bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Men and Women in Contemporary Kalmykia: Traditional Gender Stereotypes and Reality
Authors: Butovskaya M. L. , Guchinova E. B.
Published: December 2010

Kalmyk social life has been transformed over the 20th century, and this article documents changes specifically in the sexual division of labour and gender relations. Previous social norms (which differed from widely-held suppositions aboutmale dominance in all spheres of life)were drastically altered by the Soviet regime, changing work patterns and living conditions for both sexes. The article focuses mainly on Post-Socialist transformations, which are discussed through analysis of field-data concerning Kalmyk children. It was found that there are significant differences between the play activities of boys and girls, the gender norms they uphold, and the actual patterns of relations between men and women found among adults. The gender norms children uphold in speech are stereotyped and more ‘conservative’ than either their own behaviour or that of their parents. Nevertheless, observation of boys and girls at play showed definite differences in aggressiveness and responsiveness, the types of games preferred, and patterns of inter-relations among / between the sexes, and the article concludes that human behavioural universals may be evident here.
Notions of Rights over Land and the History of Mongolian Pastoralism
Authors: Sneath David
Published: December 2010

In the 1990s the Mongolian state implemented a series of reforms designed to create a competitive market economy based on private property. These included the wholesale privatisation of the pastoral economy and the dissolution of the collective and state farms. The Asian Development Bank and other international development agencies advocated new legislation to allow the private ownership of land. This remains a highly controversial issue in Mongolia, particularly with respect to pasture land which remains a public-access resource.
The Secret Secret: Cinema, Ethnicity and Seventeenth Century Tibetan-Mongolian Relations
Authors: Barnett Robert
Published: December 2010

The Secret History of the Potala Palace, a 1989 film about Mongol-Tibetan relations in the seventeenth century, was a milestone in the still tentative development of Tibetan film, with significant Tibetan participation and close attention to Tibetan sources of history. This paper suggests possible reasons for the withdrawal of the film from circulation, and proposes ways of reading film in the context of contested versions of ethnicity.
The Reincarnations of Desi Sangye Gyatso in Alasha and the Secret History of the Sixth Dalai Lama
Authors: Jalsan
Published: December 2010

This paper deals with the history of the two lines of reincarnated lamas of the Baruun Heid monastery in Alasha and is written by the most senior representative of this tradition. According to The Biography of the Sixth Dalai Lama, sometimes called The Secret Biography, and according to the tradition of the Alasha Mongols, the Sixth Dalai Lama did not die in 1706 in the Khökhnuur area as described in standard histories. Instead he is said to have escaped while being taken to Beijing under custody and after various travels to have settled in Alasha, where he died in 1746. His disciples founded a monastery and two complementary reincarnation lines which combined the reincarnations of the de-throned Sixth Dalai Lama and those of Sangye Gyatso (1653–1705), the Tibetan regent or desi (sde srid) who had recognised him. The author, who is at the same time Professor of Linguistics at Inner Mongolia University and the current reincarnation of Sangye Gyatso, describes this widely discussed tradition and its re-emergence in Alasha after the Cultural Revolution
History and its Televising: Events and Narratives of the Hoshuud Mongols in Modern China
Authors: Bayar Nasan
Published: December 2010

In the seventeenth century Güüshi Khan, leader of the Hoshuud Mongols, conquered the Kökhnuur area and Tibet. Since he was at the same time an ally of the Qing, this episode has been emphasised in contemporary Chinese historical discourse as a key event in the process of constructing the Chinese nation in such a way as to include Tibetans and Mongols. This paper describes the vicissitudes of a group of Hoshuud Mongols that migrated and settled in the Alasha area in Inner Mongolia where they became subjects of the Qing dynasty. During the Republican Period they transformed their status to become members of the modern Chinese nation and later they were included in the People's Republic of China. The paper explores the way in which these processes are represented in various forms of contemporary official discourse – from television films to publications – in order to detect the underlying logic on which current historical narratives are based and which serve as the ‘historical truth’.
The Power of Imagination: Whose Northeast and Whose Manchuria?
Authors: Narangoa Li
Published: December 2010

In the early twentieth century, Manchuria became what Owen Lattimore called a ‘Cradle of Conflict’ where Russia and Japan competed for supremacy in Northeast Asia. Russian and Japanese involvement in Mongolia and Manchuria, especially after the Russo-Japanese War, compelled Chinese authorities to certify that the Northeast (Dongbei), that is Manchuria, was an integral part of China. Japan, for its part, asserted the opposite and represented Manchuria as a territory separate from China in order to justify its presence there. In this paper I argue that Japanese and Chinese travellers’ accounts, their reconnaissance or memoir writings on Manchuria and its Manchu and Mongolian inhabitants, were part of larger geographical and historical constructions of power struggle, in terms of both the Japanese claim for Manchuria and the Chinese ‘response’ to the loss of Manchuria.
The Barbarian Borderland and the Chinese Imagination: Travellers in Wa Country
Authors: Fiskesjö Magnus
Published: December 2010

The Wa lands continue to be seized upon in the Chinese imagination, and elsewhere too, as representing what is dangerous and off limits. This is one important underlying reason why these lands, located in between China and Burma, have been some of the least-travelled areas on China's southwestern borders during most of the last few centuries. In fact, these areas have long been regarded as impenetrable for outsider travellers unless assisted by a full-fledged army, its gunpowder dry and its guns loaded. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the British occupation of Burma as well as increasing opium trade prompted increases in the numbers of Chinese and other visitors: officials, soldiers, traders, and so on. The first attempt at delineating a Burma-China border having failed, a second, joint British-Chinese survey was launched and almost completed in the late 1930s. These activities prompted a flurry of patriotic-scholarly efforts to claim these borderlands for the reconstituted Chinese state, which continued into the second half of the twentieth century. This brief paper explores some of the conflicting views of the various kinds of travellers and locals, including early Chinese judgements of the Wa, the nationalistic and scientistic travellers and writers of the 1930s, as well as the teams of ethnologists and soldiers dispatched there in the 1950s and 1960s – notably also Alan Winnington, the famous British correspondent for the Morning Star, and his Wa reception.
Searching for Qiang Culture in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Authors: Wang Ming-KE
Published: December 2010

This paper critically examines attempts by western missionaries, scholars and Chinese intellectuals during the first half of the twentieth century at defining the ‘Qiang culture’, for the purpose of delineating the ethnic boundaries of the ‘Qiang nationality’, in western China. I start by introducing a long historical process, in respect of boundary-formation, from the Shang to the later Qing period, which finally turned the habitants of the Upper Min River valley into a cultural and ethnic mix of hybrids between the Han and the Tibetan. Then, I explore how these outside observers – western missionaries/scholars and Chinese intellectuals – had attempted to find the exemplar of the Qiang culture that could fit in with the ‘history’ of the ‘Qiang people’ each of these authors bore in mind. Even though these attempts produced many confusing aspects, possible misunderstandings and debatable results, nonetheless the works produced and the ethnographical data contained have become important sources for the Han Chinese to later construct the ethnic category of the Qiang in the scheme of the Chinese nation, and also for the Qiang natives to build their own culture and history. I argue that the modern Qiang nationality was not necessarily the product of the ethno/cultural-centralism of the Han Chinese, but was produced after a battle between many centrisms, and that the modern attempt by the Han to define ‘the Qiang’ through their history and culture is not necessarily a new ‘invention’ but only the newest attempt at defining the western ethnic boundary of the Han Chinese, which had been defined, persisted and then was re-defined periodically for more than two thousand years.
Between Chinese Nationalism and Soviet Colonisation: A Chinese Orientalist's Narration of Inner and Outer Mongolia (1926–1927)
Authors: Borchigud Wurlig
Published: December 2010

This essay questions the nature of ‘Chinese orientalism’ vis-à-vis the Western model of ‘orientalism’. It examines the dialectics of the interconnection between Chinese civilisation/nationalism and Soviet communist colonisation/modernisation, and how these shape and limit the perceptions of a Chinese scholar politician, Ma Hetian, in his travel writing about Inner and Outer Mongolia in the mid 1920s. Unlike most travel writings which focus on cultural differences of the ‘inferior’ others as study object and aesthetic idol, Ma's was a political travel writing, which represents his Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Republican government in relation to its internal frontier Inner Mongolia and the independent ‘Outer Mongolia’ (the MPR) at the time. This political travel writing challenges Kojin Karatani's coherent though essentialised reinterpretation of orientalism from its specific sociocultural contexts and geopolitical positions. Similarly to Western orientalists, Ma had an authority to speak of his ‘inferior’ Inner Mongol objects as their civiliser as well as to represent his ‘helpless’ Outer Mongol ‘brothers’ as their national guardian. However, unlike many orientalists (Western and non-Western), Ma's politically charged Sinocentric position and often chauvinistic attitude towards Mongols align him closer to his ‘enemy/friend’ – Soviet Russia.
An Ethnographic World Formulated: On Yih-fu Ruey's Academic Construction of Minority Histories and Cultures in South China
Authors: Hsieh Shih-Chung
Published: December 2010

Yih-fu Ruey was one of the most important ethnologists in the history of anthropological development in China and Taiwan. Ruey's kind of ethnology can be divided into ethnic classification of China, ethnography of minority peoples, and ethnohistory of the non-Han group in the Southwest. Ruey had very limited ‘standard’ field records in contacting people's daily lives, but did have full experiences of travelling historical southwestern China through literature reading.
The Reconstruction of Mongolian Identity in the Pantheon of Polyphonic Images
Authors: Bilik Naran
Published: December 2010

