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Gerald Roche
I am an anthropologist and Associate Professor of Politics at La Trobe University, and was previously a DECRA fellow at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Uppsala University's Hugo Valentin Centre.
My research focuses on the politics of language endangerment and revitalization, with a regional focus on Tibet.
I previously lived on the northeast Tibetan Plateau for eight years (2005-2013), working as an applied anthropologist, and also undertaking research for my PhD in Asian Studies from Griffith University. My PhD research examined issues of variation in change in a ritual complex of the Monguor (Tuzu) people.
As an applied anthropologist, I have collaborated with people in Tibet on various educational and cultural initiatives, including the creation of the world's largest online archive of oral traditions from the Tibetan Plateau, and the publication of the first nationally-distributed English language textbooks designed specifically for Tibetans.
My publications have appeared in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Modern Asian Studies, China Quarterly, International Journal for the Sociology of Language, Anthropos, and Asian Ethnicity amongst others. I recently co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization.
My current research project looks at ethnic politics and linguistic diversity in the Tibetan regions of China. The study examines the sociolinguistic predicament of the Monguor population of Rebgong, a multiethnic and multilingual region on the Northeast Tibetan Plateau where the Monguor constitute a linguistic minority.
My research focuses on the politics of language endangerment and revitalization, with a regional focus on Tibet.
I previously lived on the northeast Tibetan Plateau for eight years (2005-2013), working as an applied anthropologist, and also undertaking research for my PhD in Asian Studies from Griffith University. My PhD research examined issues of variation in change in a ritual complex of the Monguor (Tuzu) people.
As an applied anthropologist, I have collaborated with people in Tibet on various educational and cultural initiatives, including the creation of the world's largest online archive of oral traditions from the Tibetan Plateau, and the publication of the first nationally-distributed English language textbooks designed specifically for Tibetans.
My publications have appeared in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Modern Asian Studies, China Quarterly, International Journal for the Sociology of Language, Anthropos, and Asian Ethnicity amongst others. I recently co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization.
My current research project looks at ethnic politics and linguistic diversity in the Tibetan regions of China. The study examines the sociolinguistic predicament of the Monguor population of Rebgong, a multiethnic and multilingual region on the Northeast Tibetan Plateau where the Monguor constitute a linguistic minority.
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Indigenous people. However, ongoing attacks on human rights defenders
and restrictions on civil society present critical challenges for the Decade, creating a politics of fear that suppresses action in defense of Indigenous languages and undermines the effectiveness of the Decade. We demonstrate this by examining the situation in China, India, and Indonesia. These are the three most populous and linguistically diverse countries in Asia. In each country, Indigenous languages are suppressed, while human rights defenders and civil society are under attack. We conclude by making recommendations for the governments of China, India, and Indonesia; the United Nations; global civil society; and the government and people of Australia. Our recommendations seek to ensure the safe participation of Indigenous language rights defenders in the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Key recommendations include:
• The governments of China, India, and Indonesia must immediately cease attacks on human rights defenders and restrictions on civil society.
• The UN Special Representative on Rights Defenders should specifically monitor and produce information about the situation of Indigenous language
rights defenders.
• The Australian government should use the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review process to highlight restrictions on language rights and attacks on language rights defenders in China, India, and Indonesia.
• International human rights organizations should focus attention on Indigenous language rights defenders in China, India, and Indonesia.
• Journalists and academics who focus on human rights issues in Asia should help bring attention to the situation of the region’s Indigenous language rights defenders.
• Concerned individuals everywhere should stand in solidarity with language rights defenders in China, India, and Indonesia, and help raise awareness of
their plight.
state borders. It argues that both state and language borders are forms of
structural violence that are mutually reinforcing. These interlocking forms
of structural violence produce material, biopolitical, and representational
inequalities and concrete harms. Therefore, like the placing of state borders,
the placing of language borders is seen to be a non-trivial issue. The
transnational Himalayas, stretching across the People’s Republic of China
(PRC), Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bhutan, are introduced as an ideal site
for investigating how language and state borders interact. Furthermore,
the role that Tibetan, as an imagined language, plays in the region is seen
to have central importance to this dynamic.
