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This article argues that belonging can be characterized by absence. It explores this as experienced in two different geographical and historical contexts by two groups of actors: members of the early Tibetan diaspora in India (1959–1979) and former members of a religious group (Aum Shinrikyō) in Japan. The absence we conceptualize is double: it is not solely a spatial absence, but also a temporal absence in terms of the irreversibility of time. It is felt and articulated through emotions that play decisive roles in the constitution and sustaining of these communities. These communities as feeling communities are characterized by absence, but absence is simultaneously what makes them a community. This simultaneity allows our actors to create complex temporal frameworks by relating to reimagined pasts, different presents, and potential futures. Therefore, the article contributes to discussions of belonging by retheorizing the relationship between absence, emotions, and time.

This article investigates the political mobilization of Tibetans in Toronto. I develop the hypothesis that Tibetans in Toronto who enter into local politics are already politicized, which facilitates the transition from activism within the Tibetan community to activism in Canadian society. To explore this transition from an inward- to an outward-looking type of mobilization, I draw on theoretical insights about the political integration of migrants developed by leading scholars in Social Movement Studies and Diaspora Studies. The careers of the two Tibetans who stood for office in Toronto in 2018, Bhutila Karpoche and Kalsang Dolma, as well as of Tibetan blogger and campaign manager Gelek Badheytsang, then serve to analyze the “strategic action fields” (Fligstein and McAdam 2012) or “arenas” (Jasper and Duyvendak 2015) invested by the Tibetans who choose to enter into local politics.

In Dharamsala, India, the third generation of Tibetans is growing up in Indian exile. While in the homeland Tibet, cultural and religious practices face systematic destruction, many Tibetans in India try their best to preserve these. While Tibetan cultural identity has been the subject of numerous studies, few academic publications focused specifically on youth in the diaspora. This is significant because a large part of the Tibetan population in exile is young. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dharamsala in northern India, this thesis examines the experiences and lived realities of young Tibetans. By analyzing their individual concepts of cultural identity, the work focuses on the interplay of perceptions of the homeland Tibet, India as hostland, and the broader diaspora. This interplay is grounded in political and social conditions of the exile and the resulting challenges, as well as the political and social desires for the homeland. The young Tibetan generation in Dharamsala struggles for the continuation of Tibetan traditions, religions, languages, and culture in the diaspora. Although they share a collective memory of the history and a longing for the homeland, they pursuit individual and highly heterogeneous plans for the future. This thesis analyzes variations of “being Tibetan” in Dharamsala by evaluating different cultural aspects and experiences by Tibetans in their two countries of origins, Tibet or India. In Dharamsala, Indien, wächst die dritte Generation von Tibetern im indischen Exil auf. Während im Heimatland Tibet kulturelle und religiöse Praktiken der systematischen Zerstörung ausgesetzt sind, versuchen viele Tibeter in Indien ihr Bestes, diese zu bewahren. Während die tibetische kulturelle Identität Gegenstand zahlreicher Studien war, gibt es nur wenige akademische Veröffentlichungen, die sich speziell mit der Jugend in der Diaspora beschäftigen. Dies ist bedeutsam, da ein großer Teil der tibetischen Bevölkerung im Exil jung ist. Basierend auf einer ethnographischen Feldforschung in Dharamsala in Nordindien, untersucht diese Arbeit die Erfahrungen und Lebensrealitäten junger Tibeter. Durch die Analyse ihrer individuellen Konzepte von kultureller Identität konzentriert sich die Arbeit auf das Zusammenspiel von Wahrnehmungen des Heimatlandes Tibet, Indien als Gastland und der breiteren Diaspora. Dieses Zusammenspiel ist begründet in den politischen und sozialen Bedingungen des Exils und den daraus resultierenden Herausforderungen sowie den politischen und sozialen Sehnsüchten nach dem Heimatland. Die junge tibetische Generation in Dharamsala kämpft für den Fortbestand der tibetischen Traditionen, Religionen, Sprachen und Kultur in der Diaspora. Obwohl sie eine kollektive Erinnerung an die Geschichte und eine Sehnsucht nach dem Heimatland teilen, verfolgen sie individuelle und sehr heterogene Zukunftspläne. Diese Arbeit analysiert Variationen des "Tibetischseins" in Dharamsala, indem sie verschiedene kulturelle Aspekte und Erfahrungen von Tibetern in ihren beiden Herkunftsländern, Tibet oder Indien, auswertet. unKnown

