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ABSTRACT This article introduces a representative claims approach as a novel analytical framework to the field of diaspora politics. Supplemented with a network perspective, this approach offers a more nuanced understanding of the practices underpinning diasporic claims‐making. Applying it to the empirical case of the Tibetan diaspora, which is confronted with an authoritarian China, the study draws on the internet as a pivotal tool for diasporas to foster connections, mobilize and articulate their claims. By exploring the online network on the basis of a hyperlink and web‐content analysis, the article reveals the intertwined structure of the Tibetan diaspora online. A plethora of actors claim to speak on behalf of the voiceless people at home, advocating for the preservation of the unique Tibetan culture while also embracing global values to garner external support. This article contributes to the scholarly discussion on transnational engagement and representation in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dharamsala is probably the most known settlement of Tibetans in exile. It is based in India and is a popular tourist destination, so it is subject to various foreign influences. This paper aims to provide an ethnographic account of selected cases encountered during field studies and their reception among young Tibetans. Some new examples of multiculturalism, global and contemporary Indian influence and commodification of the Tibetan community and their culture will be provided, as well as accounts of interviewees on those phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Tibetan government routinely consulted an oracle known as the Nechung Oracle. Topics include characterized by spirit possession being linked to the concept of shamanism and also whether they are a pre-Buddhist or Buddhist phenomenon; and distinctions being made according to sex, age, and location not least the wide range of occupations.

This article analyses the divergent, and occasionally overlapping, trajectories of Tibetan refugee and Gaddi tribal cosmopolitanism in Dharamshala, North India. In a place self-consciously branded as cosmopolitan, where Tibetan ethnocommodification is the primary symbolic currency, practices of inclusivity can broadly give way to Gaddi exclusions. Cosmopolitanism as an ordering ideology and set of intercultural competencies, often predicated on the dyadic relationship between Tibetan refugees and international tourists, propels Gaddi resentments and coarsens intergroup sociality. This does not mean, however, that Gaddis are forever consigned to tribal backwardness and reactionary forms of communal aspiration. Gaddis have forged an alternate, grounded cosmopolitanism based on cultural skills fostered through pastoral transhumance, seasonal labour migration corresponding with foreign tourists and ongoing ethnopolitical redefinition of what it means to be tribal itself. By seeing past utopian propaganda and dystopian exaggerations about Dharamshala, a richer tapestry of group relations emerges which reveals divergent cosmopolitanisms in the promotion of shared struggles for state recognition and cultural preservation.

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.

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]

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—animal activists, environmental lawyers, judges, and hunter-conservationists—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—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.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with Tibetan refugees in India from the first arrivals in 1959, following the Dalai Lama's own flight to India, up to the present day. It focuses on legal issues and on questions pertaining to livelihood possibilities and the preservation of a distinct Tibetan identity in a context of increasingly numerous interactions with Indian society. It first explains how Tibetans managed to establish a strong exile community thanks to the possibilities offered by life in India, such as the constitution of relatively isolated refugee settlements. It then focuses on the challenges faced by Tibetans in India by analysing the tensions between being/remaining a refugee and acknowledging the diasporic status of the Tibetan exile community. It eventually concludes on the more recent trend towards further dispersion, notably to North America. For this, it makes use of the triangular relationship developed by refugee and diaspora scholars, such as Gabriel Sheffer, Bertrand Badie, Steven Vertovec, and Kim Butler, and more specifically of the refugee/diaspora community/host country segment of the triangular relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents how older Tibetan refugees have adapted to changing social and economic conditions in India. Participant observation and open-ended interview questions were used to explore life experiences of 14 older Tibetans living in India who participated in this study. Findings revealed that, after having to abandon familiar environments, these participants underwent harsh times in India but have adapted well. They have secured meaningful lives for themselves. Availability of children and institutional resources has proved beneficial at old age. Participants with children perceived that they were well cared for, which added to their satisfaction with present circumstances. However, those without children did not have any source of support and were dissatisfied. Religious activity was important for these participants. The ability to freely practice religion contributed to their satisfaction in exile. These findings are instructive for the treatment and acceptance of refugees throughout the world by contributing to the field of refugee aging and adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Prior to the advent of the Internet, e-mail, and other information technologies, there was very little sustained communication between Tibetan Buddhist youth living in Chinese-dominated Tibet and their ethno-religious cohorts in the Diaspora. Recent years have witnessed a dramatic expansion of global networks linked to the Tibetan freedom movement, fueled in large measure by enhanced levels of computer-mediated interactions between Tibetan youth and sympathetic activists living in a wide variety of geographic locales. The role of the Internet and other information technologies in stimulating and facilitating cross-border political activism by Tibetan young people is explored in depth by this paper. The ways in which youth-based social movement organizations (SMOs) have framed the values, goals, and tactics of the Tibetan freedom movement in cyberspace are assessed. Computer-mediated discourses articulated by Tibetan teenagers and young adults who were mostly born and raised in the Diaspora - dubbed "Generation Exile" - are analyzed and compared to that of older activists in the movement. The subject matter of SMO websites and selected excerpts from blogs, social networking sites (e.g., MySpace, Facebook), and other online interactions involving Tibetans and interested parties are surveyed and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First, demographic aspects and the focus of research of studies on the Tibetan Diaspora are presented in relation to other, general studies of diasporas. Then, the notion of "Tibetanness" is analyzed and. against this background, traditional Tibetan attitudes, the relation of adaptation and integration, and also the idea of "limited integration" in the Tibetan case. Then, the discourse on the Tibet question (by, and about Tibetans) and the present situation of information are briefly portrayed. This includes the influence of the western, or, "Orientalist" discourse. Following this research methods regarding the Tibetan Diaspora are described (as in Capper, Kohut) as well as major complexes of Tibetan identity in the Diaspora are described: health, partnership, marriage and sexuality, the body, and generally coping strategies and the notion of "religio-political" identity. Finally, changed identities in the Diaspora are dealt with. and future research is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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—animal activists, environmental lawyers, judges, and hunter-conservationists—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—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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]