Doctoral Candidates: Losang Ragbey

Engendering Tibet: Women En-countering Nationalism in a Transnational Diaspora

Dissertation Summary

This is the first study focusing specifically on Tibetan diaspora women emerging from the ordinary classes (as opposed to the élite). This dissertation is about the construction of gender identity and how women and men are differently shaped by culturally scripted practices of power. It also interrogates the inscription of nationalist and patriarchal authority on the female body in the Tibetan transnational diasporic community. Women's responses to, and narrativization of, these gendered cultural scripts lead me to explore how women assimilate, accommodate and resist norms of gendered practice.

Gender discourse remains a key concern in discussions of power, transnationalism, identity and narrative analysis. Through this ethnographic account, I hope to contribute to these discussions by examining women's lives in a specific historical moment. I describe how women who have been forced into exile have encountered the juxtaposition of gender oppression and nationalist attachments. These Tibetan women ranging from ages 24 to 90 are situated in two different diasporic locations. The first, Bylakuppe, is a refugee settlement in south India with approximately 12, 000 Tibetans, most of whom are farmers. The second location, Toronto, Canada's largest city, recently witnessed a population spurt from less than 300 to over 1,000 Tibetans. This interrogation leads to the first analysis of Tibetan women from the theoretical lenses of gender, nationalism and diaspora.

Bio

Losang Rabgey is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, England, where she specializes in gender anthropology and the Tibetan diaspora. Rabgey received a Master's degree in Anthropology and a B.A. in Sociology and Environmental Studies, both from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her fieldwork has focused on oral life histories of Tibetan women in India and the West. She has presented her research at a number of universities in the United States and Canada.

Rabgey will be the first Tibetan woman in the West to get an advanced degree. After her parents fled Tibet in 1959, Rabgey was born in a refugee settlement in northern India. Her family soon emigrated to Canada and in 1987, Rabgey traveled with her family to her father's village in Kham, Tibet. Her family has established a Non- Governmental Organization ("NGO") in Tibet called Shenpen through which community development projects for the village region are pursued, with emphasis on Tibetan women's and girls' education.