The challenges that Indigenous and minority languages face are complex, and strategies for language maintenance need to draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives. In this presentation, I demonstrate some of the ways in which anthropology can contribute to language maintenance efforts. Based primarily on a review of Anglophone literature, but also to a lesser extend on my own research, I look at three issues related to language maintenance that anthropologists are uniquely positioned to investigate, namely, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions about language. Language beliefs relate to people’s concepts of what language is, how it is transmitted, why and when it needs to be maintained, and how to go about doing so. Language attitudes, meanwhile, relate to subjective evaluations of distinct linguistic codes: for example, how people evaluate a language in terms of its aesthetic and utilitarian value. Finally, I also examine the emotions that are often involved in language maintenance, which commonly include shame, regret, and anxiety, as well as pride, anticipation, and confidence. In taking an anthropological perspective on these topics, I aim to make the case for cross-disciplinary collaboration to support language maintenance efforts.
Indigenous people. However, ongoing attacks on human rights defenders
and restrictions on civil society present critical challenges for the Decade, creating a politics of fear that suppresses action in defense of Indigenous languages and undermines the effectiveness of the Decade. We demonstrate this by examining the situation in China, India, and Indonesia. These are the three most populous and linguistically diverse countries in Asia. In each country, Indigenous languages are suppressed, while human rights defenders and civil society are under attack. We conclude by making recommendations for the governments of China, India, and Indonesia; the United Nations; global civil society; and the government and people of Australia. Our recommendations seek to ensure the safe participation of Indigenous language rights defenders in the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Key recommendations include:
• The governments of China, India, and Indonesia must immediately cease attacks on human rights defenders and restrictions on civil society.
• The UN Special Representative on Rights Defenders should specifically monitor and produce information about the situation of Indigenous language
rights defenders.
• The Australian government should use the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review process to highlight restrictions on language rights and attacks on language rights defenders in China, India, and Indonesia.
• International human rights organizations should focus attention on Indigenous language rights defenders in China, India, and Indonesia.
• Journalists and academics who focus on human rights issues in Asia should help bring attention to the situation of the region’s Indigenous language rights defenders.
• Concerned individuals everywhere should stand in solidarity with language rights defenders in China, India, and Indonesia, and help raise awareness of
their plight.
state borders. It argues that both state and language borders are forms of
structural violence that are mutually reinforcing. These interlocking forms
of structural violence produce material, biopolitical, and representational
inequalities and concrete harms. Therefore, like the placing of state borders,
the placing of language borders is seen to be a non-trivial issue. The
transnational Himalayas, stretching across the People’s Republic of China
(PRC), Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bhutan, are introduced as an ideal site
for investigating how language and state borders interact. Furthermore,
the role that Tibetan, as an imagined language, plays in the region is seen
to have central importance to this dynamic.
The challenges that Indigenous and minority languages face are complex, and strategies for language maintenance need to draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives. In this presentation, I demonstrate some of the ways in which anthropology can contribute to language maintenance efforts. Based primarily on a review of Anglophone literature, but also to a lesser extend on my own research, I look at three issues related to language maintenance that anthropologists are uniquely positioned to investigate, namely, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions about language. Language beliefs relate to people’s concepts of what language is, how it is transmitted, why and when it needs to be maintained, and how to go about doing so. Language attitudes, meanwhile, relate to subjective evaluations of distinct linguistic codes: for example, how people evaluate a language in terms of its aesthetic and utilitarian value. Finally, I also examine the emotions that are often involved in language maintenance, which commonly include shame, regret, and anxiety, as well as pride, anticipation, and confidence. In taking an anthropological perspective on these topics, I aim to make the case for cross-disciplinary collaboration to support language maintenance efforts.
Agricultural tools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu35DKUnlqg
Nomadic Tools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5rogmLCON0
There are approximately 5,000 Lavrung speakers in China. They identify themselves as Tibetans, but Tibetans who speak a language that is distinct from other Tibetans. Most Lavrung-speakers live in Dzam thang County, Rnga ba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Currently, many Lavrung words for domestic tools are being lost, as work becomes increasingly mechanized.
The audio, video, and images for this video were collected by G.yu lha, a Lavrung-speaker, in order to document these vanishing words. She distributed DVDs containing Tibetan and Chinese versions of this video to Lavrung villages.
