FASS Staff Profile

DR DANZENG JINBA
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Appointment:
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Office:
AS1/03-18
Email:
socdj@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
(65) 6516-6409
Fax:
(65) 6777-9579
Homepage:
http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/soc/faculty/jdanzeng.html
Tabs

Brief Introduction

 

I was born and raised in Gyalrong, on the easternmost fringe of the Tibetan plateau. There, Tibetan and Chinese civilizations encounter and converge, and it is also a land rich in oral traditions about powerful queens, fearless warriors and learned lamas in history. I have simultaneously witnessed unprecedented changes in local livelihood and environment as a result of state-orchestrated development projects, including tourism.

Such an experience cultivates my keen interest in borders and margins, oral traditions, gender symbolism, nature and culture, environment and development, cultural encounters, and state-society relations. To explore these interests initially motivated myself to pursue a PhD in Anthropology at Boston University, and then I went on to conduct my postdoctoral research at the Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, to further such inquiries. While continuing to probe into these research areas at present, I have also become fascinated with comparative intellectual practices, academic dependency, postcolonial critiques, social suffering and wellbeing (medical anthropology/sociology), among other issues. So far, my relevant works have appeared in such journals as Current Anthropology, China Quarterly, Modern China, Cross-Currents, Journal of Historical Sociology, and American Behavioral Scientist.

I am also the author of the book: In the Land of The Eastern Queendom:  The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan Border (University of Washington Press, 2014). This book looks into the reconfiguring grassroots politics and state-society relations in Sichuan’s Tibetan region with particular attention to intra-state and intra-societal divergences. My latest book, The Beggar Lama: The Life of the Gyalrong Kuzhap (Columbia University Press, 2023), discusses the resilience and promise of the Tibetan culture in its potential “spiritual” value in this assumed increasingly materialized and rationalized world. As an extension, another ongoing book project of mine, Small Peoples, Big Histories: A Grassland's Elegy,  delves further into possibilities and potentials of non-Western “alternative” traditions in addressing high modernity’s dehumanizing potential and effect, namely, an ongoing process to deprive people (individuals and group) of their humanness (human qualities), as "inspired" partly by the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. On top of that, I participated in a research team on Tibetan manuscript studies led by Professor Tsanlha Ngawang (one of the last living Tibetan Buddhist polymaths of his generation in China, or the "beggar lama" in my book) and co-edited Gyalrong Tibetan History and Culture Book Series (10 Volumes in Tibetan and Chinese), the first and largest of its kind. 

Finally, I'm enthusiastic about exploring social complexity through diverse disciplines and angles, and I welcome my Honours, MA, and PhD students to pursue their research agendas and employ different methods. This allows me to learn from their fresh approaches and novel ideas, and remain an earnest student in the field.

  


Teaching Areas

 

SOCIAL MEMORY

CULTURE & SOCIETY

GENDER, CULTURE AND SOCIETY

UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY CULTURES

SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN MODERN CHINA

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

 

 

 


Graduate Supervision

 

PhD Supervision:

2016-2022   Suraj Gogoi,  Sociology, PhD Thesis:  “Assamese Ideology: Social and Political Consciousness in Contemporary Assam"


Research Interests

Critical Border Studies

Crtical China (and Tibetan) Studies

Critical Sociology of Academia and Intellectuals

 


Publications

BOOKS/MONOGRAPHS AUTHORED

  •  

    Published in English:

    2023. The Beggar Lama: The Life of the Gyalrong Kuzhap. New York: Columbia University Press. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-beggar-lama/9780231209359

    2014. In the Land of The Eastern Queendom:  The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan Border.  Seattle:  University of Washington Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwngcb (open access)

     

    Published in Chinese & Tibetan:

    2017. Gyalrong Tibetan History and Culture Book Series (10 Volumes in Tibetan and Chinese), co-editor (of the book series), with Tsanlha Ngawang and others. Chengdu: Sichuan Ethnic Studies Press.

    2017. Local History of Gyalrong III (Gyalrong Tibetan History and Culture Book Series), co-editor, with Tsanlha Ngawang and others. Chengdu: Sichuan Ethnic Studies Press.

     

    Ongoing: 

    Small Peoples, Big Histories: A Grassland's Elegy.

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

OTHERS

  • Short Essays

     

    2020. Review of Stéphane Gros, Frontier Tibet: Patterns of Change in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland. In The Journal of Asian Studies 79(4): 984-986.

    2020. Review of Max Oidtmann, Forging the Golden Urn: The Qing Empire and the Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet. In American Historical Review 125(5): 1838–1839.

    2019. Review of Charlene Makley, The Battle for Fortune: State-Led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China. In The China Quarterly 239: 829-831.

    2017. “Contesting Border/Frontier Studies in China and Beyond: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Zomia as a Metaphor” (Review of Kang Xiaofei and Donald Sutton, Contesting the Yellow Dragon: ethnicity, religion, and the state in the Sino-Tibetan borderland and Megan Bryson, Goddess on the frontier: religion, ethnicity, and gender in southwest China). Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 24: 192-199.

    2017. Review of Naktsang Nulo, My Tibetan Childhood: When Ice Shattered Stone. In China Review International: 22 (2), 2015: 134-137.

    2016. Review of the documentary film: Peasant Family Happiness, directed by Jenny Chio. In Pacific Affairs 89 (2): 507-509.

    2015. “Is the Sino-Tibetan Border ‘Zomia’ or ‘middle ground’?” (Review of Jack Patrick Hayes, A Change in Worlds on the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands: Politics, Economies, and Environments in Northern Sichuan). In American Historical Review 120 (1): 216-217

    2014. Review of Emily Chao, Lijiang Stories: Shamans, Taxi Drivers, and Runaway Brides in Reform-Era China. In Asian Ethnology 73 (1/2): 307-309.

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