In Dharamsala, India, the third generation of Tibetans is growing up in Indian exile. While in the homeland Tibet, cultural and religious practices face systematic destruction, many Tibetans in India try their best to preserve these. While Tibetan cultural identity has been the subject of numerous studies, few academic publications focused specifically on youth in the diaspora. This is significant because a large part of the Tibetan population in exile is young. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dharamsala in northern India, this thesis examines the experiences and lived realities of young Tibetans. By analyzing their individual concepts of cultural identity, the work focuses on the interplay of perceptions of the homeland Tibet, India as hostland, and the broader diaspora. This interplay is grounded in political and social conditions of the exile and the resulting challenges, as well as the political and social desires for the homeland. The young Tibetan generation in Dharamsala struggles for the continuation of Tibetan traditions, religions, languages, and culture in the diaspora. Although they share a collective memory of the history and a longing for the homeland, they pursuit individual and highly heterogeneous plans for the future. This thesis analyzes variations of “being Tibetan” in Dharamsala by evaluating different cultural aspects and experiences by Tibetans in their two countries of origins, Tibet or India., n Dharamsala, Indien, wächst die dritte Generation von Tibetern im indischen Exil auf. Während im Heimatland Tibet kulturelle und religiöse Praktiken der systematischen Zerstörung ausgesetzt sind, versuchen viele Tibeter in Indien ihr Bestes, diese zu bewahren. Während die tibetische kulturelle Identität Gegenstand zahlreicher Studien war, gibt es nur wenige akademische Veröffentlichungen, die sich speziell mit der Jugend in der Diaspora beschäftigen. Dies ist bedeutsam, da ein großer Teil der tibetischen Bevölkerung im Exil jung ist. Basierend auf einer ethnographischen Feldforschung in Dharamsala in Nordindien, untersucht diese Arbeit die Erfahrungen und Lebensrealitäten junger Tibeter. Durch die Analyse ihrer individuellen Konzepte von kultureller Identität konzentriert sich die Arbeit auf das Zusammenspiel von Wahrnehmungen des Heimatlandes Tibet, Indien als Gastland und der breiteren Diaspora. Dieses Zusammenspiel ist begründet in den politischen und sozialen Bedingungen des Exils und den daraus resultierenden Herausforderungen sowie den politischen und sozialen Sehnsüchten nach dem Heimatland. Die junge tibetische Generation in Dharamsala kämpft für den Fortbestand der tibetischen Traditionen, Religionen, Sprachen und Kultur in der Diaspora. Obwohl sie eine kollektive Erinnerung an die Geschichte und eine Sehnsucht nach dem Heimatland teilen, verfolgen sie individuelle und sehr heterogene Zukunftspläne. Diese Arbeit analysiert Variationen des "Tibetischseins" in Dharamsala, indem sie verschiedene kulturelle Aspekte und Erfahrungen von Tibetern in ihren beiden Herkunftsländern, Tibet oder Indien, auswertet., GISCA occasional paper ; 30

The epidemic of COVID-19 caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been in the headlines since December 2019. This Think Piece presents ethnographic vignettes from a recent (February 2020) field visit to Dharamsala, where the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and a Tibetan exile community reside in the northwestern Indian Himalayas. At that time there were no COVID-19 cases in India except in Kerala, South India, which had three confirmed cases. There were no cases in Tibetan communities in India, but they were considered vulnerable because of the influx of Buddhist pilgrims from China. My ethnographic focus is on traditional Tibetan medical responses of prevention and conceptions of contagion prior to any outbreak. I explore what counts as prevention, protection, and contagion in a Tibetan medical public outreach context during pre-epidemic days, and how politics and fear of ‘the other’ merge with the preventive aspects of traditional medicinal products and public health announcements in Dharamsala. Taken together, these ethnographic vignettes illustrate how local epidemic imaginaries draw on complex webs of potency. These combine, for example, substances and their smells with mantras, protective oils, and facemasks in varied ways, all in an effort to reduce anxiety and prevent contagion.

