Publications (Selected)
Climate Change on the Third Pole: Causes and Processes. Cross-Party Group on Tibet, Scottish Parliament/Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research (Jan 2021). [GET HOLD OF A COPY HERE]
In 2021, the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group on Tibet, supported by the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research, published the results of a two-year inquiry into climate change on the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges, collectively known as the Third Pole. This report summarises the results of over 700 scientific publications from around the world.
The Third Pole Region is an area the size of Western Europe, the source and headland of most of Asia's major rivers. Its cryosphere of snow, glacier and permafrost regulate water cycles that support the livelihoods of nearly 1.9 billion people. That cryosphere is rapidly fragmenting due to global climate change, regional pollution and local urbanisation and industry, leading to a total shift in the region's hydrology, and thereby its capacity to support human communities across Asia.
Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism (2003).
London: Routledge (Full Monograph). [Get hold of a copy]
'A tour de force exposition of Tibetan culture, society, and religion.' - The Journal of Asian Studies
An ethnographic description and analysis of the ritual life of Lingshed Kumbum, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Western Himalayan region of Ladakh. Based on long-term fieldwork in the region and many months living in the monastery, this book describes in detail the complex life and duties of a village monastery:
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The social and economic organisation of the monastery, and what it means to be a monk.
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The Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist rites performed as part of the monastic calendar.
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Lingshed monastery's deep relationship with the five surrounding villages whose needs it serves, and the complex cosmology of local gods and spirits that inhabit the landscape.
"The Last Gift of the God-King: Narrating the Dalai Lama’s Resignation" (2018). In Bhoil, S. & E. Galvan-Alvarez (eds.) Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage. London: Lexington Books.
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On the 19th March 2011, His Holiness the 14th Dalai announced his retirement from office as the political leader of the Tibetan cause and the separation of the Ganden Podrang estate (the religious ‘house’ of the Dalai Lamas' reincarnations) from the governance of Tibetans in line with democratic principles that His Holiness has asserted since first entering exile from Tibet in 1959. His Holiness' departure from office required a substantial rewriting of the Tibetan Charter, the constitution of all exiled Tibetans. This article, based on extensive interviews with members of the Charter Redrafting committee as well as the two Tibetan prime ministers that oversaw the change, examines the challenges faced in writing the new constitution, finding a way to speak of the Dalai Lama's on-going influence, of secularisation with Buddhist characteristics, and of a distinctively Tibetan understanding of exiled democracy.
"The Opposite of Witchcraft: Evans‐Pritchard and the Problem of the Person" (2013). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 19(1): 18-33. [Get hold of a Copy]
The principal legacy of Evans‐Pritchard's 1937 ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has been to associate the rationality of witchcraft with Azande ideas of misfortune and enmity. Evans‐Pritchard found Azande ideas regarding witchcraft both challenging and rational, but still felt that "'witches, as the Azande conceive them, clearly cannot exist". However, a close reading of the original, unabridged version of Oracles suggest that his thesis regarding misfortune was contradicted by much of his own ethnography, that Azande witchcraft was to be found in the manner in which daily practices of Azande craft (hunting, agriculture, pottery, just to name a few), entwined persons together in ways that contradict European notions of the physically bounded self. In this sense, it was less that Evans-Pritchard did not believe in Azande witches - he also could not bring himself to believe in Azande personhood in general.
"The Perils of Exchange: Karma, Kingship and Templecraft in Tibet" (2015). Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie Année, 2015 24 pp. 189-209
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The Buddhist doctrine of karma is generally described as an entirely individualistic affair. However, both the huge literary corpus of Tibetan Buddhist writers, as well as the practice of daily Buddhist life, point towards the vital importance of 'communal karma' - that is, karmic mechanisms that link people together by ties of authority, inheritance and exchange, even by sharing the same food. This article examines the importance of these ideas in detail for the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and for how they influenced decisions about everything, from the most humble day-to-day interactions to the very organisation of the Tibetan state at Lhasa.
