"Catholic and Buddhist Ecologies in Tibetan Wine Production in Southwest China"

Brendan A. Galipeau
Lecturer
Environmental Studies Program
Binghamton University

Drawing from material in my recently published book, Crafting a Tibetan Terroir, this talk discusses the historical Catholic roots and modern Buddhist environmental responses to viticulture in Tibetan Southwest China. Vineyards were first introduced to this region by nineteenth-century French and Swiss Catholic missionaries to make sacramental wine, a tradition continued and expanded upon today by Catholic households today. These developments have formed in response to twenty-first century commercialization of the region for tourism, and a desire among Catholic families to differentiate themselves within the wider landscape of wine across Northwest Yunnan Province. Here Tibetan agropastoral livelihoods have been transformed by monocropping vineyards for state supported wineries. Catholic families have resisted these commercialization efforts and instead produce their own wines identified with French history and Catholic ritual. In neighboring Buddhist communities, a majority of households have welcomed state capitalism and viticulture and the new economic opportunities they bring. However, select active Buddhist environmentalists are agitating against these new economies in response to increasing use of agrochemicals and pollution. These reactions are largely driven by perceived degradation of sacred landscapes and failing devotion to mountain deities, observed through changes in the landscape such as glacier retreat.

Brendan A. Galipeau is a Lecturer in Environmental Studies at Binghamton University. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan from 2019 to 2024 and as a postdoctoral fellow in Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University from 2017 to 2019. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in 2017 and MA in Applied Anthropology at Oregon State University in 2012.

Galipeau has lived in and been conducting research in Tibetan Southwest China for almost two decades since 2007. His research and publications broadly focus on environmental change and human relations with nature in Southwest China and Taiwan, with a particular focus on agrarian change, hydropower resettlement, and religious ecologies. His work and publications have been featured in a variety of publications and media including Made in China, Journal of Agrarian Change, Human Ecology, Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment, National Public Radio, and the web publication The Third Pole. Crafting a Tibetan Terroir published by the University of Washington Press in 2024 is his first book.

Sponsored: Religious Studies Program

Co-sponsors: East Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies