About the Book Together with new preface detailing author's 1987-88 research Tibet, Tibetan Frontier Families becomes chronicle four generations Tibet's people. This community a hundred villages embedded the Tibetan valleys hillsides Dingri, adjacent the Pung Chu River in Tibet, facing Mount Everest the north, the main route between and Lhasa, Tibet.

unique chronicle, now updated beautifully written preface, the first sociological account of kind. Along with unparalleled personal portraits these mountain the book explains Tibetans' complex household structure detailed family genealogies case histories. We understand the economy of Dingri the context affairs and relation to the land which people move work. We learn religious history and what means to be and though intimate and vivid stories family dynamics.

and charisma spiritual masters, From hundreds of accounts assembled highly trained scientist, the rhythm of civilization The body book based on the research refugees in Nepal. With her subsequent visits Tibet, recorded new edition preface, the anthropologist reveals more dimensions of Dingri's personality: its austere physical landscape, ongoing economic cultural dynamics, survival of institutions and changes following the imposition of Chinese rule over Tibet. edition includes new photographs the author during her 1988 excursions through Dingri.

About the Author Barbara Nimri Aziz resides in New York where she continues her writing and lecturing while devoting much time to radio production (Pacifica-WBAI Radio, 99.5 fm, New York; www.Radio Tahrir.org). "Swimming Up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq" (2007, University Press Florida.) is her most recent book. Aziz also authored "Heir to A Silent Song: Two Rebel Women of Nepal" (2000, Tribhuvan University Press) and she is co editor of the 1984 collection "Soundings in Tibetan Civilization" (reprinted in 2009 by Vajra Books, Nepal). "Tibetan Frontier Families" was initially published in 1978 by Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi. It has become a classic in the anthropology and sociology of Tibet.

Aziz was a Fulbright professor in Algeria in 2008. She is currently at work on a collection of essays based on her research in North Africa.

Preface The sky was clear, cloudless blue, the sun piercing bright, and one could see far, far across the open Tibetan plain. Dingri Maidan lay before me.

A biting wind erased any warmth that the seamless space above us may have promised. Arriving on the Dingri plain, I was eager to finally witness its daily life-what was left of it under Chinese rule. I would be pleasantly surprised, but I did not know what to expect on this first encounter.

I pulled in my chin and turned my face away from the sandy blast, squinting tightly to discern the terrain ahead of me. I had written much about Dingri's people but only from a distance. Fifteen years earlier I lived with Dingri refugees in Nepal. I expected the place they fled had since become a desolate scene. Now I would find out if anything endured decades of Chinese rule and the inclement environment.

On the surface the expanse around me certainly appeared desolate. This was before I stopped and conversed with its inhabitants, wandered through their humble settlements and closely examined craggy recesses of the landscape. On my second visit, in the early summer when streams flowed at our feet and green barley sprouted behind stone walls and turned the gritty earth green, I would discover just how much survived. The slow revelation of the layers of a place's life is what so enchants an anthropologist or biologist and helps us endure the discomforts that may attend our painstaking and sometimes-lonely work. That measured disclosure is the science of research too. My first visit to Dingri was in early winter 1986.

**Contents and Sample Pages**