"Who Belongs to Tibet? Governmental Narratives of State in the Ganden Podrang" (2014). In G. Toffin, & J. Pfaff-Czarnecka (Eds.), Facing Globalization in the Himalayas: Belonging and the Politics of the Self (pp. 397-419). (Governance, Conflict and Civic Action; Vol. 5). Sage Publications Ltd. [Get Hold of a Copy]
The Ganden Podrang state of the Dalai Lamas maintained a complex and historically changing relationship to territory on the Tibetan Plateau, leading to extended contestations over history and sovereignty in the wake of the region's incorporation into the People's Republic of China in 1951. This article examines the historical development of the indigenous governmental concept of " Greater Tibet" from the seventh century to the final days of the Dalai Lama's rule in Tibet in 1959, through the lens of the Tibetan notion of the cholkha sum, or "three provinces". The term itself was originally part of Mongolian taxation policy in the 13th century, but its ideas were intimately linked by Tibetan writers, historians and governments to the mythic sovereign territory of the seventh-ninth century Yarlung emperors of Central Tibet.
"Ritual as History in Tibetan Divine Kingship: Notes on the Myth of the Khotanese Monks" (2012). History of Religions, 51(3), pp. 219-220
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In the seventh century, Songtsen Gampo became the first Buddhist emperor of Tibet, founding the city of Lhasa, inventing the Tibetan script and building the first great Buddhist temples of that land. Seen today as the pre-incarnation of the Dalai Lamas, Songtsen Gampo was also hailed in Tibetan history as the human manifestation of Chenresik, the Mahayana bodhisattva of compassion and Tibet's patron deity. The Tale of the Khotanese Monks is the first written form of this claim to Songtsen Gampo's divinity and to the Buddhist destiny of the Tibetan people. It is a story filled with violence, terror and complex religious imagery. It is also a tale that has changed dramatically as the centuries of re-telling have passed.
"La double figure du moine: monachisme et maisons" (2009). In A. Herrou, & G. Krauskopff (Eds.), Moines et moniales de par le monde: La vie monastique au miroir de la parenté (pp. 161-171). (Collection Religion et Sciences Humaines). Editions L'Harmattan.
English Language Title: "The Two-Dimensional Monk : Monasticism and Householding". What does mean to be a Buddhist monk in Tibetan societies? This article examines the 'two-dimensional' nature of Buddhist monasticism in its relationship to the natal households of monks. While doctrinally presented as communities of "homeless ones" (anagarika), Buddhist monasticism in Tibetan societies deals with the realities of monastic dependence on lay economic life. Monks are at once members of a Buddhist sangha that has renounced economic production and, of course, sexual reproduction, and at the same time peripheral members of households, whose monastic quarters are legal parts of the household estates they came from, and partially dependent on those households for their daily livelihood. The necessity of both these realities results in a life that is not a blended compromise, but a carefully organised daily separation of eating, sleeping and social interaction.
"Vajra Brother, Vajra Sister: Renunciation, Individualism and the Household in Tibetan Buddhist Monasticism" (2003). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6(1): 17-34. [Get hold of a Copy]
This article challenges two connected notions in the study of Tibetan Buddhism: that Buddhist monasticism is characterized by a pronounced move towards individualism, systematically detaching monks from relational social life; and that Tibetan Buddhist doctrines of karma represent an alternative mode of identity to those constructed within household life. By comparing the ritual practices and inheritance patterns associated with household groups in Ladakh with tantric ritual forms in local Buddhist (Gelukpa) monasteries, it is argued that they demonstrate pronounced structural similarities, centred on the shared symbolic construct of the household/temple as the source of socialized agency. An analysis of the meditative disciplines of Gelukpa monasticism is used to show how such training serves not to renounce kinship and household values, but to transform them into modes of religious authority, essential to the social position of monks (trapa ) and incarnate lamas (tulku) in Tibetan Buddhism.