Report on the International Conference on Origins and Migrations among Tibeto-Burman Speakers of the Extended Eastern Himalaya: Humboldt University, 23 - 25 May, 2008

Abstract

An international, interdisciplinary conference on origins and migrations among Tibeto-Burman speakers of the "Extended Eastern Himalaya" was staged by the Humboldt University Institute for Asian and African Studies over three glorious spring days in Berlin this May. The stage was initially set by F K Lehman (Chit Hlaing; Univ. of Illinois) and Robbins Burling (Univ. of Michigan), who lost no time in dispensing with the popularly-held view that an entire population (nation, tribe, etc.) might be said to have "originated" in one place and "migrated" en masse to another. Instead, they both argued, places of "origin" and putative migration routes alike are as subject to reinterpretation and change as the populations themselves are to mixture with neighbouring groups and shifts in status, identity and group-affiliations over space and over time. Lehman's and Burling's themes surfaced repeatedly throughout the remainder of the conference as participants grappled from a variety of perspectives with the nature and reliability of various types of evidence The conference convenors Toni Huber (Tibetan studies, Humboldt University) and Stuart Blackburn (Folklore, SOAS) assembled a diverse field of presenters, discussants and other participants from a wide range of disciplines - including folklorists, Tibetologists, (other) anthropologists, historians, geographers, and linguists - with the goal of addressing the vexing twin problems of "origins" and "migrations" among T-B speakers in an area stretching from central Arunachal Pradesh to upland Southeast Asia and Southwest China. Despite the diversity of approaches represented and the breadth and complexity of the field addressed, the conference was marked throughout by fascinating and often unexpected convergences of viewpoint and a uniformly collegial and collaborative atmosphere. This was certainly due in no small part to the evidently high competence of the conference organizers and their assistants (mainly Humboldt University graduate students), who ferried participants efficiently but in an always relaxed manner from hotel to venue, room to restaurant, and discussion to discussion, and in the end brought off a logistically challenging event without even the slightest hitch.