Galipeau Brendan A.: Crafting a Tibetan Terroir

Winemaking in Shangri-La

From the introduction of vineyards by nineteenth-century by French and Swiss Catholic missionaries to make sacramental wine, to twenty-first century commercialization, this ethnography documents the ways that Tibetans are indigenizing modernity in the context of capitalist development on their own terms. It also addresses larger issues of global capitalism and its history, suggesting that certain commodities-stimulants and intoxicants in particular-have connected Europe and the Asia Pacific region for extended periods of time, and that these connections are now being reconceived in fashioning new industries and identities.