every day for a
sponsored tourism on which the monastery depended for year, I found the shikor the most Tibetan of public spaces in
income and state sanction and subsidies, and which facili- town. Life on the path was an essential element of the con-
tated tourists' "romance of proximity" (Schein 2000:123) to tinuing cohesiveness of intervillage and interregional Ti-
authentically ethnic sites staged for their viewing pleasure.l9 betan community. Unlike the streets and markets, or even
In this context, the monk guide's simultaneous interac- the courtyards of the great monastic buildings, the shikor
tion with the Tibetan women and the tourists asserted the was essentially a monolingual space; and all practitioners of
moral priority of the central sources of Tibetan sacrality over circumambulation were united by a corporeal orientation
the state-sponsored authorities and market forces that had to the monastic center as an efficacious gnas. The core
brought the tourists there. The monk's gesture to include group of circumambulators consisted of local villagers who
the Tibetan women in the group of ticket-buying tourists met on the shikor, caught up on family news, conducted
and the women's acceptance of his authority to do so, as business, and gossiped while walking. Importantly, in our
well as their very visceral sense of fear and awe at finding debates about the nature of gender among Tibetans, one of
themselves in the most hallowed center of the monastery, the main ways my interlocutors argued for the essential
worked to reanimate and re-empower the images of deities gender equality of Buddhism was to say that the mecha-
and lamas and the assembly of chanting monks in the face nisms underlying the ritual efficacy of such "meritorious
of their reduction to flattened and staged representations of work" (Tib. dge las) were the same for everyone. In the face
the exotic by the tourists' gaze and purchase of tickets to of great social changes and moral upheaval, Tibetans I
viewthem (cf. Mitchell 1992:310). spoke to found this merit work to be empowering, and they
By allowing the women to perform the most basic of widely insisted that anyone could participate in the poten-
Buddhist devotional practices amidst the tourists, the monk tial "justice and optimism" (Lichter and Epstein 1983:254) of
joined with the women to reassert the three-dimensional individual karmic agency by choosing to work hard at wor-
nature of the assembly hall space and its occupants, their lo- ship practices that expressed pure faith in the power of the
cation in a gendered Buddhist cosmology extending hori- sacred center, person, or deity.
zontally through this world and vertically to worlds beyond. Individual faith was most essentially performed
In this way, the guide and the two women mutually pro- through the public display of bodily commitment to the
duced faith, or dapa, that very physical orientation of sub- completion of circuits. Many insisted that there was no effi-
mission, devotion, homage, and offering to Buddhist and cacy in walking half a circuit of the monastery. And the most
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American Ethnologist * Volume 30 Number4 November2003
determined of practitioners, the ones who walked so rapidly maintenance of the moving bulwark and in the processes
that they passed everyone else many times, were those who that threatened it with disintegration. I found that contem-
had ritual obligations (Tib. bsa' ba) given them by a lama porary circumambulation practice was both reconstituting
they had approached for help with a particular problem, and reconfiguring basic gendered participation frameworks
usually physical ailments, but also family difficulties.2l Seri- operative in precommunist Labrang, a process that was pro-
ous practitioners conceived of their merit work as geared to- ducing new and differential consequences for Tibetan
ward the achievement of a "circumambulation standard" women and men. Both before and after the communist
(Tib. skor tshad), which was set at a daunting 10,000 circuits takeover, the majority of circuambulators were women, in-
(for any sacred structure) and most often formed the basic cluding younger adult women, married or not. And most of
numerical unit of lamas' ritual prescriptions. As one old the men on the path were elderly individuals working in
man insisted to me, using his fingers for emphasis as he their waning years for a better rebirth.24
walked the path, "The circumarnbulation standard is not This difference in numbers of men and women is strik-
100 circuits, not 1,000 circuits, but 10,000 circuits!!" People I ing when one considers that historically and in recent years,
walked with often made elaborate calculations of time nomad, farmer, and urban Tibetan women had far less lei-
needed to complete such tasks. At average walking speed, it sure time than men because, in all of those contexts, they
took an hour to complete a circuit and thus several years to were responsible for the vast majority of household labor
finish 10,000 circuits. The sheer amount of time and physi- (including most farmwork, dairy production, and care of
cal energy necessary to bring about sought-for benefits re- livestock in both natal and affinal households). In this, I sus-
quired quite a bodily commitment from practitioners, and pect that my monk friend Konchok, in explaining women's
some of the most serious, usually the elderly, devoted hours disproportionate participation in worship practices like cir-
every day for several years to their tasks.22 cumambulation and ritual fasting (Tib. smyung gnas), was
In the contemporary context, however, circumambula- citing traditional cultural logic that magnified men's contri-
tion formed a moving "bulwark" against unprecedented butions relative to the prestige associated with masculine,
and increasing intrusions into the sacred space of the mon- "outside" tasks.25 Contrary to overwhelming evidence indi-
astery and the inner sanctums of local Tibetan identity. In- cating the opposite, Konchok insisted to me that more lay-
stead of encircling a center whose sacred power and worldly women participated because they had less to do than lay-
authority derived from its ritual separation in space and men and their tasks in the household required less energy
time from the mundane world, Tibetan circumambulators because laymen did all of the major, "heavy" (Tib. IjEd mo,
had to elbow through and cut across the secular and state with connotations of "weighty" or "important") work.
spaces that not only extended right up to the former "walls" But Konchok's appeal to traditional gender ideals to ac-
of the monastery but that also penetrated the center itself, count for Tibetan women's greater presence on the shikor
threatening its status as a sacred power place and rendering elided the fundamentally transformed conditions for the
its worldly authority ambiguous. The daily, multiethnic traf- performance of gendered subjectivities in Labrang and else-
1C of the urbanizing valley cut a straight line through the where in China. I argue that the reconstitution of the partici-
monastery and connected it directly with state headquar- pation frameworks of circumambulation allowed for the
ters, thereby tracing the channels of authority that now sup- performance of an oppositional and remedial Tibetan-
posedly sanctioned monastic officials and drawing the lines marked sexedness that had particularly difficult conse-
of translocal market exchanges on which the monastic com- quences for young Tibetan women. Especially since the
munity increasingly depended. early 20th century, with the increasing militarization of the
Tourism brought Han Chinese and foreign visitors as region (cf. Lipman 1997), Tibetans in the frontier zone have
well as Muslim merchants, including women, onto monas- negotiated accommodations with Han and Hui lifestyles.
