This exhilarating book interweaves the stories of two early twentieth-century botanists to explore the collaborative relationships each formed with Yunnan villagers in gathering botanical specimens from the borderlands between China, Tibet, and Burma. Erik Mueggler introduces Scottish botanist George Forrest, who employed Naxi adventurers in his fieldwork from 1906 until his death in 1932. We also meet American Joseph Francis Charles Rock, who, in 1924, undertook a dangerous expedition to Gansu and Tibet with the sons and nephews of Forrest's workers. Mueggler describes how the Naxi workers and their Western employers rendered the earth into specimens, notes, maps, diaries, letters, books, photographs, and ritual manuscripts. Drawing on an ancient metaphor of the earth as a book, Mueggler provides a sustained meditation on what can be copied, translated, and revised and what can be folded back into the earth.

Autorentext

Erik Mueggler is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China (UC Press).



Inhalt

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration

Introduction

Part I
1. The Eyes of Others
2. Farmers and Kings
3. The Paper Road
4. The Golden Mountain Gate

Part II
5. Bodies Real and Virtual
6. Lost Worlds
7. The Mountain
8. Adventurers
9. The Book of the Earth

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Titel
The Paper Road
Untertitel
Archive and Experience in the Botanical Exploration of West China and Tibet
EAN
9780520950498
ISBN
978-0-520-95049-8
Format
E-Book (epub)
Veröffentlichung
02.11.2011
Digitaler Kopierschutz
Wasserzeichen
Anzahl Seiten
376
Jahr
2011
Untertitel
Englisch
Auflage
1. Auflage