VINCANNE ADAMS
Department of Anthropology
Princeton University
Suffering the Winds of Lhasa: Politicized
Bodies, Human Rights, Cultural Difference,
and Humanism in Tibet
Tibetan refugees and Western activists note that if universal human rights
standards were enforced in China, Tibetans would suffer less and come
closer to political independence. This article explores potential problems
ofuniversalism and individualism in human rights discourse by examining
understandings of the body and suffering among Lhasa Tibetan women.
Data are taken from accounts of political prisoners and women patients
at Lhasa's traditional Tibetan medical hospital. The data suggest a
collective subjectivity, based on ideas about karma and congruencies of
body, mind, and society that contrast with those found in international
human rights discourse. Tibetans are forced to adopt universalist and
individualist positions to make their claims for human rights heard while
ironically articulating ideas about suffering that would contest such
universalist positions. The article proposes a need for alternative concep-
tualizations of human rights taken from Tibetan epistemologies of suffer-
ing, and illustrates the utility of medical anthropological inquiries about
embodiment and subjectivity for addressing larger political debates about
human rights. [Traditional Tibetan Medicine, Human Rights, Epistemol-
ogy, Bodily Suffering]
In its own eyes, Western humanism is the love of humanity, but to others it is merely
the custom and institution of a group of men, their password, and sometimes their battle
cry.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Medical Anthropology Quarterly 12(l):74~102. Copyright © 1998 American Anthropological Asso-
ciation.
74

SUFFERING THE WINDS OF LHASA 75
Liberal Humanism
Veena Das once observed that globalization does not necessarily meanuniversalization. One meaning of this comment is that even though aculture is globalized, it still might not partake of certain universalist
privileges. For example, Tibetan culture is known around the world today (spawned
at least in part by the 1959 diaspora of refugees over at least three continents), but
Tibetans do not share equally with other cultural groups, or even uniformly within
their culture, the privileges of universal human rights, particularly the right not to
be imprisoned or tortured for their politics. This situation, in part, inspires Das to
ask questions not about the means necessary to ensure universalization but rather
about the utility of universalist rights discourse itself.1 In a related fashion, I ask in
this article questions about the universalist potential of a specific intersection of
human rights discourse, anthropology, and a politics of engagement in the case of
Tibetan suffering. I take human rights discourse as currently one of the most
popular rubrics of liberal humanism, anthropology as among other things a persist-
ent concern with identifying and valorizing cultural difference, and a politics of
engagement as that which is required of humanism. My goal is to explore how a
politics of engagement might move beyond the paralyzing polemic that situates
universalism in opposition to cultural specificity when it comes to human rights,
politicized bodies, and suffering in Tibet.
Adopting the position that universalism can and should be a basis upon which
to promote a contemporary liberal agenda in an era when globalization seems to
engage so many people so unequally in transnational projects, I ask here how such
a project might also suggest rethinking the very category of "universal" in the case
of human rights in Tibet. I do this not to revert to or adopt the conventionally rec-
ognized position that opposes universalism in human rights—namely that human
rights are not universal but culturally specific—although that would seem inevita-
ble given that the debate is already cast in these polarized terms. I do not want to re-
produce the dualism. Rather, I ask how a humanist agenda might be combined with
anthropological concerns for identifying cultural difference in ways that construc-
tively disentangle and disempower both sides of this polarized debate. As such, my
discussion focuses on three discourses of difference: universal versus culturally
specific human rights, individualist versus collective subjectivities, and Tibetan
versus Chinese, and Tibetan versus Western identities.
My motivation stems partially from what I see as a complicated politics of
identity in Tibet wherein various constructions of Tibetan identity issue from
Western and Tibetan refugee activists who desire a free Tibet. I see this not as a
civilizing agenda but as a politicizing one that impacts on both Tibetans who are
and who are not already politically active about their identity. My motivation also
stems partially from a desire to move away from what I see as a tendency to ex-
clude from the Western and foreign view the idea (or even the possibility) that at
least some Tibetans are less interested in liberation by independence from China
than they are in the delivery of modernization by the Chinese or anyone else.2 At
the same time, I also note that "ethnic" and class tensions and conflict between
Chinese and Tibetans are extant and pervasive on the plateau,3 and that official
PRC policies toward Tibetans seem to be driven by a good deal of paranoia (Craig
Janes, personal communication December, 1996), leading to a situation in which