| This dissertation is a study of individual and collective accomplishment of national identity among Tibetan refugees based at their political center of Dharamsala, India, and extending in recent years back to their homeland. Incorporated in this study is an analysis of various historical periods in the development of the Tibetan governmental apparatus which has traditionally defined the State of Tibet as separate from China. It is suggested that modern praxis is considered consistent with these historical precedences. The conceptual framework utilized is based on the structure-as-process approach of Sahlins, Jean Comaroff, Ian Hodder, and structural historians who view change and continuity as aspects of the same phenomenon. Important events, such as the 1959 Lhasa Uprising which was immediately responsible for the diaspora, are interpreted on the basis of long-term structural change in Tibetan society. Data for this study were collected primarily through informal interviewing, participant observation, and archival research. Field sites include Dharamsala, Kathmandu, and various locations in Tibet itself.;A long-term patron/client relationship, the sbyin-bdag dyad between secular and clerical elements in traditional Tibetan society, provides an apparent continuity of practice among actors in exile. Its apparent continuation provides ideological support for a resilient Tibetan identity in exile. While the sbyuin-bdag dyad is envisioned to have merely reproduced itself at various periods in Tibetan history up to the present, it has itself been the primary agent for change in society. This is especially evident in the recent diaspora. In accommodating western agency as a new form of patronage, some of the differential relationships between traditional clerical and secular elements have changed. Among these are increasing secularization, western-style nationalism and centralization to the decrease of traditional monastic franchise. An idea of a western-style, sovereign, independent State of Tibet has gradually developed out of these changing relationships. |