The Lavrung names of the tools are shown in the International Phonetic Alphabet, since Lavrung does not have a writing system.
The film was created by Klu rgyal 'bum in 2011. Funds to support the creation of this film were provided by the World Oral Literature Project and the Firebird Foundation."
The ritual focuses on the cults of communal deities, and also on the cult of Erlang Ye, the communal deity for the entire Sanchuan region. These deities are feted for a day with the aim of ensuring their continued protection of the community. Offerings of paper, bread, liquor, fruit, and oil (burned in lamps) are made to the deity, who is also entertained by danced performances:
Huishou - all village males dance in military-inspired formations
Zhuangjiaqi - Farmer's Dance, in which an Elder Farmer, assisted by village elders, instructs his son how to farm
Generals - depicting scenes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Shaguojiang - Tiger Killing General, in which a bull-headed warrior fights and defeats wild animals
Officials - imperial bureaucrats dance, sometimes accompanied by their wives
Cun Xiao Beats a Tiger - a youth named Cun Xiao wrestles with and defeats a tiger
The dramatic highlight of the Nadun occurs when the deity incarnates in the body of a villager, called a huala (fala), thus facilitating direct communication between the deity and the community.
In addition to the huala, other ritual practitioners may also be involved. Huashi (fashi) are practitioners who beat drums, sing, and dance to delight deities. Elderly men and women in 'mantra societies' may also chant Buddhist scriptures.
The ~ 500 images in this collection were taken throughout Sanchuan between 2008 and 2010 by Gerald Roche and Wen Xiangchen. Photos are organized chronologically from most recent to oldest, and are organized into sets by location.
For more on Nadun, see:
Stuart, Kevin and Hu Jun. "That All May Prosper: The Monguor (Tu) Nadun of the Guanting/ Sanchuan Region, Qinghai, China" Anthropos. 88 (1993): 15-27
and
Roche, Gerald. Nadun: Ritual and the Dynamics of Diversity in Northwest China's Hehuang Region. PhD thesis, Griffith University, Australia. (2011).
The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization is the first comprehensive overview of the language revitalization movement, from the Arctic to the Amazon and across continents. Featuring 47 contributions from a global range of top scholars in the field, the handbook is divided into two parts, the first of which expands on language revitalization issues of theory and practice while the second covers regional perspectives in an effort to globalize and decolonize the field. The collection examines critical issues in language revitalization, including:
language rights, language and well-being, and language policy;
language in educational institutions and in the home;
new methodologies and venues for language learning;
and the roles of documentation, literacies, and the internet.
The volume also contains chapters on the kinds of language that are less often researched such as the revitalization of music, of whistled languages and sign languages, and how languages change when they are being revitalized. The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization is the ideal resource for graduate students and researchers working in linguistic anthropology and language revitalization and endangerment.
The kaleidoscope of stories told in these songs include that of Marshall Qi, a chieftain from the Seven Valleys who travels to Luoyang with his Mongghul army to battle rebels; Laarimbu and Qiimunso, a pair of star-crossed lovers who take revenge from beyond the grave on the families that kept them apart; and the Crop-Planting Song and the Sheep Song, which map the physical and spiritual terrain of the Mongghul people, vividly describing the physical and cosmological world in which they exist.
This collection of songs is supported by an Introduction by Gerald Roche that provides an understanding of their traditional context, and shows that these works offer insights into the practices of multilingualism in Tibet. Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet is vital reading for researchers and others working on oral literature, as well as those who study Inner Asia, Tibet, and China’s ethnic minorities. Finally, this book is of interest to linguistic anthropologists and sociolinguists, particularly those working on small-scale multilingualism and pre-colonial multilingualism.
The University of Melbourne has generously contributed towards the publication of this volume.
Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet is the eighth volume in our World Oral Literature Series. The Series is produced in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project.
The text begins by placing the study in its regional context and situating the research topic within the reemergence of area studies and recent discussion on Zomia and the nature of regional formation in Asian borderlands. The introductory chapter also provides details on Nadun (including a review of relevant literature), and background on the theory and method employed in the study.
The second chapter of the thesis deals with the ontological foundations of Nadun – beliefs and practices centered on an opposition between malevolent ghosts and benevolent deities that can both manipulate human fortunes. This chapter also examines the impact of Dge lugs pa Buddhism on these beliefs and practices.
