The Moynihan Institute’s\, East Asia Progra m presents a book talk with Brendan A. Galipeau from Binghamton Univeristy - SUNY.
Book Abstract:
This book talk discusses how wine has transformed Tibetan land and lives. Set in the Sino-Tibetan border re gion renamed “Shangri-La” by the Chinese government for tourism promotion\ , Crafting a Tibetan Terroir considers how the deploym ent of the French notion of terroir works to create new forms of ethno-reg ional identities and village landscapes through the production of Tibetan wine as a commodity. \;
In Shangri-La\, a rapidly de veloping international ethno-travel destination\, European histories and g lobal capitalism are being reestablished and reformulated through viticult ure\, which has altered landscapes and livelihoods. From the introduction of vineyards by nineteenth-century French and Swiss Catholic missionaries to make sacramental wine\, to twenty-first century commercialization\, thi s ethnography documents the ways Tibetans are indigenizing modernity in th e context of economic development on their own terms.
It provides t imely insight into China’s rapid entry into the global wine market\, highl ighting the localized impacts of this emergent industry\, which include tr ansformation from subsistence agriculture to monocropping and intensified agrochemical use. It also addresses larger issues of international trade\, suggesting that certain commodities—stimulants and intoxicants in particu lar—have long connected Europe and the Asia Pacific region\, and that thes e connections are now being reconceived in fashioning new industries and i dentities.
Brendan A. Galipeau is a lecturer in env ironmental studies at Binghamton University. He previously served as assis tant professor of anthropology at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan from 2019 to 2024 and as a postdoctoral fellow in transnational Asian stud ies at Rice University from 2017 to 2019. Galipeau has lived in and has be en conducting research in Tibetan Southwest China since 2007. His research and publications broadly focus on environmental change and human relation s with nature in Southwest China and Taiwan\, with a particular focus on a grarian change\, hydropower resettlement and religious ecologies. \;