tic grounds in movements and at times that disrupted the And since the CCP takeover, the pressures and allures of al-
cycles of ritual life (see Figure 8).23 And Tibetans themselves ternative discourses about the proclivities of sexed bodies
were caught up in the transformations breaching ritual have arguably been one of the main factors contributing to
boundaries, as women vendors and worshippers came and "strategic hybridity" (cf. Bhabha 1994; Schein 2000) among
went, and, because of the diminished ability of the monastic Tibetans as well as constituting a crucial avenue through
leaders to discipline them, young monks regularly left the which the Chinese state has expanded its reach across the
monastery to indulge in the increasingly available worldly frontier and into Tibetans' daily lives.
pleasures in town. CCP-sponsored efforts to "liberate" Tibetans were part
of a larger "civilizing project" (Harrell 1995) aimed at break-
ing male monastic authority by reforming Tibetan families.
Gendered boundanes: The corporeality of a woman
With the advent of collectivization schemes and of state
Despite the communal nature of circumambulation, on the feminism under the auspices of the local Women's Associa-
shikor gender difference was highly significant in both the tion (Ch. Fulian), social mobility under the new order
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Figure 8. Han Chinese work unit from Lanzhou on a tour of Labrang monasteryt summer 1993.
required Tibetans to demonstrate loyalty to new roles that 1960). And, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, when
both claimed the irrelevance of (local) sex differences and the campaign to "destroy the four olds" was well under way,
drew on "scientific" discourses about sex and sexuality to state officials and red guards desecrated Tibetan sacred
retain male privilege in service to the state (cf. Dikotter 1995; spaces by bringing women into them. Prior to the commu-
Evans 1997; Yang 1999). In practice, the coexistence of these nist takeover women had been crucial to the Tibetan com-
cultural logics of sexedness provided state officials flexibility munity as maintainers of the household economy when (in
in maneuvering Tibetan women's bodies as pivots between nomad regions) most adult men were at war with the Chi-
state and Tibetan male ritual authority. During the upheav- nese; after the crackdown in 1958 they continued to be cru-
als of the years 1958-78, state agents attacked local male cial to the state as maintainers of the commune economy
authorities by conspicuously displaying Tibetan women in when the majority of adult men in Labrang were arrested
sacred spaces and in public roles, thereby making danger- and sent to prisons or labor camps (cf. Dhondup Choedon
ously explicit the traditionally elided (yet crucial) mobility of 1978:21; Enloe 1989:58; Smith 1996:482; Tibet Information
Tibetan women locally.26 Network 1997:101).
During that period, as several elderly women told me, With the "reform and opening up" period in the mid-
Chinese work teams attempted to ally with Tibetan women 1980s, Tibetans in Labrang were subjected to state and popular
as disaffected masses and made the most "activist" among media appeals to biological explanations for male domi-
the women local cadres and party members.27 During strug- nance, which worked both to naturalize the increasingly in-
gle sessions Tibetan women were encouraged to denigrate terconnected and capitalist market economy and to provide
lamas by accusing them in front of assembled villagers of avenues for state-local and interethnic male collusions. As
horrible sex crimes (cf. International Commission of Jurists Emily Chao (2001) has pointed out, the masculinization of the
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American Ethnologist * VoLume 30 Number4 November 2003
burgeoning private sector in China, embodied in the figure that constructed female bodies as the appropriate objects of
of the bold, urban entrepreneur, also feminized state work scrutiny and control justified one of the most austere state
as passive and static and (hyper)sexualized young women's policies enforced during the reform era, one that, especially
bodies and motives if women appeared in commercial in Tibetan regions, was instrumental in "restor[ing] the sta-
spaces. The reform process, then, had very different conse- tist ambitions of the party leadership" (Anagnost 1995:23; cf.
quences for the mobility of Tibetan men versus women. Anagnost 1997) after the debacles of the Maoist years.
State hegemony had rendered monastic leadership tenuous For Tibetans in this region, a basic polarity of sexed
and emasculated male secular authority in the villages. bodies (Tib. pho mo gnyis, lit., the two, males and females)
These changes, combined with state limits on numbers of enabled what was in practice a very flexible sex-gender sys-
monks and the decline of rural secular schools (cf. Bass tem underpinning Tibetan hegemony.30 In the contempo-
1998), left a vacuum in which young Tibetan men literally rary context, then, the terms and conditions under which
had no place to go locally.28 Young men thus increasingly bodies were sexed became key sites of "boundary work"
shored up threatened masculinities by pursuing opportuni- among locals. Amidst all the contestations around gender
ties for modern, urban work and pleasure outside house- occurring in the valley, historically and in recent years spa-
hold and monastic life. tial practices vis-a-vis sacred centers most clearly indexed a
Meanwhile, young women with such aspirations found basic hierarchy that was not at all ambiguous to Tibetans:
themselves squeezed between broadened participation The exclusion of females from sacred spaces, regardless of
frameworks for their gender-appropriate public agency and age, status, or ethnicit,v, emphasized a polar opposition of
intensifying demands that their mobility remain narrower hierarchically arranged sexed bodies above all other social
relative to that of men. Nonetheless, Labrang by the mid- distinctions.3l In striking contrast to confident exegeses of
l990s had become a crucial node in a regional movement to the egalitarian nature of Buddhism or to discreetly phrased
"urbanity" (Schein 2000), a gathering place for young aspir- criticisms of gender asymmetry among Tibetans, the topic
ing Tibetan men and women. Young urban women I came of female exclusion from sacred spaces elicited, among laity
to know idealized the gender equality that mobile Han and and monastics alike, exclamations of ready agreement and
foreign women tourists seemed to enjoy, and they envied an embarrassed lack of exegesis about the reasons for such
the fashions and beauty products they saw modeled by cos- exclusions-even among the most "feminist" of my young
mopolitan women on television. Deji and Tsomo, both low- urban women friends like Deji and Tsomo.
level cadres in their late twenties who lived in my small Unlike other forms of pollution that could apply to both
apartment building with their husbands and small children, men's and women's bodies, the pollution associated with
expressed pride in their (albeit meager) independent in- female bodies in sacred spaces was not subject to purifica-
comes and in their ability to establish households separate tion efforts (in this lifetime). It was, instead, a kind of nega-
from their in-laws in the villages a practice that contra- tive power that adhered to a female body and derived from
vened renewed pressures for patrilocal residence. But both its opposition to male bodies, females being more deter-
also chafed at the added time and effort it took them to run mined by corporeality than males. Tibetans I spoke to, both
between the duties they shouldered in their work units and lay and monastic, did not talk about females in sacred
