Reproducing identity: Using images to promote pronatalism and sexual endogamy among Tibetan exiles in South Asia

In this paper the authors analyze images from publications, produced by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile during the 1990s, that were used to educate Tibetan exiles living in India about health issues. The purpose is to show how the images promote pronatalism and ethnic endogamy-objectives that Tibetan exiles view as essential steps toward stemming a perceived threat, perpetrated by China, to their existence as a distinct ethnic group. The authors argue that the storybook aesthetics used in these images efface the ideological controversy of their encoded messages by evoking the style and authority of remedial health education.