| This dissertation examines everyday literacy practices among Tibetan young adults in the refugee settlement of McLeod Ganj, India. It is based on seventeen months of fieldwork that included a sociolinguistic survey of 184 McLeod Ganj residents, participant/observation techniques, interviews and collection of written data from eighteen young Tibetans living in McLeod Ganj. In this examination of a shift in literacy practices from Tibetan to English among twenty to thirty-two year old Tibetans, this dissertation draws from practice theory, in particular Marshall Sahlins' structure of the conjuncture and Eckert and McConnell-Ginet's ("Think Practically") communities of practice in an effort to better understand divergent processes of social transformation. Ethnographically, this project focuses on writing among three communities of practice in McLeod Ganj, namely Diaspora Borns, TCV Orphans and New Arrivals. It examines how members of these three communities of practice utilize written Tibetan and English across various written genres to negotiate shared meanings and resources within their respective communities of practice but also as ways of taking up positions in the peer-based symbolic marketplace. Taking such diverse and seemingly inconsequential written genres such as grocery lists, text messages, and diary entries as primary data, this dissertation contributes significantly to several areas of anthropological and social theory including practice theory, literacy studies, bilingualism, language ideologies and Tibetan studies. |
