Jane Caple's monograph Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet explores the resurgence of Geluk monastic Buddhism on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, in Tibetan geographical terms Amdo, which is under the jurisdiction of Qinghai Province in the People's Republic of China. The sixteen monasteries and their supporting communities where Caple conducted ethnographic fieldwork from 2008 to 2015 are situated in Rebgong (Ch. Tongren) and western Bayen (Ch. Hualong)—an ethnically diverse border zone northeast of the Tibet Autonomous Region that has significant Tibetan but also Han Chinese, Muslim, and Mongol populations. Caple's rich material produced through extensive fieldwork and interviews (with eighty-two monastics and fifty-five laypeople) provides an important and critical bottom-up perspective on an exceptional development in Tibet: the revival of Tibetan Buddhist monasticism after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
The focus is on monastic economy, and Caple argues from the very beginning that “[i]ssues...
