Politische Geographien des Religiösen – Ambivalenzen der Verkopplung von Religion und Raum im Fall Tibet

Abstract. "Religious spaces" can become a powerful nucleus of (geo-) political imaginations, identities, and conflicts. The paper outlines this aspect using the example of Tibet. Considering the prominent position of Buddhism in Tibet, the tense relationships between religion, space and nation come into view. In this respect the paper does however not primarily discuss the quite well known antagonistic constructions of pro-Chinese and pro-Tibetan geopolitical discourses. Rather, it addresses the far less publicized yet for the development of Tibetan Nationalism equally important fact that differences in the production of religious spaces and respective identities can also be found within Tibetan society. Tracing these discursive inventions of tradition helps to better understand, why the establishment of a national project in Tibet has been difficult and why it only started to gain traction and visibility in the face of mounting threads by an antagonistic exterior and the precarious Tibetan exile situation.