The third chapter examines the social patterning of Nadun according to local ideologies of age, gender, kin, and territory. Local idioms of hospitality, etiquette, and festive atmosphere which pattern dyadic social relationships are also discussed.
Chapter Four deals with the impact of the state upon patterns of cultural diversity and unity in China. In particular, it seeks to establish that significant elements of Nadun represent an attempt by the Qing state to render Mangghuer populations legible, conscriptable, and favorably disposed towards the state.
Chapter Five examines the impact of contemporary cultural trends – modernism, globalism, and consumerism – in Sanchuan and on Nadun. This chapter in particular examines the way in which global ideologies are co-opted by locally hegemonic ideologies.
This final chapter of this thesis generalizes the findings of the previous chapters into three broadly applicable conclusions. It is first suggested that cultural diversity is most accurately envisioned as noospheric diversity – diversity of ideologies or paradigms – rather than as diversity of cultural groups, an approach which dominates contemporary discourse on cultural diversity. It is secondly suggested that a further element of cultural diversity is areal diversity – diversity in the number and nature of regions created by meshworks of social processes within which ideologies circulate. The final generalizable conclusion of this thesis is that future attention should be paid to the role of certain individuals in generating cultural diversity by creating regional variations and combinations of translocal ideologies.
https://www120.secure.griffith.edu.au/rch/items/913bc3e4-3b57-1374-02d9-a4c46422f8f6/1/
https://www.languageonthemove.com/im-dying-to-speak-to-you/
https://theasiadialogue.com/2020/03/11/beyond-bilingual-education-in-tibet/
From: http://www.ogmios.org/blog/welcome-to-the-year-of-un-indigenous-languages/
Both India and China are currently growing more jingoistic at home and assertive abroad, creating an increasingly significant geopolitical faultline. However, a sole focus on the these two superstates misses important aspects of regional geopolitics. A look at the Himalayan language politics reveals both hidden actors and invisible victims in regional struggles.
https://thediplomat.com/2018/11/the-geopolitics-of-language-in-the-himalayas/
As China continues its rise to global prominence, understanding the complexity of its relationship with Tibet is more important than ever. Recent research suggests we still have a long way to go.
Has China’s ethnic policy increased conflict in Tibet? How do the development practices and policies of the Chinese state affect Tibetans? Do economic subsidies disempower Tibetans? Do educational policies disrupt the transmission of Tibetan language and culture? Has the attempt to build a ‘harmonious society’ in China marginalised Tibetans?
These are some of the questions that scholars and journalists are asking about Tibet today. In emphasising the transformations that Tibet is currently undergoing, they all, in one way or another, take for granted the unity and coherence of Tibet, and its existence as an object that is acted upon by the Chinese state. Here, I want to add another angle to the discussion. Rather than examining the process of transformation, I will look at what is being transformed, and ask, “What is Tibet?”
Please contact me if you have additional resources to add, and I will update this list accordingly – contact information in document header.
What is the relationship between ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity? This paper is part of a broader project to investigate this question in the context of a region of supposed ethno-cultural rupture – the Sino-Tibetan Frontier. My investigations of ethnicity, culture, and language in this region (Roche 2011, 2014, 2015, Roche and Lcag mo tshe ring 2013, Roche and Stuart 2015) have focused on a
population referred to as the Monguor or Tu. My work also aims to contribute to broader trends in the study of Tibet and ethnic minorities in China that look at the complex relations between ethnicity and diversity (Jinba Tenzin 2013, Chao 2012, Merriam 2012, Hayes 2014).
Data were collected on 20 languages (see Appendix 1 for further information). This data consisted of expert testimony from linguists and anthropologists who are intimately familiar with the demographic, social, political, cultural contexts in which the languages are spoken (see Appendix 2 for details). Questions consisted of multiple choice and Likert scale questions; opportunity for open comment was also provided.
Where applicable, the caption above each graph shows the question that respondents were asked to answer. Unless otherwise stated, values shown indicate the number of languages. The information below each chart highlights key findings. This preliminary analysis of the data is being made available to help raise awareness of the situation faced by these languages; a more rigorous analysis will follow in subsequent publications.
Video of the hearing available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QteAg-PDumg