in their own and their in-laws' households. spaces in terms of "pollution" (Tib. grib/sgrib). Instead, they
As Deji and Tsomo discovered, state-sponsored "wo- focused on the dangers contiguity with the female body
men's worK' (Ch. funu gongzuo) did not address the basic posed to the ritual efficacy of both lay and monastic sacred
gender asymmetries that still severely limited Tibetan contexts.32 The pollution of female bodies in sacred spaces
women's social mobility the difficulties of arranged, pa- was essentially the congenital capacit,v to drain the male
trilocal marriage, divorce laws that favored husbands, and power (Tib. nus pa) to transcend and control, the power that
the division of labor that kept women and girls working was the basis of the sacred for Tibetans. Thus, this contigu-
longer and harder in the household than men and boys (cf. ity was unlike other forms of pollution (such as the presence
Barlow 1994; Evans 1997; Gilmartin 1990; Judd 1994; Wolf of bodily fluids), for which avoidance practices were not
1985; Yang 1999). And during the time of my fieldwork, necessarily enforced or universal but which were open to a
young women like Deji and Tsomo faced difficult decisions range of individual decisions for action, and people were
as they envisioned their sexual and reproductive lives very clear that female avoidance of sacred spaces was man-
amidst pressures from lovers, families, and, increasingly, datory and enforced (Tib. mi juggll-33
the state. By the mid-199Os, birth control policies originally Tibetan women in contemporary Labrang, as absence
aimed at curbing growth among Han Chinese populations and presence, respectively, were thus crucial to the recon-
were being implemented among Tibetans. In Labrang, as struction of the main sites of male ritual authority, both
elsewhere in China, the implementation and enforcement sacred power places and the ideal household to gnas in
of such policies were carried out completely on women's both of its senses the abiding foundations of the Tibetan
bodies.29 In this way, an asymmetric notion of sexedness community. And, at the very time when opportunities for
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translocal mobility were greater than ever before in the era and times. Their avoidance, however, was not disempow-
of "reform and opening up," the Tibetan community and ered absence women performed their absence from sa-
Chinese state policies together narrowed the parameters for cred centers by actively engaging with them from the ritu-
the performance of proper Tibetan femininity, requiring Ti- ally demarcated peripheries. In fact, in the contemporary
betan females to be to embody and fix, to produce and context, circumambulation as an opportunity for individual
maintain the continuity of basic social units (within com- and collective agency was particularly appealing to Tibetan
peting social orders) in time and space. Ideally, females women. The juxtaposition in recent years of alternative
fixed locality whereas males embodied the possibility, and logics of sexedness amidst the high stakes of interethnic and
the danger, of translocality. state-local politics had feminized the participation frame-
Arnidst the transformation of lifeways locals had expe- works of such ritual agency producing faith, or dapa, among
rienced since the communist takeover, perhaps the most Tibetans.
important roles and boundaries to Tibetans, the most avail- Perhaps the best indicator of this process was the trans-
able for delineation, were those of the monastery. One of the formation I found occurring in the meanings people attrib-
most salient aspects of sacred power places in this context uted to a famous series of folktales about "the Simpleton
was, after all, their fixic in time and space. As my lay male from Arik" (Tib. Arik Lenpa). These well-known narratives,
friend Gazang once said to me in a conversation about the related to me by Tibetans across the community as true sto-
nature of a gnas, "Once a deity inhabits a gnas, you can't ries, tell of the pilgrimages of a nomad man from Arik, south
move it here and there like you can a chair." The elderly, of Labrang, to the Jokhang temple in Lhasa, and of the mi-
whose nostalgia for the "old world" led them to project the raculous effects of his deeply sincere and naive faith in the
fixity of boundaries onto the past, often told me that "be- living reality of the deities there. In one tale, Arik Lenpa's
fore," gender roles were clear and monastic discipline was faith is so honest that, when he enters the temple to worship
the strictest in the region. They contrasted this with the and asks the protector deity on the wall to hold his staff for
changed state of affairs nowadays, epitomized especially by
him, the deity complies. In another tale, the barefoot image
the presence of women within the shikor at all times of the
of Maitreya dutifully lifts his foot so that Arik Lenpa can fit
ritual year. The desacralization of monastic space corre-
the deity with the shoe he made for him. As several local
sponded to the attenuation of monastic authority to regu-
men told me, however, the stories previously were taken to
late both lay and monastic bodies. And, because many
indicate the great benefits of pure faith in that an unob-
young men were adrift in the absence of traditional routes to
scured mental state actually brought to life the deities and
social mobility and power, what women chose to do with re-
bent them to one's will. In recent years, however, the stories
gard to sacred spaces was particularly important.
were often interpreted as evidence of the naive stupidity
Most significantly perhaps, Tibetans collaborated, within
and hopeless parochialism of the nomad pilgrim, a dupe of
new spatial practices that allowed wider parameters for in-
his blind faith. In effect, the current context called into ques-
dividual choice, to establish "inner sanctums" of sacred
tion the masculinity of Arik Lenpa, his faithful pilgrimage fo-
fixity in which the exclusion of females was both deeply as-
cused on the sacred core of the central city contrasting
sumed and consciously enforced. These inner sanctums
sharply with the wily, cosmopolitan masculinity of the ur-
were, not surprisingly, the gnas at the core of the monas-
ban entrepreneur.
tery the abodes of the fierce protector deities whose task it
Thus, on an ordinary day in Labrang, village women
was to defend Buddhism against human and supernatural
could be seen rushing about on errands, working in fields, or
enemies by guarding the internal and external interests of
hurrying to do a few circuits of the monastery while crowds
the monastery.34 In recent years, these deities and their cult
of young men gathered at pool tables set up in the streets.
represented the last bastion of a "militaristic" Tibetan
And on holidays, when the merit-making power of the mon-
power at the core of the monastery the transcendent
astery was said to increase a thousandfold, women still out-
(male) power to stave off, attack, or tame intruders. These
core spaces, therefore, were also the last bastion of the man- numbered men on the path by two-thirds.36 For young and
datory exclusion of females. These were the spaces that, for old women I spoke to, circumambulation was the most
my interlocutors men and women, lay and monastic- important avenue for empowered action aimed at self-
were immediately and emphatically associated with the improvement in a rapidly changing world with few opportu-
most basic difference between men and women. The pres- nities for women's social mobility and education. With little
ence of a female body in such places was so unimaginable access to resources necessary to reap benefits from the cor-
that most could not speculate about what would happen if a rupt, globalizing marketplace, at the same time that de-
woman were to enter them.35 mands on them from state and household had increased,
