Sociological Problems and Educational Divergence

This talk focuses on the relationship between education and social structure through applying Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory to rural Tibetan society in China. In this, we analyse the dialectical relationship among local social structures and three forms of education in Tibetan society in China.  The talk also looks at how myth and symbol have parallel and relationship to the social and cultural linkages in the construction of this identity and are reflected in stories, views of nature, the dialectical relationships of world and social beings.

The paper also examines how the use of myth and symbol have helped to reinforce the dialectical and practical understandings of culture and understanding in Tibetan rural society and specifically the evolutionary role of works like Gesar of Ling in the integration of the social order and the practical understanding in day to day life of what structuration means.