Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government-In-Exile

ISBN-13: 9781118661284 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 240 str.

Fiona McConnell

Opis

Rehearsing the State presents a comprehensive investigation of the institutions, performances, and actors through which the Tibetan Government-in-Exile is rehearsing statecraft. McConnell offers new insights into how communities officially excluded from formal state politics enact hoped-for futures and seek legitimacy in the present.

• Offers timely and original insights into exile Tibetan politics based on detailed qualitative research in Tibetan communities in India
• Advances existing debates in political geography by bringing ideas of stateness and statecraft into dialogue with geographies of temporality
• Explores the provisional and pedagogical dimensions of state practices, adding weight to assertions that states are in a continual situation of emergence
• Makes a significant contribution to critical state theory

Rehearsing the State presents a comprehensive investigation of the institutions, performances, and actors through which the Tibetan Government–in–Exile is rehearsing statecraft. McConnell offers new insights into how communities officially excluded from formal state politics enact hoped–for futures and seek legitimacy in the present.

Spis treści

List of Figures viii

Series Editors′ Preface ix

Acknowledgements x

Note on Transliteration xiii

1 Introduction 1

2 Rethinking the (Non)state: Time / Space / Performance 17

3 Setting the Scene: Contested Narratives of Tibetan Statehood 40

4 Rehearsal Spaces: Material and Symbolic Roles of Exile Tibetan Settlements 61

5 Playwright and Cast: Crafting Legitimacy in Exile 92

6 Scripting the State: Constructing a Population, Welfare State and Citizenship in Exile 116

7 Audiences of Statecraft: Negotiating Hospitality and Performing Diplomacy 145

8 Conclusion: Rehearsing Stateness 171

References 190

Index 216

O autorze

Fiona McConnell is Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford. She is co–editor of Geographies of Peace (2014) and Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics forthcoming), and sits on the Board of Directors of the Tibet Justice Centre.

Blurb

Controversy has surrounded the legal, territorial, and political status of Tibet for decades. How does the Tibetan Government–in–Exile (TGiE) in spite of a complete lack of legal recognition continue to enact state–like functions from the hill town of Dharamsala, India? Rehearsing the State: The Political Practices of the Tibetan Government–in–Exile presents a comprehensive investigation of the institutions, performances, and actors through which the exiled Tibetan community this active state–in–waiting is experimenting, modifying, and rehearsing state practices. Based on ethnographic research on the TGiE and in Tibetan communities based in India, chapters bring critical theories of the state into dialogue with geographies of temporality to develop the idea of rehearsal through the exploration of spaces, roles, scripts, and audiences in the performance of exile statecraft. A wide range of issues are explored, including how state–like functions are enacted without legal jurisdiction over territory, ways in which futures are made present alongside prolonged waiting, and what happens to these anticipatory logics when the time frame is extended indefinitely. Illuminating and thought–provoking, Rehearsing the State offers timely insights into exile Tibetan politics while making a significant contribution to wider issues of critical state theory and the politics of displacement.