Social Structuration in Tibetan Society: Education, Society and Religious Life

Social structure is a core concept in the field of sociology, and Anthony Giddens has extended this concept to structuration theory. This theory has multiple applications, but has never been used to analyze the structure of Tibetan society. Tibetan social structuration is an under-researched area. The lack of basic sociological understanding of Tibetan society is due to insufficient study on the question of why neither Tibetan monastic education nor the state school system have produced Tibetan sociologists and social theory able to identify the social problems in contemporary Tibetan society. This study aims to construct a theory of Tibetan sociology and, emerging from this, a preliminary Tibetan sociology of education, that sets Giddens’s theory of structuration in dialogue with Je TsongKhapa’s philosophy. Through a process of dialectical co-construction, it links Tibetan analytic approaches with international sociological perspectives. The resulting synthesis helps us to analyze social structuration in a spiritual society and how the two types of Tibetan society—oral and literate society—are situated in this dynamic context. The study extends structuration theory to several sub-divisions including personal life and education, analyzes the social relations of political and spiritual authority, and compares the two thinkers’ ontological approaches to conventional and ultimate reality. It also applies Giddens’s theory to the social tensions and realities resulting from Je TsongKhapa’s dramatic religious restructuration of Tibetan society. Education is the force of social change. Yet the uneasy co-existence of three distinct forms of education in Tibetan society—monastic, oral and state school education—challenges the practice and potential of social transformation. The study analyzes these forms of education in relation to Tibetan social structuration and argues that the current distinctions between oral and literate society need to be narrowed, that village culture and agency need to be empowered, and that the strengths of each form of education need to converge in the mutual aim of a new educational approach that is socio-culturally relevant and also critically attuned to the realities of modernization and globalization. It is hoped that this study will contribute to reinforcing Tibetan social structure and the long-term sustainability of Tibetan society and culture.Ph.D