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Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas
By: Vincanne Adams

Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas, Vincanne Adams


 
Our Price: $29.95
Author: Vincanne Adams
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780691001111


Product Code: 13090
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Description Contents
 
Sherpas are portrayed by Westerners as heroic mountain guides, or "tigers of the snow," as Buddhist adepts, and as a people in touch with intimate ways of life that seem no longer available in the Western world. In this book, Vincanne Adams explores how attempts to characterize an "authentic" Sherpa are complicated by Western fascination with Sherpas and by the Sherpas' desires to live up to Western portrayals of them. Noting that diplomatic aides at world summit meetings go by the name "Sherpa," as do a van in the U.K. built for rough terrain and a software product from Silicon Valley, Adams examines the "authenticating" effects of this mobile signifier on a community of Himalayan Sherpas who live at the base of Mount Everest, Nepal, and its "deauthenticating" effects on anthropological representation.

This book speaks not only to anthropologists concerned with ethnographic portrayals of Otherness but also to those working in cultural studies who are concerned with ethnographically grounded analyses of representations. Throughout Adams illustrates how one might undertake an ethnography of transnationally produced subjects by using the notion of "virtual" identities. In a manner informed by both Buddhism and shamanism, virtual Sherpas are always both real and distilled reflections of the desires that produce them.

Tigers of the Snow and Other Virtual Sherpas, Vincanne Adams, Princeton, Paperback, 1996, 304 Pages, $29.95
List of Illustrations
Acknowlegments
Orthographic Note
Introduction: Lament for Pasang3
Ch. 1Sherpas in Mirrors39
Ch. 2Making Modern Sherpas79
Ch. 3Buddhist Sherpas as Others121
Ch. 4The Intimacy of Shamanic Sherpas171
Ch. 5Seduction and Simulative Power in the Himalayas: Staying Sherpa206
Conclusion: Virtual Sherpas in Circulation233
Appendix A Khentse Rinpoche Lecture, Tengboche, 1987243
Appendix B Exerpts from "The Stages of Repelling Demons Based on the Heart Sutra, the Summary of the Vast, Intermediate, and Condensed Mothers"247
Appendix C Musings on Textuality and Truth251
Appendix D Production/Seduction257
Notes263
Glossary of Sherpa Terms283
Bibliography289
Index299

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