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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
List of contents
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
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
