Nancy Jo Johnson on the New Tibet
There is an interview with Nancy Jo Johnson over at BlogCritics in which she discusses some very interesting points about where Tibetans are today, what they want, and what that means to her.
She is mostly very even-handed regarding what she sees. She concedes that Tibetans are economically engaged, and generally seem to be enjoying the fruits of their relationship in the fold of China. She tempers this view, however, with what is really a classic case of what Donald Lopez described in “Prisoners of Shangri-La”. Johnson laments what she sees as an abandonment of traditional Tibetanness (read: Buddhism).
Her overly romantic view can most clearly be seen in this comment:
People don’t smile. And when you consider the traditional Tibetan culture, in which people did nothing but smile for thousands of years…
I have the utmost respect for all she’s done for the Tibetans she has helped, but simply put, she is a classic romantic. Speaking in more theoretical terms, this romanticism often has, as it’s base, a subconscious ethnocentrism. Westerners who lament the losses of traditional culture (however sad this may be) fail to realize that people are not museum peices, and culture is not a static phenomenon. It is paternalistic to look at modern Lhasans with materialistic desires and pity them for abandoning their traditional heritage. It robs them of their agency, and assumes that they are simply “confused” in her words.
While it is regrettable that China is not doing more to nurture traditional Tibetan identity it shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. The GIE in India’s campaigns to establish an independent Tibet (not to be confused with the DL’s more tempered requests for autonomy within China) are essentially a nationalist movement, with the preservation of a distinct Tibetan identity (they have often discouraged Tibetans from marrying non-Tibetans) as its core goal, at least publicly. When ethnic nationalism is seen as the problem, then it is somewhat logical (though unfortunate) that China would not rush to nurture that feeling of ethnic separateness.
In a way we should look favorably on the fact that China is taking steps to keep Tibetans engaged in the greater system of things. It should hardly be a surprise that when given the chance to be engaged many Tibetans, most of whose families lived in subsistence-level serfdom for generations, would take those opportunities.
