Viewing Embeddedness and Ethnic-Solidarity in Economics of Exchange: Reflections from Economic and Cultural Practices of Tibetan Community in India

Abstract

Karl Polanyi argues that the discipline of economics has emerged from the observations of human beings and their practices existing in a society. Since humans are perceived primarily as social beings rather than economic ones, embeddedness is a necessary and basic condition of the economy. It is critical for an attempt to view a given economic structure with respect to the given social order in which it is embedded. And the social order prevailing in a society is determined by a community’s values, culture, political environment and history. Similarly, some economic frameworks and market systems emerge from a social order of communities that seeks to preserve, establish and promote its identity, and is rarely motivated by economic profit. ‘Solidarity economies’ like these can then be viewed as organizations or communities that tend to organize themselves into an enclosed solid framework to confront their problems and cater to their needs. When such solidarity is evident in the economic framework of an ethnic community, we refer to this as ethnic-solidarity. This paper attempts to study the inter-sectional application of these concepts, that is, of embeddedness and ethnic solidarity, in the socio-economic context of the Tibetan community residing in India. Our study’s field work was divided in two parts; the first phase of the study was conducted in the Majnu Ka Tilla (New Delhi), and the second (more detailed) phase was conducted in Mcleodganj (Dharamshala). The paper's findings and observations focus on this second phase. Two Tibetan knowledge systems here: the Thangka art and the Tibetan healing system, were identified during field-work as mirrored images of the Tibetan cultural identity, its history, and the community’s effort to preserve, promote it in different economic forms.