Abstract
This is an ethnographic study of the Tibetan living around the valleys of Yang-tzu River on the Yunnan – Xizang border in Southwest China. It uses field and archival data collected among laity and monks during six months of fieldwork. This study is particularly concerned with the interplay between lay community and Tibetan monastic institution. In this essay the author attempt a comprehensive picture of bilaterally reciprocal relationship. This thesis follows in the scholarly lineages of Exchange as defined by Mauss, and the Tibetan study as articulated by Goldstein. Accordingly, this thesis in two parts: Part one, base on interviews with the village-residents, exams aspects of the economic production、consumption and mutual-aid association follows by kinship、alliance、coresidence framework. Part two, an ethnographic case study of local monastic community. The aim is to show how the hierarchy of monastic institute runs. Ritual potlatch is needed for those monks intent on getting a higher level, especially the public feast for the position of disciplinary lama (dge bskos). The results of this project are detail analysis the economic behavior. People lavish spending of wealth in religious ritual, both layers and monks are pursuing the achieved status become an honorable great people.