This paper proposes a survey of the many ways in which people look at and deal with animals in contemporary India. On the basis of ethnographic research and of multiple written sources (judgments, newspapers, websites, legal files, activist pamphlets, etc.), I present some of the actors involved in the animal debate&mdash, animal activists, environmental lawyers, judges, and hunter-conservationists&mdash, who adopt different, though sometimes interconnected, approaches to animals. Some of them look at animals as victims that need to be rescued and treated in the field, others fight for animals in Parliament or in Court so that they can be entitled to certain rights, others are concerned with the issue of species survival, where the interest of the group prevails on the protection of individual animals. In the context of a predominantly secularist background of the people engaged in such debates, I also examine the role that religion may, in certain cases, play for some of them: whether as a way of constructing a Hindu or Buddhist cultural or political identity, or as a strategic argument in a legal battle in order to obtain public attention. Lastly, I raise the question of the role played by animals themselves in these different situations&mdash, as intellectual principles to be fought for (or to be voiced) in their absence, or as real individuals to interact with and whose encounter may produce different kinds of sometimes conflicting emotions.

This study uses the Tibetan mandala, a Buddhist meditation aid and sacred artform, as a secular critical model by which to analyse the complete fictions of author David Mitchell. Discussing his novels, short stories and libretti, this study maps the author’s fictions as an interconnected world-system whose re-evaluation of secular belief in galvanising compassionate ethical action is revealed by a critical comparison with the mandala’s methods of world-building. Using the mandala as an interpretive tool to critique the author’s Buddhist influences, this thesis reads the mandala as a metaphysical map, a fitting medium for mapping the author’s ethical worldview. The introduction evaluates critical structures already suggested to describe the author’s worlds, and introduces the mandala as an alternative which more fully addresses Mitchell’s fictional terrain. Chapter I investigates the mandala’s cartographic properties, mapping Mitchell’s short stories as integral islandic narratives within his fictional world which, combined, re-evaluate the role of secular belief in galvanising positive ethical action. Chapter II discusses the Tibetan sand mandala in diaspora as a form of performance when created for unfamiliar audiences, reading its cross-cultural deployment in parallel with the regenerative approaches to tragedy in the author’s libretti Wake and Sunken Garden. Chapter III identifies Mitchell’s use of reincarnation as a form of non-linear temporality that advocates future-facing ethical action in the face of humanitarian crises, reading the reincarnated Marinus as a form of secular bodhisattva. Chapter IV deconstructs the mandala to address its theoretical limitations, identifying the panopticon as its sinister counterpart, and analysing its effects in number9dream. Chapter V shifts this study’s use of the mandala from interpretive tool to emerging category, identifying the transferrable traits that form the emerging category of mandalic literature within other post-secular contemporary fictions, discussing works by Michael Ondaatje, Ali Smith, Yann Martel, Will Self, and Margaret Atwood.

The concept of the contact zone, as formulated by Marie Louise Pratt, describes social spaces where different cultures meet and engage, generally in very uneven relations of power. However, she suggests that contact zones can also be de-colonialising spaces where new possibilities are formulated for a different, better future. Within such spaces some kind of hope is essential. In recent years the notion of hope has been the focus of considerable attention by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, yet the role of hope in a contact zone has received little, if any, attention. This paper explores contact zones where diverse, multiple hopes, from western and non-western cultures, encounter each other. In particular it draws on the struggle for reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, plus attempts at dialogue between western cultures and the Tibetan Diaspora as it seeks reconciliation with China. While a sense of hope can be shared across differing cultures, it can also be highly specific to them. Different goals for hope can circulate through a contact zone, and also differing visions and modalities of hope as western and non-western cultures struggle to attain some kind of mutual imaginary. Such situations suggest challenges for post-Enlightenment systems of knowledge and imagination, which have often dominated contact with other traditions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Since the end of the Cold War, the international system has become more cosmopolitan, communicative, and connected. These changes have taken place against a backdrop of intensifying processes of globalization, the unevenness of which has helped redefine possible fields of political action. This dissertation offers an interpretation of how we might go about understanding and representing the intercultural dynamics and forms of politics that constitute the transnational Tibet Movement.