published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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.

Undergraduate thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Undergraduate thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 319-330). / Microfiche. / xiv, 330 leaves, bound ill., maps 29 cm

This is a two-pronged study of how the Chinese and Tibetan literary traditions have become intertwined in the modern era. Setting out from the contention that the study of minority literatures in China must be fundamentally multilingual in its approach, this dissertation investigates how Tibetans were written into Chinese literature, and how Tibetans themselves adopted and adapted Chinese literary discourses to their own ends. It begins with Lu Xun and the formative literary conceptions of nation in the late Qing and Republican periods – a time when the Tibetan subject was fundamentally absent from modern Chinese literature – and then moves to the 1980s, when Tibet and Tibetans belatedly, and contentiously, became valid subject matter for Han Chinese writers. The second aspect of the project situates modern Tibetan-language literature, which arose from the 1980s onwards, within the literary and intellectual context of modern China. I read Döndrup Gyel, modern Tibetan literature’s “father figure,” as working within unmistakably Lu Xun-ian paradigms, I consider the contradictions that arose when Tsering Döndrup’s short story “Ralo” was interpreted as a Tibetan equivalent of “The True Story of Ah Q,” and I analyze the rise of a “Tibetan May Fourth Movement” in the 2000s, which I argue presented a selective reading of modern China’s intellectual history. Throughout, I focus on the intersections and divergences at play and examine the ways in which these texts navigate complex and conflicting discourses of nationalism, statism, and colonialism. The conclusions of this research point us toward significant theoretical reconceptualizations of literary practices in the People’s Republic of China, which now include not only a vast body of Chinese-language writing on minority peoples, but also numerous minority-language literatures and distinct “national” literary traditions.

This dissertation is a study of the minzu stream for ethnic Tibetan students in the context of bilingual degree programs in China’s tertiary education system. It draws attention to the significance of bilingual ‘diversity’ education and its presumed role in ensuring cultural and social inclusion of Tibetan students in study programs and equity in educational and occupational attainment. This study finds that Tibetan students’ learning outcomes and career pathways are systemically restricted due to limited availability of specialized study areas in bilingual programs, poor education quality, homogenized academic training, and discrimination regarding the value of Tibetan graduates’ credentials for employment. As a result, Tibetan students’ educational and occupational opportunities are largely shaped by the structural conditions of the binary choice in ethnic streaming policy in tertiary education and the university mission that is primarily occupied with the political socialization of ethnic minority groups. Drawing on Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory, I argue that the social exclusion of Tibetans from fully participating in national tertiary education and exercising their language rights in academic study programs has been institutionalized in minzu higher education. The institutionalization of cultural and social exclusion effectively conceals the systemic inequalities embedded in the streaming practices and reproduces structural inequity in educational and occupational attainment.

Cette thèse de droit public se propose d'étudier le développement du système politique tibétain en exil. Ce travail est basé sur une analyse détaillée des normes tibétaines encadrant le fonctionnement du Gouvernement tibétain en exil et de son Administration centrale, lesquels n'ont pas été reconnus au plan international. Mené principalement sous l'angle du droit constitutionnel tibétain, ce travail décrit le fonctionnement des différentes institutions centrales, instances décisionnelles, ayant autorité au sein de la communauté tibétaine en exil. L'institutionnalisation du pouvoir politique tibétain a pris avec la Charte de 1991 une nouvelle dimension car les rapports politiques au sein du système passent désormais par la médiation du droit. Cette médiation du droit est liée à l'établissement d'un ordre général et collectif dépassant les volontés individuelles / This public law thesis deals with the development of the Tibetan political system in exile. The objective was to carry out a detailed research on roots texts and commentaries on law and other relevant documents passed in the Tibetan refugee community, in order to explain the functioning of the Central Tibetan Administration, which for all practical purposes functions as the Tibetan-government-in-exile, although not formally recognized as such by the world at large and in particular by the host government. This work covers the various institutions of political representation, decision-making and governance within the Tibetan Refugee Community. Considering all this elements, we reached at the conclusion that the basics fundamentals laid down by this Charter, and the substantive and procedural laws and other rules, are inevitable for the immediate and long-term functioning of the Tibetan government in exile

