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Despite exposure to political violence, many Tibetans in the diaspora avoid framing past experience in terms of trauma. Instead, they deploy shared cultural understandings often infused with Buddhist doctrine, to reframe loss, violence and displacement. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research in Dharamsala, India conducted in the Tibetan language, this article investigates how Tibetans utilise everyday cultural wisdom framed by lojong (mind-training) teachings to cope with adversity. Here, compassion practices serve to orient members of the diaspora towards recovery even, and perhaps, especially, when they are struggling. In this article, I argue that this cultural form of resilience is better conceived of as a practice of agency than a mental health practice, despite a global interest in adapting meditation and mindfulness for use in clinical settings. This study also challenges theory on structural violence and social suffering, which tends to overemphasise victimhood, bypassing the ordinary (and extraordinary) ways that people find agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contrasts approaches to supporting ethno-cultural diversity in education in Canada, the USA and India through the lens of the experiences of the Tibetan diaspora. All three countries self-identify as linguistic and ethnically diverse states that value multiculturalism. These shared values make them insightful comparative cases to consider the role of public education vis-a-vis its impact on ethnocultural diversity within pluralistic societies. The case used to conduct the comparison is that of the Tibetan diaspora, an ethno-cultural migrant minority found in each country. Three prevailing ethnocultural diversity orientations are identified - integration, achievement and sustainability - to describe prevalent approaches in Canada, the USA and India, respectively. The paper concludes with implications of the skewed orientations in each context, proposing a more balanced use of all three orientations for more robust and comprehensive supports for ethno-cultural diversity in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing scholarly discussions on international volunteer tourism focus primarily on volunteer tourists as subjects and local communities as their near-static objects. This ethnographic study reverses that focus. Five developmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are explored as active agents that see tourists and travellers as a resource and a free workforce in Dharamsala's Tibetan diaspora settlement in India. These NGOs have found a unique way of increasing the volume of volunteer tourism by offering tourists and travellers accessible volunteering opportunities on the spot, particularly as English-language tutors for Tibetan newcomers. Tourists and travellers in Dharamsala are backpacker oriented and usually interested in Tibetan culture, representing a perfect target group for NGOs offering them meaningful encounters with Tibetans. This study aims to broaden the scope of scholarly discussion and conceptualization of volunteer tourism. It provides an example of how volunteer tourism could become an increasingly effective tool for NGOs in the Global South, in an increasingly equitable manner. It also demonstrates how the method found by the Tibetan NGOs contests the current critique of commodification in volunteer tourism. Within volunteer tourism, true empowerment of local communities can only occur when the locals are in control and able to set their own goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, Tibetans in the diaspora in India are shown to be engaged in emotional processes that connect very different themes of their lives. Their attachment to both Tibetan moral notions and Indian popular cultural representations is theorised with reference to emotional attachment as appropriation into the sense of what belongs with oneself. Both normative Tibetan moral notions and aspirational Indian popular-cultural representations are appropriated by Tibetans born and raised in India. On the one hand, Tibetan moral notions of harmonious relationships present generally salient norms for Tibetans, and are connected to polyandry and idealised representations of Tibet in older people's discourse. On the other hand, Indian popular film and television are ubiquitous in Tibetan everyday life. The ethnography presented demonstrates that Indian popular culture has helped to shape Tibetan diasporic aesthetics and historicity and provides an idiom for ideas and practices of love, romance and marriage for younger Tibetans in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research note provides an overview of Tibetan refugee settlements in South Asia, viz. in India, Nepal and Bhutan. The note focuses on the residential status of Tibetans and their life and livelihood. Tibetan refugees are viewed as representatives of Tibetan culture and religion in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]