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

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.

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 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