Following several successful military expeditions against the Mongols in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Manchu rulers of Qing China (1644-1911) met an unprecedented challenge as they incorporated culturally different subjects into their growing empire. After doubling in territory and tripling in population, how did the multicultural Qing operate? How did the new imperial subjects receive and reinterpret Qing state policies? What have been the ramifications of the eighteenth-century political innovations in modern China? In this dissertation, I address these questions by examining the encounters of the expanding Qing empire with Tibetans and Mongols in Inner Asia. Central to the analysis is Tibetan Buddhism, to which Mongols and Tibetans have adhered for centuries. Recent decades have seen a growing volume of research attending to Tibetan Buddhism within the context of the Qing’s imperial policies, but key questions still remain with regards to the perspective of these Inner Asian communities and the reasons for their participation in the imperial enterprise. The inadequate understanding of the Qing’s interaction with Tibetan Buddhism is predicated upon the assumption that Qing emperors propitiated the belligerent Mongols by patronizing their religion. While this premise acknowledges Tibetan Buddhism’s importance in the Qing’s imperial formation, it simultaneously deprives those practicing the religion of agency. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze how the empire was ruled from the viewpoint of the governed. The project draws evidence from Tibetan-language biographies and monastic chronicles, letters in the Mongolian language, as well as local gazetteers, artisanal manuals, and court statutes in Chinese and Manchu, the two official languages in the Qing era. These textual sources are supplemented by Tibetan Buddhist artifacts housed in museums and libraries in North America and Asia. Through an examination of the wide array of source materials, I argue that the Qing imperial rulers capitalized on the religious culture of Inner Asian communities, which in turn gave rise to a transnational religious network that was centered on Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. The religious knowledge system remained strong well past the formative eighteenth century. Its enduring impact on Qing political and social history was felt even as the empire worked towards creating a distinctive cosmopolitan Qing culture. The dissertation consists of four chapters, each of which locates a space within the context of the symbiotic growth of the Qing and the Tibetan Buddhist knowledge network. This dissertation revolves around Tibetan Buddhist scholars, institutions, rituals, and objects, as they traveled from Tibet to Qing China’s capital and eastern Mongolia, and finally entered the literary realm of intellectuals in eighteenth-century China. Chapter One brings into focus Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation—a dynamic practice that redefined the institutional genealogy of individual prestige—as the Qing imperial power increased its contact with Inner Asian communities from the 1720s in the strategic border region of Amdo between Tibet and Qing China. I discuss how local hereditary headmen refashioned themselves into religious leaders whose enduring influence could transcend even death so as to preserve their prestige. Yet, their impact reached beyond the imperial margin. Chapter Two traces the role of these religious leaders in transforming an imperial private space into the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Qing’s imperial capital. This monastery—Beijing’s Lama Temple (Yonghegong 雍和宮)—not only became a site that manifested Qing imperial devotion to Tibetan Buddhism, but also served as an institutional outpost for the increasingly transnational Tibetan Buddhist network to the east. The Lama Temple was not the only outpost of the growing religious network, and Chapter Three explores another major nodal point within this network at a contact zone in southern Mongolia. It was here that two massive Tibetan Buddhist monasteries were constructed, owing to the mutual efforts undertaken by the imperial household and Tibetan Buddhists from Inner Asia. The final chapter returns to the imperial center but shifts its focus to a discursive space formed by Tibetan Buddhist laity who also occupied official posts in the imperial court. Two Manchu princes and one Mongolian Buddhist composed or were commissioned to compile texts in multiple languages on Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. Their writings reveal the fluidity and extent of the religious network, as well as its symbiotic growth with the imperial enterprise as the Qing empire took shape territorially and culturally. This dissertation concludes by addressing the nature of the Qing’s governance and that of the transnational power of the Tibetan Buddhist network, and it aims to deconstruct the dominant discourse associated with imperial policies in the Inner Asian frontier. My findings offer insight into how Tibetan Buddhism had a lasting impact on the Qing’s imperial imagination, during and after the formative eighteenth century.