On my daily circuits on the shikor, and in interactions I many Tibetan women took what little time and energy they
had in and around monastic space, I found that Tibetan could find and invested them in the efficacy they sought
women self-regulated to avoid the most sacred of spaces from lamas and deities in the monastery.
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I was struck by the wide range of strategies I found casual ease with which the monk guide negotiated the vari-
among women on the path to derive benefits from their ous participation frameworks in the encounter and simulta-
merit work, benefits they conceived of sometimes as very in- neously inhabited different participant roles within them.
dividual and sometimes as accruing to their loved ones. After inviting the Tibetan women along, the monk guide
And, even though Tibetan women had unprecedented year- never addressed them again. Their hushed "side play" talk
long access to monastic space in recent years, the vast ma- to me about their fear and embarrassment both registered
jority of those within the shikor at any one time were per- their subordination to the participation frameworks of the
forming daily circumambulations of temples to obtain tour and the monk assembly and, because their comments
specific benefits associated with those temples. Signifi- were still loud enough for the monk guide to hear (yet were
cantly, women circumambulators across regions, statuses, unintelligible to the Han tourists), constructed a participa-
and generations shared an overwhelmingly corporeal orien- tion framework that included the monk guide as authorita-
tation to the gains they sought. The majority I found to be tive listener.
resolutely strategizing for relief from physical illnesses or for In this encounter and others like it, the traditional
help with their reproductive fitures. Thus, most circumam- authority of monks was challenged by the presence of Han
bulators of the monastery's medical college (looking for re- and foreign men and women, whose bodies in the monastic
lief from illnesses) and Drolma temple (looking to influence space indexed the superior power of the Chinese state as
childbirth) were women, whereas the largest number of lay- well as the privilege of access to the globalizing marketplace.
men and monks on ordinary days could be found circling The monk guide countered that intrusion by allying with me
the Maitreya temple, which was thought to bring about bet- in Tibetan-language talk the Han tourists did not under-
ter rebirths. Finally, for hard-pressed women, circumambu- stand and by limiting tourist access to sacred spaces, but his
lation was "working leisure" time the shikor especially was inclusion of the Tibetan women brought the visceral power
a noncommercial public space outside the household of the women's sincere corporeality into play. In contrast to
where women could legitimately relax and interact with the Han tourists' blase observations, my talk of politics, and
others from across the village and region while simultane- the monk's Chinese-language exegeses, the Tibetan wo-
ously performing virtuous "work."37 men's comments were limited to exclamations about the
state of their bodies. Their performance of dapa as an invol-
untary physical response of shame, fear, and awe powerfully
lEe tour revisited: lEe .significance of fearful bodies
asserted the basic sex-gender hierarchy that establishes Ti-
Returning to the tour of the main assembly hall and looking betan Buddhist authority as unquestionable and sacred (cf.
at it in the light of this analysis, the crucial role of gender in Rappaport 1979). During the tour, although everyone in the
the boundary work engaged in by the Tibetan participants group was kept out of the gonkhang, the Tibetan women
becomes even clearer. In this encounter, in which monk performed the fear and awe that established the protector
guide, Han and foreign tourists, Tibetan women worship- deities inside as terrifyingly powerful to Tibetans. In effect,
pers, and chanting monk assembly interacted at the center then, the Tibetan women's worshipful performance did for
of the monastery, the assertion of a basic Tibetan sex-gender the encounter what women's circumambulation practice
hierarchy structured the complex embedding of participa- was doing for the community in general: Contrary to the
tion frameworks involved and enabled the negotiations "exhibitionary order" (Mitchell 1992) of the tour for tourists,
among them that, for the Tibetans, reestablished the sacred their (feminine) worship restored the reciprocal bodily con-
authority of lamas, monks, and deities. This was accom- tiguity that grounded ritual efficacy for Tibetans, thereby re-
plished in the same way I have argued that gender differ- asserting the abiding copresence of deities (and by extension
ence generally operated among Tibetans in contemporary of the lamas and monks empowered to invoke them) as
Labrang: By allowing the Tibetan women to worship during agents or participants, not mere objects, in the encounter.
the tour, the monk guide used the women's embodied al- By very publicly granting the Tibetan women access to
ienation from the authoritative contexts indexed by the that sacred space without tickets, the monk guide declared
presence of Han tourists, foreign "Tibet supporters," and to his audience of Han and foreign tourists the moral supe-
chanting monks to powerfully augment his status as an riority of such a bodily orientation. The monk guide's move
authoritative broker between the main sets of participation to include the Tibetan women allowed for intraethnic bond-
frameworks those varied people and interests created. ing among Tibetan men and women around the reestablish-
Amid the intermingling of bodies and motivations in ment of the monastery as a sacred power center. The
that sacred space, the presence of the Tibetan women women came from the ritual peripheries (the shikor) into
brought clear difference into play: The women understood the monastic center on the monk's authority and returned
neither the Chinese language tour nor the texts chanted by to the peripheries to continue their circumambulation after
the monks. Their awkward, timid, and deferential behavior the encounter. The Tibetan women's circular movement
and limited participant roles contrasted sharply with the thus counteracted the linear, alienated movement of the
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185.110.243.207 on Mon, 15 May 2023 17:39:49 +00:00
tourists into and out of the monastery on state author- lated toward one's next life, no merit at all, none at all!" In all
ity reducing Labrang to an inferior periphery serving a my discussions and interviews with Tibetan men and
Chinese center. From this angle, then, we can see the recent women about gender difference, the embarrassed silences,
increase of women's access to monastic space in Labrang in the various explanations, the emphatic denials were all at-
the way Konchok described it to me as an effort among Ti- tempts to deal with the dilemma posed by this essential
betans to "expand" or "raise up the Buddha Dharma" (Tib. fixity of sex among Tibetans, despite the availability of con-
chosgong 'phelgtongba) in the midst of intense assimilation ventional forms of (potentially) liberative gender transfor-
pressures.38 Tibetan women were allowed within the shikor mation, as in nunhood or monkhood.40 Indeed, as I have
to counter the desecrating intrusions of tourists and the shown, the spatial practices constructing the most essential
Chinese state by interacting appropriatelywith monastic in- places to the Tibetan community fixed sacred space by turn-
ner sanctums and thereby turning some of the efficacy of ing on the construction of the static nature of sex.
those centers to their own ends.
Conclusion: Gender and the penetrated center

