The renunciation of the slaughter of yaks has become a significant cultural movement among Tibetan pastoralist communities in China, influenced by prominent figures in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This movement promotes a compassionate approach to livestock management, encouraging pastoralists to abstain from slaughtering yaks or selling them to slaughterhouses. While existing scholarship acknowledges the widespread adoption of this ethical practice, it often overlooks the ways in which pastoralists actively resist and reinterpret these norms. In this article, I propose the concept of performative agency to examine how pastoralists in the Pema Rito area of Qinghai province use an annual yak pageant as a platform to articulate their own desires and aspirations. I contend that the yak pageant functions as a crucial site of contestation, where pastoralists assert their agency by negotiating externally imposed ethical norms to advance their own vision of pastoralist life on their own terms.

Following the rules of self-sacrifice for a higher cause, the Palestinian female bomber performs the values of the struggle through and on her body in a farewell video statement. She leaves herself behind to create an image of a strong and victorious soldier. The female bomber's performance of the new self introduces her as a role model for younger generations. Her public appearance in hijab challenges notions of the body, physical beauty, and freedom in the secularist world at the same time as it deviates from the norms of a fundamentalist view of women. It is the dual impact on local and international viewers that politicizes the female bomber's public performance and makes it significant. Rana Salimi has received her PhD from the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. She currently lectures at UCSD and at National University on a variety of subjects, including theatre history and language arts.