Unsettled landscapes. The (un)making and remaking of a Tibetan farming community in northwestern China

This paper examines the impacts of land expropriation and resettlement on a Tibetan farming community in Qinghai Province by addressing resource distribution, land ownership, community membership, and sociopolitical structures. In this case, land expropriation involved the state taking community land from farmers for reforestation and demolishing their houses in the original village site to make farmland. The land expropriation prompted a shift to more market-oriented livelihoods, and it divided the community, creating tensions among villagers due to opposed interests exacerbated by competitive capitalistic relations in the market economy. As a state-led community-building scheme, resettlement ruptured the village community, undermining traditional social structures and cultural institutions. Nevertheless, villagers responded to the perceived weakening of social cohesion by drawing on the notions of pha yul (home/homeland), sha khrag rgyud pa (kin), and kha ya na zla (peers) to revitalise their community. Here I describe resettlement as an ongoing historic process of community building that does not simply end with the removal of people from one place to another, especially on the part of resettled people.