Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Tibetans Refugees'

This thesis presents a study of the Bonpo in Dolanji, a Tibetan refugee settlement in North India. The Bonpo are a distinctive religious minority within the Tibetan refugee population. In the 1950s, Chinese Communist forces occupied Tibet and, in 1959, the fourteenth Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India. In 1960, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile was established in Dharamsala, and emphasised a ‘shared’ Buddhist heritage as being central to the Tibetan national identity. This discourse, which represents the Tibetans as being homogeneously Buddhist, effectively marginalised followers of non-Buddhist religions, including the Bonpo. As a result, the Bonpo have been compelled to adapt, whilst resisting the marginalisation of their religious identity and the constraints embedded in their refugee status. Based on twelve months of fieldwork carried out in 2007-2008 in Dolanji, this thesis explores the ways in which the Bonpo engage with their marginality and manipulate the constraints applied to their situation in order to empower themselves. It argues that on the margins, where the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion are contested and negotiable, the Bonpo are permitted some flexibility to create their identity with different ‘others,’ and to develop new affiliations in order to modify their situation. This thesis unpicks the ‘dialogues’ the Bonpo have established with the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, including their discourse on ‘the Bon traditions’, the participation of the Bonpo in the Tibetan national community, their relationship with foreign patrons and the Chinese Government, and the representation of the Bon religion in school textbooks. It is contended that the margins provide a consistent energy which feeds the dynamics of social relationships, informing cultural and social change. Today’s Bonpo remain situated on the margins of the Tibetan refugee population. However, this thesis demonstrates that in the past decades of exile, the Bonpo have utilised the marginalisation that was forced upon them by multiple ‘others’ to develop what they claim to be ‘Bon traditions’, in order to illustrate their distinctive, but equally important, status in contrast to Buddhism within the Tibetan ‘national’ identity.

In 2000, Tim Ingold argued: 'people do not import their ideas, plans or mental representations into the world, since that very world ... is the homeland of their thoughts. Only because they already dwell therein can they think the thoughts they do' (2000: 186). He thus stressed the importance of place in the construction and reproduction of culture. How does this play out, however, among refugees who by virtue of their displacement must 'import' cultural concepts into alien environments? For those outside a 'homeland' how do they make sense of the world? In this thesis I examine the relationship between Tibetan refugees, the landscapes of their exile and their wider material environment. Drawing on theory in material anthropology and thirteen months' ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two contrasting Tibetan refugee settlements in northwest India, I analyse how Tibetan refugees are affected by, and in turn exert agency over their material world. Through this discussion, I reflect on the multiple and mutable meanings of home for Tibetan refugees, many of whom were born and/or raised in India. Few scholarly discussions of home encompass both its affective and imaginary dimensions; this thesis achieves this by focusing on the material and aesthetic aspects of home. Through this lens, I explore how refugees both work hard to develop a sense of home in exile, yet simultaneously destabilise this by orienting themselves towards an imagined home in a future 'free Tibet'. The discussion unfolds thematically, through chapters focusing on several material categories: landscape, the built environment, dress and objects. I develop my analysis via existing theoretical literature in material anthropology and its sub-disciplines, transnational and migration studies, and area-specialist literature in Tibetology.

Detta arbete bygger på en studieresa, under en månads tid, till Indien, Dharamsala. Dharamsa-la är känd för att inhysa den tibetanska statens exilregering och inte minst den tibetanska bud-dismens andlige ledare Dalai Lama. Därav är Dharamsala en viktig tillflyktsort för de tibe-tanska flyktingar som undkommit den Kinesiska regeringens förtryck i Tibet.

Syftet med denna studie blir därför, att få mer insikt och kunskap om hur man idag i Dha-ramsala bemöter tibetanska flyktingbarn från Tibet.

Jag fick äran, att möta 8 av de människor som dagligen möter och arbetar med tibetanska flyktingbarn på ett eller annat sätt.

I undersökningen har jag dels använt mig av kvalitativa intervjuer och dels av observatio-ner. Genom dessa metoder framgår det, att tibetanska flyktingbarn blir bemötta på ett kärleks-fullt och respektfullt sätt. Detta för, att de skall få ett värdigt liv i frihet samt en gedigen ut-bildning.

Tibetanernas omtanke och kärlek till sin nästa generation motiverar barnen, i Dharamsala, att vilja studera, för att senare i livet ska kunna hjälpa andra tibetaner i nöd, vilka fortfarande är under den Kinesiska regeringens våld i Tibet.

This paper is a result of a one month field study Dharamsala in India. Dharamsala is well-known for harbouring the exile Tibetan government and also their religious leader in Tibetan Buddhism, Dalai Lama. Because of this Dharamsala is an important sanctuary fore Tibetan refugees who are escaping from the Chinese government’s oppression in Tibet.

The purpose of this study is therefore to get a better insight and knowledge how people today in Dharamsala receive Tibetan refugee children from Tibet.

I got the privilege to meet 8 of the people who, in one way or another, daily meet and work with Tibetan refugee children.

