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Abstract
Matters concerning Tibetan sovereignty, self-determination and political representation continue to be mired in intractable controversy as the People’s Republic of China and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile remain diametrically opposed on virtually all issues concerning Tibet’s political status, history and how it ought to be represented. Beyond these two dominant narratives, the relevant literature has paid scant attention to the other actors in this dispute, namely Tibetan people living throughout China. This article investigates identity constructions among Tibetan netizens in China through the use of forums, blogs and video postings. These flourishing new platforms for voicing and constructing alternative identity narratives provide a valuable and yet largely unexplored resource for examining how Tibetans in China construct self-representations in a time of increased interconnectivity, migration and cultural flux. By exploring the very lively and thriving participation of Tibetans in the Sino-blogosphere, this article showcases the highly diverse and creative processes of identity construction among Tibetan netizens based in China, and the myriad of ways in which Tibetans connect and disconnect online.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Taru Salmenkari and Florian Schneider for their valuable comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of this article.
Notes
1. Such notions of romanticism, as well as the appropriation of Tibet in ‘Western culture’ are explored at length in Donald Lopez’s Prisoners of Shangri-La.
2. Barnett, “Beyond the Collaborator-Martyr Model,” 25–66; Crowe, “The Tibet Question,” 1100–35; Dreyfus, “Are We Prisoners of Shangrila?” 1–21; Harnett, “Tibet is Burning,” 283–316.
3. In February 2014, Xinhua News reported that as of 2013, more than two-thirds of the population in Tibet were online, and that mobile Internet usage had also passed the 50% mark earlier that same year, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/14/c_133115174.htm. For more on infrastructural development across the TAR, see Dreyer, “Economic Development in Tibet under the People’s Republic of China,” 411–30; Yeh, “Tropes of Indolence and the Cultural Politics of Development in Lhasa, Tibet,” 593–612.
4. Adams, “Karaoke as Modern Lhasa, Tibet,” 510–46; Goldstein and Kapstein, Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet; Hillman and Henfry, “Macho Minority,” 251–72; Warner, “Hope and Sorrow,” 543–68.
5. Hannerz, “The World in Creolisation,” 546–59.
6. Eriksen, “Creolization and Creativity,” 233–7.
7. Ibid., 233.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 232.
10. Ibid., 233.
11. This observation marks a significant departure from Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, whose influential conceptualization of ethnicity emphasizes the centrality of othering in group definition.
12. Bulag, “Alter/native Mongolian Identity,” 223–5.
13. Bauman, The Individualized Society, 152; Bauman, Liquid Modernity.
14. Bauman, Liquid Life, 9.
15. Hine, Virtual Ethnography, 5–15.
16. Yan et al., “Social Capital, Digital Inequality, and a ‘Glocal’ Community Informatics Project in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Gansu Province,” 234–60.
17. Morahan-Martin, “The Gender Gap in Internet Use,” 3–10.
18. Makley, “Gendered Boundaries in Motion,” 597–619; Hillman and Henfry, “Macho Minority,” 251–72.
19. Treacher, “Postcolonial Subjectivity,” 281–99; Sautman, “Colonialism, Genocide, and Tibet,” 243–65.
20. Yangdong Dhongdup notes that the way in which the ‘other’ has been represented in Tibetan poetry has long been diverse. For instance, she explores how praise and loyalty for the party and Mao were both highly evident throughout Tibetan poetry written during the 1950s and 1960s. “Roar of the Snow Lion,” 40.
21. Gladney, Dislocating China, 93; Schein, “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China,” 69–98.
22. Lee, “Modernity, Solidity and Agency,” 650–64.
23. Yu, “Life in Lara Village, Tibet,” 258–82.
24. Fischer, “The Geopolitics of Politico-Religious Protest in Eastern Tibet,” 1–6.
25. Bulletin Boards Systems refer to a popular destination for Chinese Internet users similar to discussion board and forums.
26. Bass, “Learning to Love the Motherland,” 433–49; Postiglione et al., “From Ethnic Segregation to Impact Integration,” 195–217.
27. Chirkova, “Between Tibetan and Chinese,” 405–17.
28. A popular webpage that relies on collective knowledge and responses to answer almost any query.
29. A Wikipedia-style encyclopaedia.
30. Brown, “Ethnic Classification and Culture,” 55–72.
31. Warner, “Hope and Sorrow,” 543–68.
32. Greenberg, “‘The King of the Streets’,” 231–50.
33. Morgan and Warren, “Aboriginal Youth, Hip Hop and the Politics of Identification,” 925–47.
34. See note 5 above.
35. Bulag, “Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China,” 752–63.
36. John Powers argues that this ‘depoliticization’ can largely be attributed to Han chauvinism and the persistence of a belief in the duty of the Han ‘big elder brothers’ (laodage) to take the lead in saving these ‘backward’ cultures from themselves and lift them ‘up to the level of their instructors’. History as Propaganda, 102.
37. Ellison et al., “With a Little Help from My Friends,” 124–45.
38. Gladney, “Representing Nationality in China,” 92–123.
39. Hillman, “Paradise under Construction,” 185–6.
40. Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity, 54.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Tricia Kehoe
Tricia Kehoe is a first year Ph.D. candidate at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham. She holds a BA in Sociology and Chinese Studies (University College Cork) and MA in East Asian Studies (Leiden University). Her major field of research concerns the politics of inclusion and exclusion in identity-making among Tibetan netizens in the People’s Republic of China.
Author’s postal address: PhD Office, Si Yuan Centre, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK.