Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Quiet State: Micro-Surveillance and Normalisation in Tibet

The Quiet State: Micro-Surveillance and Normalisation in Tibet

Barnett, Robert
Nathan, Andrew J.

Hardcover

AnthropologyGeneral Political ScienceGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 9819222699
ISBN13: 9789819222698
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: Sep 25 2026
Pages: 300
Weight: 1.23
Height: 0.88 Width: 5.83 Depth: 8.27
Language: English

This open access book is both a meticulously researched account of newly emerging forms of rule in the Chinese borderlands and a broader theoretical intervention into the study of authoritarian governance.

Taking the current situation in Tibet as its case study, The Quiet State shows how local officials in Tibet have developed previously unknown methods to micromanage and surveil certain social groups. The book examines one such scheme, involving some ten thousand Tibetan Buddhist nuns who have been singled out for having travelled beyond their home areas to receive religious teachings, resettled in fixed locations, monitored by local officials and residents, and given repeated political education, all under the rubric of state tolerance and care. This exercise in coercive benevolence lies at the heart of what the author calls the quiet mode of authoritarianism: a post-carceral form of social control, found particularly in ethnic or minority areas, that constrains movement and thought while avoiding the overt use of violence. Presented as routine or normal instruments of social management and barely visible even to locals, let alone outsiders, these micro-surveillance schemes are linked to the mass expansion of grassroots governance in Tibet, where for the first time officials are now stationed in almost every monastery and village.

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