Tibet and the Problem of Radical Reductionism

Abstract:  This article takes issue with a mode of argumentation advanced by a number of left-leaning, radical scholars, including those associated with China's New Left, about the causes of the Tibetan unrest in China in spring 2008. According to this stance, the Tibetan protests were the result of external manipulation by neoconservative, reactionary forces, ranging from the CIA to the Dalai Lama. The unstated premise of this response is that taking a critical stance against western imperialism and neoliberal globalization necessitates a defense of China's policies in Tibet. Such arguments take the form of unfavorable comparisons between Tibetans and Palestinians especially because the former are often romanticized, suggestions that Tibetans are unfortunate ideological victims of US-funded propaganda, and claims that they should be grateful for Chinese state-funded development. This response renders Tibetans incapable of being authentic political subjects. A radical stance on Western imperialism and capitalism should reject such reductionism.     

Transnational environmentalism and entanglements of sovereignty: The tiger campaign across the Himalayas

In the spring of 2006, Tibetans in China set fire to more than a million dollars worth of otter, leopard and tiger pelts. The numerous bonfires were a response to the 14th Dalai Lama's statement, made at the Kalachakra Initiation Ceremony in India, that Tibetans should cease wearing such pelts. The Chinese state interpreted this as an act of loyalty to the Dalai Lama and this evidence of multiple overlapping sovereignties as a threat to its exclusive territorial sovereignty. An effort to clarify this space invited a sovereign invocation of the exception, as salaried employees were forced to wear endangered animal pelts, violating Chinese national law. A conjunctural analysis of the Dalai Lama's speech and the subsequent burnings demonstrates that contrary to prevailing narratives, transnational environmental advocacy played a key role. The conjuncture in which these events took place was shaped by multiple competing entanglements of Chinese, Indian, and Tibetan sovereignties with nature protection and transnational activism. Two distinct assemblages, shaped by power relations and the politics of sovereignty, formed around protecting the tiger across the Himalayas, with dramatically different effects. The case shows that far from post-sovereign environmental governance, nature and sovereignty remain inextricably entangled, and illustrates how multiple modes to construct and defend state sovereignty come into conflict with each other.     

Traveling with faith: the creation of women's immigrant aid associations in nineteenth and twentieth-century France

This article explores the efforts of French Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish women to morally, spiritually, and physically protect immigrant and migrant women and girls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Women of faith worried about the dangers posed by the white slave trade, and they feared the loss of spiritual consciousness among women living far from their families and their places of worship. In response to these concerns, they developed numerous faith-based international organizations aimed at protecting vulnerable working-class immigrants. Upper-class women's work in immigrant aid societies allowed them to take on much greater social and religious leadership roles than they had in the past. Likewise, the intricate, international networks that these women developed contributed to the building of international cooperation throughout Europe.     

Folklore from Ireland

THE NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA By A. W. HOWITT, D.Sc Macmillan &; Co. 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

WEST AFRICAN BELIEFS. Reviewed by A. Lang.

ZWEI JAHRE UNTER DEN KANNIBALEN DER SALOMO-INSELN : Reiseerlebnisse und Schilderunge von Land und Leuten. By CARL RIBBE. 352 pp. 86 figures in the text. 14 plates. 10 diagrams and 3 maps. Dresden-Blasewitz, Elbgau-Buchdruckerei, H. Beyer, 1903. Reviewed by A. C. Haddon.

TRADITIONS OF THE SKIDI PAWNEE. BY GEORGE A. DORSEY (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, vol. viii.). Boston, 1904, pp. xxvi, 366, with 15 Plates. Reviewed by N. W. Thomas.

A PHONETICAL STUDY OF THE ESKIMO LANGUAGE, BASED ON OBSERVATIONS MADE ON A JOURNEY IN NORTH GREENLAND, 1900–1901. By WILLIAM THALBITZER. Reprint from Meddelelser om Gronland, vol. xxxi. Copenhagen, 1904. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

SOCIOLOGICAL PAPERS: 1904. With an INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS by JAMES BRYCE. Published for the Sociological Society. Macmillan. 1905. Reviewed by Charlotte S. Burne.

STUDIES IN ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. By H. M. CHADWICK. Cambridge University Press. Reviewed by F. M. Stenton.

JOURNAL OF THE FOLK-SONG SOCIETY, Vol. I., Pt. 5. Spottiswoode &; Co., 1904. Reviewed by L. M. Eyre.