The burden of encireling
I have focused on circumambulation among Tibetans in
Thus, amidst unprecedented gender mingling within the Labrang as a gendered spatial practice to demonstrate the
shikor, spatial practices that excluded all female bodies everyday processes by which important boundaries struc-
from sacred power centers reestablished a particularly Ti- turing social lives constantly "move" despite efforts to fix
betan gender hierarchy that both grounded and empow- them in space and time. In recent years, the Chinese state
ered the Tibetan community in Labrang. Yet, ironically, the and local Tibetans shared an interest in fixing monastic
sex-gender hierarchy that was so foundationally empower- boundaries. But the differences in the monastic center each
ing in these ways to the Tibetan community vis-a-vis outsid- hoped to thereby construct underscored the great threat of
ers was taking an especially heavy toll on Tibetan women. the monastery to the state as well as the precarious nature of
Although women viewed their circuits of the monastery as a its role in the Tibetan community. The state wished to con-
way to exercise a form of (karmic) agency, many of my lay- tain the monastery as a neutral package of exotic Tibetan-
woman and nun interlocutors expressed weary resignation ness, commodifiable as a tourist site and available as gor-
about the prospect of ever being able to escape either the geous evidence of China as a "multinational" state under
seasonal cycles of family life or the rebirth cycles of samsara. the benevolent rule of the party. For Tibetans, however, re-
I found that for Tibetan women, especially the younger gen- constructing ritual boundaries involved reestablishing links
erations, the potential "justice and optimism" of karmic between lay and monastic communities that, especially
agency were muted by the limitations of sex. As Charles nowadays, constructed loyalties that always already over-
Keyes (1983) argues, people in Buddhist communities ex- flowed the bounds of the state's "map of power." For the or-
plain and ameliorate misfortunes in various ways, but most dinary lay and monastic Tibetans I came to know, real, effi-
often karmic causation is associated with a lack of agency. cacious authority still flowed from the sacred power of
In Labrang, karma was most generally invoked to explain lamas. In the valley the vigorous cycles of monastic life con-
basic social inequities that could not be changed. Tibetans trasted sharply with the stillness of state work units and the
spoke of relative stores of merit (Tib. bsod nams) most often emptiness of unfinished state buildings.
to account for those whose social privilege vis-a-vis others Yet there was also the recognition among Tibetans that
(i.e., men, the wealthy, and foreigners such as myseliLD could the intervention of the Chinese Communists opened the
be read from their bodies and behavior.39 way to unprecedented spatial intrusions that had altered
In the contemporary context, aspiring Tibetan women forever the center that once ruled the valley and kept outsid-
were increasingly aware of the catch-22 in which the karmic ers at bay. The monastic center had been engulfed and
explanation of gender difference placed them relative to Ti- penetrated, rendering it a jealously guarded icon of, yet poor
betan men and foreign women: If men's inherently superior substitute for, the "old world." Tibetans young and old
accumulation of merit allowed them access to social and rit- therefore were also looking outside and away from Labrang
ual resources necessary for upward mobility, women's infe- for hope for the future. Ambitious young men were drawn
rior merit kept them both excluded from access to highest away from bodily commitments to the monastery in circu-
ritual powers and encompassed by the affairs of the house- mambulation or ordination. Meanwhile, for the first time in
hold, with little time for the "virtuous" work that leads to its history, the monastery's central incarnate lama did not
Buddhist advancement or the self-improvement required inhabit the residence for which the monastery was named.
for social mobility. As a young woman who had persevered As a married layman and Chinese-educated cadre, the sixth
against great family opposition to become a nun at age 21 so Jamyang Shepa resided for the most part in Lanzhou, the
emphatically put it, "Women must have children . .. and provincial capital. His contemporary status epitomized the
work and work very hard so that one has no merit accumu- emasculating cooptation of Tibetan male authorities whose
|13