In this study I have used the methods qualitative interview and observation. Through these methods it’s clear that, Tibetan refugee children are received with love and respect in Dhar-amsala. In this way the Tibetan refugee children got a worthy life in freedom and a proper education.

The love and compassion from the Tibetan people in Dharamsala, to their next generation, motivate these children to study hard so that they later in life can help other Tibetans who still live under the Chinese government’s oppression in Tibet.

This study explored how Tibetan refugee women have coped with the possible trauma they experienced in Tibet and when escaping from Tibet. It also examined how these women envisioned peace between Tibet and China and what meanings they constructed about the violence they may have experienced.Twelve Tibetan refugee women were interviewed in New York City. They came from all three regions of Tibet and their mean age was 35.5 years old. Only two participants were fluent in English. A qualitative semi-structured interview was employed to understand participants' unique experiences with past trauma and any continued repercussions. The interviews also assessed how participants envisioned peace between China and Tibet and if they believed peace was at all possible. An interpreter assisted with all the interviews.The data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology; with the help of two research assistants. This methodology offered the best opportunity to investigate the participants' understandings of their experiences and their beliefs. Using the constant comparative method, the results revealed the role of participants' religion, their belief in karma, and communal support as keys in their adjustment and mental health. Additionally, the women reported feelings of loss, fear, and loneliness, but not anger or hostility. The participants also revealed, however, feelings of relief and safety leaving the threat of imprisonment or torture behind in Tibet. Further, the women expressed feelings of appreciation for their freedom and their ability to hope for a better future for themselves and their families.The results suggested that there are some specific cultural variables that helped these Tibetan refugee women navigate the course of leaving Tibet and moving to a new country. Additional studies are needed to more fully comprehend the effects of trauma on the migration of Tibetan refugee women. Such studies can help further explain the relationship between trauma and culture-bound expressions of distress. Other implications (e.g., provision of services) of the current findings are discussed, as are several limitations to the study.
Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Thesis (B.A.)--Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.
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2031-01-01

Opportunities of mass education are a relatively new phenomenon in the Tibetan community. Following the incidents of 1959, the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans fled into India. Mass education was implemented and sustained within the Tibetan community for the first time. The goal of this exploratory research is to study the impact of mass education on the first generations of Tibetans who experienced it in exile. This study analyzes the gendered pattern in subjects students choose to pursue, their educational attainment and the kinds of jobs they assume after graduation. The study presents a quantitative analysis of data spanning twenty years, which was collected by the head office of Tibetan Children’s Village schools based in India. This study finds that gender is a significant predictor of whether one pursued higher studies, and also of what kinds of jobs people get. The results indicate that females have lower educational performance, attainment and occupational scores than males within the Tibetan community. This study also points to a change in gender relations within the Tibetan community after migrating into India.

This liberation-psychology study included several years’ immersion in the Tibetan refugee community in Dharamsala, India, where I offered Somatic Experiencing-informed (SE) sessions to exprisoner refugees. During the course of conversations with refugees, this study shifted from an investigation of SE as a trauma-healing intervention to a cross-cultural dialogical approach to the healing of the psychological and physical sequelae of forced displacement, imprisonment, and torture of Tibetan expolitical prisoners. Tibetan refugee expolitical prisoners living in Dharamsala, India, were asked to describe their emotional and somatic sequelae, as well as the alleviated factors and conditions of these sequelae, which stemmed from experiences of political incarceration, loss of homeland, torture, and escape. Purposeful sampling was employed, and 17 participants were observed in a 2-day Freirean-inspired dialogic workshop participant observations in which sequelae and processes of amelioration and responses to the Western SE therapy were identified and recorded. Also, 12 participants were interviewed on their experiences and perceptions of the workshop; 9 of whom volunteered for SE sessions. Data were analyzed by thematic content analysis.

Major findings on emotional distress included loneliness due to separation from friends and families, helplessness to assist other Tibetans, and distress of “non-being” brought on by occupation, displacement, and unofficial refugee status. Physical sequelae were digestive problems, difficulty breathing, pain and tightness, dizziness, weakness, and fatigue. A Buddhist approach was distinguished as a dependable route to mental health and Tibetan Buddhist methods were highlighted as unique in achieving lasting well-being. Community interdependence and preservation of Tibetan Buddhist culture were preferred over individualized approaches to trauma healing. Implications include a potential shift in international trauma fieldwork to a cross-cultural psychological approach.

