Research On The Ecological Culture Of Production And Living In Rural Areas In Central Tibet

The ecological environment of Central Tibet is fragile,and Tibetans there are confronted with three major problems: lack of fertilizer in agriculture,insufficiency of fodder in grass-based production,and shortage of firewood in cooking and warming.In spite of these,they organize their production,make their living,conserve their environment,and materialize a sustainable socio-economic development by fully using their ecological knowledge inherited from one generation to another.Great changes have taken place in Tibet since its democratic reformation in 1959.Because of modernization,informatization and globalization,rural areas in Central Tibet have been witnessing unprecedented changes,so has the traditional ecological culture,the study of which is thus both necessary and of great value in terms of cultural record.The dissertation mainly takes as its research object villagers' production and living in Zhaxi Lin Village Zhanang County Tibet Autonomous Region,and records the production and consumption of material subsistence in a microscopic,detailed and systematic way.Following that,it applies such theories as mode of livelihood,indigenous knowledge,cultural adaptation and changes to interpreting cultural issues related to production and living in Zhaxi Lin Village to disclose features of ecological culture in rural areas in Central Tibet.Production in Zhaxin Lin Village deals with activities in agriculture,animal husbandry,and forestation.Agriculturally,the dissertation focuses on villagers' cognition of cultivated land and crops,corresponding farming techniques and systems,especially their ways to maintain soil fertility,to make their cultivation sustainable.In grass-based production,it records their cognition of domestic animals and grass,indigenous grazing knowledge,and the strategy to make farming and grazing supportive to each other for lack of fodder.As for forestation,it includes indigenous lore of about tree plantation,utilization,taboos,village-level regulation,and cultural tension.In daily life in Zhaxi Lin,it mainly concerns with villagers' consumption of energy and food.The former is about changes in cooking utensils and tactics of using traditional and new energies,and the latter introduces food consumption both daily and on festivals,food taboos,their sanitary strategies,and the like.The dissertation holds that,in the interaction of land,crops,grass,domestic animals,trees,and so on,villagers in Centre Tibet create series of production techniques so adaptive to the environment that they play a significant role in its conservation,through which we can see their understanding of,respect and obeisance towards nature.Villagers also interact in society by means of synchronous production activities,exchanging labors,offering aid to others and receiving help in return.By doing so,they integrate human and material resources so that they make up their insufficient individual capacity and strengthen their collectively living ability.Furthermore,influenced under various production-related taboos,customs,and such ideas as moderating consumption,doing good,and paying great collective harmony,villagers normalize their behaviors and make their social-economy more sustainable.their indigenous ecological wisdom is of enlightenment to the current construction of ecological civilization.In analyzing cultural items in villagers' production and living,the dissertation mainly applies the theory of cultural adaptation to explaining how cultural items suit the local environment,society,and cultural system.On some occasions,it even employs a modern scientific knowledge to explore the inherent rationality existent in some cultural items,thus adding an interpreting perspective in it.One important feature in traditional rural production and living is that villagers use some different carriers to convert their resources of which energy is current and then make them recycled.The dissertation finds out some new carriers like dry toilets,natural fertilizer pit,and cultivated land used as transitional pasture,and expands research on ecological culture.Because of their important role in rural production and living,dry toilets constitute a separate chapter in the dissertation to discuss their adaption to environment,social-economy and culture with most of datum directly coming from fieldwork.Moreover,the dissertation puts forward some different views on some rituals,taboos,and customs connecting with rural production and living in Centre Tibet.