185.110.243.207 on Mon, 15 May 2023 17:39:49 +00:00
sacred power once established the inviolability of the mo- circling was movement-in-stasis; they encircled the monas-
nastic center. Perhaps it was the desperation born of this re- tery (Tib. skor ba 'gro pa) and yet had few prospects other
alization that had led to the widespread belief in the region, than to keep malcing the rounds of rebirths (Tib. 'khor bar
expressed to me by illiterate nomads as well as learned la- 'khor ba), in which the highest life form they could realisti-
mas, that the "real" sixth Jamyang Shepa was not the man in cally expect to achieve was another female body.4l Thus, at a
Lanzhou but in fact the president of the United States, Wil- time when local memories of an unprecedented attack on
liam Jefferson Clinton. the very foundations of the Tibetan community were still
The process of monastic revitalization in Labrang was fresh and great assimilation pressures threatened the recon-
inextricable from locals' efforts to redeem Tibetan mascu- struction of local forms of authority, Tibetan women were
linities under Chinese rule. But the wishful longing ex- charged with maintaining the stability, the "abidingness" in
pressed in the rumor about Clinton-as-lama also held the time and space of both sacred center (gnas) and lay home
peril of a repudiation a resigned and paradoxical belief (gnas). At the same time, that great burden was not associ-
that the only effective power to resist intrusion would be ated with new or traditional routes to social mobility and
embodied in a non-Tibetan, a white man and a syrnbol of prestige.
modern, sovereign nationhood. The longing for a social effi-
cacy unattainable within the parameters of local Tibetan
Notes
masculinity was precisely what was drawing young Tibetan
men away from obligations and commitments that were the Acknowledgments. I conducted research during three trips to
Labrang over a four-year period between 1992 and 1996. The re-
foundation of Tibetan power in the region. Ironically, per-
search was sponsored by the Committee on Scholarly Communi-
haps the greatest threat to both the integrity of the monastic
cation with China, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, a Foreign Lan-
community and the efficacy of state authority was the dwin- guage and Area Studies fellowship, a National Science Foundation
dling numbers of young men willing to take on the ritual re- predissertation grant, the Institute for Research on Women and
strictions of monkhood within the eroded ritual infrastruc- Gender at the University of Michigan, and the University of Michi-
ture of the monastery. And yet, as large numbers of restless gan Rackham Graduate School fellowships. An earlier version of
this article was presented in March 1998 at the Association of Asian
young men converged on the valley seeking to participate in
Studies Conference in a panel entitled "Displacing the Center in
modern forms of personal advancement and pleasure, the China: The Frontier Zone as Place and Process." I would like to
burden of public scrutiny and social constraint fell on women. thank my Tibetan and Chinese interlocutors in Labrang for sharing
An analysis that located the irreducibly emergent na- aspects of their lives and frustrations with me. I am also grateful
ture of social orders in the space-making politics of inter- to Tony Berkeley, Norma Diamond, Luis Gomez, Bruce Mannheim,
Ellen Moodie, Erik Mueggler, Jennifer Robertson, Rupert Stasch,
locutors' negotiations of participation frameworks within
Michele Gamburd, Ira Bashkow, Susan McKinnon, and four anony-
everyday encounters demonstrated that Tibetan residents
mous AE reviewers for their helpful comments and encouragement
were reworking the participation frameworks of quotidian on earlier versions of this article.
worship practices in fundamentally gendered ways. Most 1. See, for example, Anzaldua 1987; Appadurai 1991; Bhabha
significantly, locals' spatial performance of gender differ- 1994; Gupta 1992; Ortner 1996.
2. There have been attempts to rethink gender relations as "prac-
ence around sacred power places, or gnas, worked to reas-
tices" (i.e., Collier and Yanagisako 1987). Such an approach, how-
sert an essentially Tibetan notion of hierarchical sexedness
ever, made it difficult for feminist theorists to conceptualize the
that was reorienting bodies to the centricity of the monas- relationship of gender to other forms of difference and thereby
tery and its male authorities. But what aspiring women avoid assumptions of a universal experience of "womanhood" or
(such as nuns or educated laywomen) especially recognized of feminist empowerment (cf. Mohanty 1984; Ong 1988). My analy-
was that the responsibility for and consequences of the rela- sis here takes its inspiration from a recent and productive conver-
gence of interest across disciplines in the "performativity" of social
tive immutability of sex among Tibetans were largely laid on
positionings. In gender studies, attention has focused on gender
women's shoulders. Tibetan women's enclosure by the as an embodied process, shot through with politics and ambiguity,
household, as well as spatial practices that excluded them in which people enact a multiplicity of subjectivities vis-a-vis par-
from the most powerful of ritual contexts, ensured that they ticular notions of sex and sexuality (see Bordo 1993; Butler 1988,
did not have the opportunities for "maximum bodily con- 1990, 1993; Morris 1995; Weston 1993).
3. In other words, from this perspective, at no time is any indi-
tact" (Huber 1994b) with a gnas that men did. And their im-
vidual solely responsible for the integrity or authority of any mean-
portance to the household economy kept them home while ing produced, regardless of expressed or experienced intentions
young men pursued new opportunities for secular educa- (cf. Mannheirn and Tedlock 1995).
tion and advancement in the Chinese state bureaucracy. 4. Elsewhere I explore the cultural politics of other aspects of
As I have demonstrated, women were moving, to em- the sex-gender-sexuality nexus operative in post-Mao Labrang (see
Makley 1999, 2002).
power themselves and to take care of their families, but
5. The vast majority of tourists in Labrang are Han Chinese ur-
within an ideology and emergent social eifect (i.e., through banites.
the division of labor and social space) of fixity, their move- 6. By the late 18th century, the Geluk sect dominated among
ment was ultimately circular. In this context, women's en- Tibetans in this region because of the power and influence of the
614