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

Thesis advisor: John J. Makransky
The purpose of this work is to differentiate the autonomous `self-compassion' of therapeutic modernist Buddhism from pre-therapeutic Mahâyâna Buddhist practices of refuge, so that refuge itself is not obscured as a fundamental Buddhist orientation that empowers the possibility of compassion for self and other in the first place. The work begins by situating issues of shame and self-aversion sociologically, in order to understand how and why self-aversion became a significant topic of concern during the final quarter of the twentieth century. This discussion allows for a further investigation of shame as it has been addressed first by psychologists, for whom shame is often understood as a form of isolating self-aversion, and then by philosophers such as Bernard Williams and Emmanuel Levinas, for whom shame attunes the person to the moral expectations of a community, and therefore to ethical commands that arise from beyond the individual self. Both psychologists and philosophers are ultimately concerned with problems and possibilities of relationship. These discussions prepare the reader to understand the importance of Buddhist refuge as a form of relationship that structures an integrative rather than destructive self-evaluation. The second chapter of the dissertation closely examines Friedrich Nietzsche's work on shame. In a late note, Nietzsche wrote that "man has lost the faith in his own value when no infinitely valuable whole works through him"; the second chapter argues that Nietzsche's vision of a relatively autonomous will to power cannot fully incorporate this important Nietzschean insight, and helps to drive the kind of self-evaluation typical of modernist `personality culture,' which is likely to become harsh. The third chapter first discusses contemporary therapeutic Buddhist responses to self-aversion, particularly practices of `self-compassion' that claim to be rooted in early Pali canonical and commentarial sources, before developing a commentary on the medieval Tibetan lojong teaching Drive all blames into one. Drive all blames into one, though often discussed in contemporary commentaries as a form of self-blame, should be understood more thoroughly as a simultaneous process of refuge and critique--a process that drives further access to compassion not only for self, but for others as well. Chapter Four discusses mourning and self-reproach in the apophthegmata of the Desert Fathers, showing how `self-hatred' in this context is in a form of irony: the self that is denigrated is not an ultimate reality, and the process of mourning depends upon both an access to love and a clear recognition of our many turns away from that love. In conclusion, I draw attention to the irony of modernist rejections of religious self-critique as supposedly harmful forms of mere shaming, even as the modernist emphasis on autonomy is what enables self-critique to become harsh and damaging
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Theology

abstract: Since 1998 and as recently as November 2018, 165 Tibetans have burned themselves alive in public protest, both inside Tibet and in exile. This study foregrounds Tibetan refugees’ interpretations of the self-immolation protests and examines how the exile community has socially, politically, and emotionally interrogated and assimilated this resistance movement. Based upon eleven months of ethnographic field research and 150 hours of formal interviews with different groups of Tibetan refugees in northern India, including: freedom activists, former political prisoners, members of the exile parliament, teachers of Tibetan Buddhism, families of self-immolators, and survivors of self-immolation, this project asks: What does activism look like in a time of martyrdom? What are the practices of solidarity with the dead? How does a refugee community that has been in exile for over three generations make sense of a wave of death occurring in a homeland most cannot access? Does the tactic of self-immolation challenge Tibetan held conceptions of resistance and the conceived relationship between politics, religion and nation? These questions are examined with attention to the sociopolitical expectations and vulnerabilities that the refugee community face. This study thus analyzes what it means to mourn those one never knew, and examines the fractious connections between resistance, solidarity, trauma, representation, political exigency, and community cohesion. By examining the uncomfortable affect around self-immolation, its memorialization and representation, the author argues that self-immolation is a relational act that creates and ushers forth witnesses. As such, one must analyze the obligations of witnessing, the barriers to witnessing, and the expectations of solidarity. This project offers the theory of exigent solidarity, whereby solidarity is understood as a contested space, borne of expectation, pressure, and responsibility, with its expression complex and its execution seemingly impossible. It calls for attention to the affective labor of solidarity in a time of ongoing martyrdom, and demonstrates that in the need to maintain solidarity and social cohesion, a sense of mutual-becoming occurs whereby the community is reconciled uneasily into a shared fate.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2019

Mental health in the Tibetan refugee community has been studied extensively; but like most research on political violence, these studies focus almost exclusively on trauma. We know little about those who manage to thrive and what kinds of sociocultural practices enhance their resilience. This dissertation, "Spacious Minds, Empty Selves: Coping and Resilience in the Tibetan Exile Community" investigates how Buddhism and other sociocultural factors support coping and resilience among Tibetan refugees living in Dharamsala, India. In contrast to other work that focuses exclusively on trauma, the aim of this project was to examine the broad range of reactions to political violence, exploring how people thrive in the face of adversity. Drawing on 14 months of extended participant observation and 80 in-depth interviews conducted in the Tibetan language, this project investigates how communities through social processes cope in the context of political violence and resettlement. The study draws upon and aims to extend theory in three distinct but overlapping areas: 1) trauma and resilience; 2) the anthropology of memory and temporality; and 3) the transferability of interventions across cultures. The dissertation argues that the Tibetan concept of resilience is more an active process than a personality attribute. Seeing emotions as impermanent and changing, Tibetans living in exile are reticent to dwell on distress, which seems only to stagnate or prolong suffering. Rather than processing the details of traumatic events, members of this community attempt to transform distress through cultural practices that emphasize compassion and impermanence. Many forms of coping in Dharamsala work to create a greater sense of spaciousness, openness and flexibility within the mind--qualities associated with resilience and wellbeing. In practicing flexibility, the durability of negative emotions is diminished, such that the encoding of trauma is derailed and disrupted. The contribution I make involves using a "resilience imaginary" as a fruitful site for pushing the boundaries of how we understand human freedom and agency.

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.