185.110.243.207 on Mon, 15 May 2023 17:39:49 +00:00
two main Geluk monastic centers, Labrang and Jonay (Tib. Cone; 17. The guide's comments echoed a refrain I heard often from
Pu Wencheng 1990:506). the young monk tour guides at Labrang. Chosen for their ability
7. Goldstein (1998b) points out that, whereas in Tibet this "mass to speak Chinese (not English), no doubt many of them did dislike
monasticism" resulted in 10-15 percent of the male population in the job and especially resented Han tourists, who could be very
monasteries, Buddhist monasteries in Thailand held only 1-2 per- disrespectful in monastic space. Others, however, liked the job be-
cent of men. The situation at Labrang was the same as that de- cause it allowed them to interact with foreigners and to learn Eng-
scribed by Goldstein for the huge monastery of Drepung in Lhasa: lish. Some told me they liked the opportunity to represent Tibetan
The size of the monastic community, at over 3,400 monks by 1949, Buddhism in a good light to Han and foreigners alike. In addition,
was considered to indicate the success of the monastery itself (Pu in a monastic culture in which scholarship was highly valued and
Wencheng 1990:508). prestigious, it was almost required for a young monk, regardless
8. Huber (1999:10) argues convincingly that this "set of orienta- of his actual scholastic aptitude, to complain to visitors that such
tions" among both ordinary and elite Tibetans antedated the in- work took him away from his studies.
troduction of Indian Buddhist systems into Tibet and continues to 18. These three deities were considered high-ranking protector
deities who had left the mundane world still subject to karmic law
profoundly shape Tibetan Buddhism(s) in practice, a quotidian re-
(Tib. Xig rten las 'das pa'i srung ma). Their texts were chanted daily
ality that is often missed by analysts focusing solely on normative
in the assemblies of the college. All three deities, along with several
Buddhist narratives or ritual liturgies (cf. Lichter and Epstein
others, also resided in the gonkhang of the other five colleges at
1983:225).
Labrang. Mahakala is one of the most important protectors of Ti-
9. Collected by Wang Qingshan (cf. Makley et al. 2000). Proverbs
betan Buddhism and is particularly revered by the Geluk sect (Li
(Tib. gtam dpe), usually structured in parallelisms that express basic
Anzhai 1989:159; Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1956).
conceptual similarities and oppositions, were a vital part of local
19. The State Council declared the monastery a national center
Tibetan culture. They were rarely written down (although several
for the preservation of cultural relics in 1982. Labrang was officially
collections of "Tibetan proverbs" have recently been published in
"opened" to foreign and domestic tourism in 1985. The state has
Qinghai and Gansu) but were passed along through frequent cita-
since contributed millions of yuan to the reconstruction of mo-
tion in everyday interactions and in more formal rhetorical ex-
nastic buildings. According to a 1991 estimate, total annual income
changes such as comedic duets (Tib. kha shags) and speeches.
for the town from commerce associated with the tourist industry
10. Note that this gendered inside-outside dichotomy among
was over six million yuan, with the monastery taking in over 600,000
Tibetans did not necessarily map onto the cultural politics of "pub-
yuan from its various tourism enterprises.
lic-private" dichotomies assumed in capitalist Western countries.
20. Foreign visitors to Labrang I met there and in the United
11. The term skye dman (lit. low birth), albeit not in wide col-
States often complained to me about the limitations that restric-
loquial use in Labrang, means "female-woman" (cf. Aziz 1988;
tions on tourists imposed on their movements through monastic spaces.
Havnevik 1990). My Tibetan interlocutors, men and women, were
21. The etymology of the term boa' ba is unclear. In Labrang it
often embarrassed by the stark hierarchy expressed by this term,
was used to refer to all ritual obligations given by lamas to laity as
and women especially objected to its very pejorative connotations.
a way to handle particular problems. Such obligations included a
Still, most did not challenge the seFgender hierarchy underlying
prescribed number of recitations of particular mantras or texts,
it, referring instead to the basic difference between men and
usually prayers or homages to certain deities, and specified num-
women in terms of men's greater accumulation of merit (Tib. byis
bers of circumambulations or prostrations around temples seen
lu cho bsod nams che glD.
to have particular domains of efficacy or around the whole mon-
12. According to Pu Wencheng (1990), before 1958, Labrang
astery. They were analogous in a way to a doctor's prescription,
monastery rented 21,700 square mu (about 3,580 acres). The 900 except that they carried moral weight.
or so households in the surrounding villages were all tenants. Thus, 22. Elderly women and men working on a circumambulation
most capital and property were controlled by Labrang. standard on the shikor walked from two to six circuits or hours a
13. Schwartz (1994) makes this same point in his discussion of day over a period of three to six years. Practitioners working on
khorra (circumambulation) as protest. He describes how the Bark- standards around temples within monastic space would walk 20-70
hor in Lhasa was used as a site for public protests against Chinese circuits a day. One middle-aged village woman from a neighboring
rule in the late 1980s. In Labrang, however, this use of the circu- region, circumambulating the stupa of the famous incarnate lama
mambulation path for overt resistance and public demands for Gongtang to alleviate a major illness I suspect was terminal cancer,
Tibetan nationhood did not develop. told me she was working on completing seven circumambulation
14. Monastic authorities had even tried to convince Tibetans not standards (70,000 circuits!), walking 60-70 circuits per day, a task
to put up armed struggle (bsTan-'Dzin dPal-'Bar 1994:102; Huang she estimated would take her five to six years to complete.
Zhengqing 1989:78). The PLA shelled the monastery in retaliation 23. Unlike other revitalized Geluk monasteries in Amdo, women,
for reports that monks there had given provisions to Tibetan guer- as tourists, are allowed onto monastic grounds at Labrang even
rillas. The damage was said to have been minimal (International during the summer retreat (Tib. dbyar mtsham). As a monk friend
Commission of Jurists 1960:35). sheepishly explained in a letter to me, tourism is too important to
15. Although he had taken his preliminary monk vows, he was the monastery because of the income it generates to ban women
returned to lay life in Lanzhou, eventually married and had chil- during the peak tourist season.
dren, and held various figurehead posts as a government cadre. 24. This demographic roughly fits written descriptions of gen-
16. The main assembly hall was one of the first buildings erected dered participation in circumambulation in the decades prior to
at Labrang after it was founded in 1710. In April 1985, the main Chinese Communist intervention in Labrang (cf. Ekvall 1964; Li
hall burned to the ground because of faulty electric wiring. Most Anzhai 1989; Ma Haotian 1942-1947), as well as those of oral ac-
of the Buddha images and a great many precious artifacts that had counts I heard from older Tibetans.
survived the Cultural Revolution were destroyed in the fire. By 1990, 25. All personal names used in this article are pseudonyms.
with state support, the hall had been rebuilt to match the original, 26. As I and others have noted elsewhere (Aziz 1988; Makley
and the main deities' statues had been commissioned and imported 1997), in part because of Tibetan men's participation in monasti-
from Nepal (Luo Faxi 1987:5; Su Mo 1987:12; Suo Dai 1992:125). cism and long-distance trade, women across Tibet had a broader
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185.110.243.207 on Mon, 15 May 2023 17:39:49 +00:00
American Ethnologist * VoLume 30 Number 4 November 2003
range of spatial mobility than their Han, Hui, and foreign mission- tvas, and "this-worldly " indigenous deities tamed to the service
ary counterparts. Chinese and foreign observers in the Labrang of Buddhism (cf. Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1956). The monastery also
region prior to the CCP takeover expressed concern about Tibetans' had a separate tsankhang in which resided Naychong Trinlay
relatively flexible marriage practices, which gave women much in- Gyapo, the god who was made a special protector of the Geluk
formal power locally, and about the consequently large number of sect by the fifth Dalai Lama
woman-headed households. 35. One monk friend said that such a woman would be told to
27. The daughter of Labrang's military chief, the most powerful leave, but most could only imagine that a woman would enter such
lay Tibetan official in the region, was one of these "activists," ac- a space by accident or in extreme circumstances, such as during
cording to one prominent layman close to the official. The highest the violence of the Cultural Revolution. One nomad woman friend
positions, however, were still reserved for men. To this day in at
told me the story of a woman in her encampment who, while out
least one village in Labrang, the majority of Communist Party mem-
herding, had accidentally stumbled onto a ritual for a local moun-
bers are women, whereas the village and production brigade party
tain god. According to my friend, the woman was stoned and beaten
secretary is a Tibetan man who has held that position since 1958.
by young male attendees.
28. See Makley 1999 for a detailed discussion of these issues in
36. Many young urban women lamented to me that they did
relation to the reconfiguration of Tibetan masculinities under Chi-
not have more time to complete circumambulations, something I
nese rule.
never heard from young village men, and I often talked with village
29. In Chinese state censuses, only females were ranked and
women young and old who would snatch the time off from field
analyzed according to numbers at childbearing age. Birth control
work during inclement weather to circumambulate. In a head count
polices did not address men's involvement in reproduction or en-
of circumambulators during the fourth-month Nyongnay festival,
courage men's responsibility in birth control practices. The most
one of the most popular times to circumambulate the monastery
devastating aspects of this scenario for women were forced abor-
tions for unregistered pregnancies and mandatory sterilization af- and one of the annual occasions on which men turn out, women
ter the child quota was reached. These policies were being imple- still made up 65 percent of circumambulators. And although the
mented to varying degrees in rural areas around Labrang. number of young men was close to that of young women (20 and
30. Tibetans across the community accepted the possibility for 24 percent, respectively), the vast majority of those wearing Tibetan
sex transformation (as in female to male, male to female, or a mix- clothing for the occasion were young and older women.
ture of the two) and for liberative gender transformation (as in 37. Because village women did the majority of farmwork, fields
monkhood, nunhood, or lamahood). Such acceptance was in part could also be an interactive space for them (except during the win-
due to widespread assumptions that the biological body did not ter). Women from different households, usually relatives but also
exist as a fixed isolate. Instead, as Toni Huber (1994a) has put it, friends in mutual aid networks within or across villages, would help
Tibetans considered the corporeal to be ontologically continuous each other with stages of the agricultural process. Throughout the
with particular mental proclivities, spaces, times, and deities and spring and summer, women spent much time in fields working in
therefore subject to change in this and future lifetimes (cf. Adams small groups with children nearby. Fields, however, are arguably
1992, 1999). not "public" spaces but part of the household domain.
31. The sign I encountered in the summer of 1995 at Rong-bo 38. In this way, such relative permissiveness is analogous to the
monastery in Reb-Gong (Ch. Tongren), Qinghai, just northwest of unprecedented use among Tibetans of mass empowerment cere-
Labrang is a case in point. I arrived at Rong-bo during the mon- monies in exile and at places like Labrang (cf. Germano 1998; Kohn
astery's summer retreat (Tib. dbyargrlas), when monastic space is 1997; Lopez 1998).
strictly off-limits to all women. The sign read "bud med nang 'gro 39. People often accounted for my greater height and good
na mi chog" (women cannot enter); the word for women here, bud health relative to locals by considering these attributes evidence
med, is a term that indexes Buddhist discourse. It is not widely of my great stores of merit from previous lifetimes. Such statements
used in colloquial speech and refers to female bodies as impure, thus indexed locals' resigned sense of inferiority vis-a-vis wealthy
sexual threats (cf. Campbell 1996:31). Thus, even nuns, who sup- foreigners.
posedly have renounced lay life, are not allowed to enter.
40. Such difficulties and debates are contemporary versions of
32. Just as they are excluded from the abodes of monastic pro-
debates waged in Buddhist circles historically. As many scholars
tector deities, so women are barred from attending rites for lay
have pointed out, for centuries writers of Buddhist texts and com-
territorial deities that protect particular localities.
mentaries have grappled with the relationship between sexed bod-
33. Ortner (1983:109) argues that amongSherpas, the concept
ies and the ability to attain ultimate liberation (Cabezon 1992;
of pollution (Tib. grib) is not particularly "sex-linked" because the
Campbell 1996; Gross 1993; Paul 1985; Shaw 1994; Sponberg 1992;
effluvia of both male and female bodies are considered polluting.
Zwilling 1992). The fundarnental hierarchy of sexed bodies, I would
Gamchu, by contrast, the female power to drain others' special
argue, helps explain the proliferation of still-current practices
powers through touch is the only real sex-linked pollution among
among Tibetans in Labrang concerned with the relative value of
Sherpas. In monastic contexts like Labrang, however, female bodily
sexed bodies the rituals in which women pray for male rebirths
effluvia associated with sexuality (i.e., menstruation and childbirth)
were considered more polluting than the effluvia of male bodies. for themselves and their unborn children; legends, ritesl and recent
Thus, whereas monks and laymen could urinate on monastic stories evincing a fear of male to female transsexual change (cf.
grounds, menstruating women in that space were considered un- Aziz 1978; Huber 1994a); and the texts and legends replete with
clean. Still, laywomen and nuns exercised a range of decision-making stories extolling the virtues of female to male transformation. By
options with regard to worship while menstruating. By contrast, a contrast, foreign feminist advocates for an "androgynous" Bud-
female body, regardless of age, sexual experience, or time in the dhism emphasize the small group of Mahayana texts that explicitly
menstrual cycle, was uniformly excluded from the most sacred of argue for the irrelevance of sex difference vis-a-vis Buddhist en-
spaces. lightenment and state that a female adept need not be transiformed
34. The protector deities worshipped at Labrang are a combi- into a male to become a Buddha (cf. Gross 1993; Paul 1985).
nation of those considered the most powerful of "other-worldly" 41. The terms skor ba and 'khor ba are closely related etymologi-
deities, who appear as wrathful aspects of Buddhas and Bodhisat- cally. See Ekvall 1964.
61S

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Gendered Space and Identity

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Gendered Space and Identity

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Gendered Boundaries in Motion: Space and Identity on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier

Author(s): Charlene E. Makley

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3805251

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Gendered boundaxies in motion:

Every ambitious exercise in critical geographical description, in translating

institutions proscribed during the Cultural Revolu-

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1992:14).5 Chinese observers in the early 20th century were horri-

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Figure 2. Location of Labrang in the People's Republic of China.

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Contested circuits monastery both more threatening to the state in recent

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Figure 7. Main assembly hall at Labrang monastery, summer 1995.

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Conclusion: Gender and the penetrated center

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velopment Studies. 1988 Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in

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Germano, David Irvine, Judith

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Mannheim, Bruce, and Dennis Tedlock Silverstein, Michael

Marshall, Steven D., and Susette T. Cooke Smith, Warren W., Jr

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