Despite the wish for homogenisation on the part of nation builders of China – the Central Kingdom that has now turned to embrace a market economy with ‘Chinese characteristics’ – Mongolian ethnicity in Yunnan, like ethnicities in other places of this country, is strengthened due to increasing tourism and contacts facilitated by modern technologies of communication and transportation. Different cultural elements and different ethnic groups gather, help build, and celebrate, a renewed Mongolian identity.
Ethnicity in Contemporary Buryat Political Ideology
Authors: Skrynnikova T.D.
Published: December 2010

This paper looks at the role of ethnicity in post-socialist political ideologies in Russia. It offers an examination of the language of nationalist and other political discourse in Buryatia and the ways in which post-socialist ideologies are largely a result of Soviet-era policies. In doing so, it examines the resurgence of Buryat ethnicity and argues that the ethnos has highly developed adaptive capabilities: it does not adapt only to its environment, but it adapts reality to its needs. The Buryat case can also been seen as providing a more general example of the formation of a political culture.
Lost in the Post: Technologies of Imagination, and the Soviet Legacy in Post-Socialist Mongolia
Authors: Sneath David
Published: December 2010

Verdery has suggested exploring the parallels between post-socialist and postcolonial studies. Mongolia has, like many post-colonial states, experienced a series of almost simultaneous transformations in the twentieth century. After the advent of Soviet control in the 1920s Mongolia began to receive Leninist Modernisation and all the trappings of the Soviet version of the European nationstate. The imaginative project of Soviet order shaped the notion of the ‘nation’ and required an equivalent notion of the Russian Narod or ‘people’. The State Socialist ‘theatre state’ with its newly imagined (national) People as a compulsory audience, employed various ‘technologies of the imagination’ – parades, show trials, festivals, meetings and speeches etc. Relations between the Russian and Mongolian peoples were framed in terms of a fraternal metaphor – ah (elder brother). Today Mongolia finds itself in an economic and political position that is comparable to many post-colonial nations. It is now subject to the same discourse of development and the national and transnational institutions that shape conditions in the former colonies. The explicitly junior status of Mongolia with respect to a big Russian brother has been replaced with the implicit infantilisation of western-led Developmentalism, and the danger of a sensation of exclusion that Ferguson calls ‘abjection’.
Editorial Introduction
Authors: Humphrey Caroline
Published: December 2010

This issue of Inner Asia focuses first and foremost on issues of modernisation in Inner Asia. What is distinctive about modernisation in our region? What have been its costs? And what do various methodologies and theories have to offer in study of this theme?
Buryat Urbanisation and Modernisation: A Theoretical Model Based on the Example of Ulan-Ude
Authors: Batomunkuev Sergei
Published: December 2010

This paper provides a model for understanding the modernisation process undergone by ethnic minorities in Russia during the twentieth century. Modernisation is often seen as a negative process implying cultural loss, but focus on this theme has distracted attention from the more humane and positive aspects of the process. Using the example of the Buryats, the article makes a strong argument for the inevitability of socio-economic change, as people gradually adapt to, and then grasp, the opportunities offered by urbanisation. It is true that the cost has been a relative loss of cultural autonomy and the decline of the Buryat language as a multi-functional means of communication. This happens because allencompassing institutional unification is an inescapable effect of modernisation, and linguistic unity follows the cultural dominance of the majority ethnic group. For minorities cultural autonomy is a transient form and is conditional on even more urgent problems of socio-economic vitality and viability. Thus, culturallinguistic autonomy is inversely proportional to the degree of access to selfrealisation and mobility within industrial societies.
The Mutual-Aid Co-operatives and the Animal Products Trade in Mongolia, 1913–1928
Authors: Atwood Christopher P.
Published: December 2010

From the first decade of Mongolian independence after 1911, nationalist publicists and officials denounced the dominance of foreign merchants and capital in the Mongolian economy. Officials and historians declared co-operatives to be the road for simultaneous improving the peoples' living standards and also strengthening national independence. Yet examination of statistics and the vigorous debates at the early party congresses and Great Khural meetings from 1924 to 1927 shows that the co-operatives were neither effective in their mandate nor popular with the herders they were intended to help. From the beginning, the co-operatives appear to have answered the needs of the new state more than those of the herding populace.
Manchu Empire or China Historical GIS? Re-mapping the China/Inner Asia Frontier in the Qing Period CHGIS
Authors: Ryavec Karl E.
Published: December 2010

This study critiques the China Historical Geographic Information System in terms of its failure to distinguish between regions of Chinese civilisation that were directly incorporated into an imperial field administration and Inner Asian regions under indigenous polities. Although the focus of this study is on eastern Tibet, specifically China’s southwestern Tibetan Frontier in Sichuan, the general methodological approach employed is relevant to the entire Inner Asian cultural region. Despite China’s long history, only some eastern Tibetan communities located along the transition zone between the eastern Tibetan Plateau and agrarian China were integrated into the traditional Chinese field administration. Most of this expansion occurred during the last dynasty known as the Qing or Manchu, c. 1644–1911.
The Movement for Reconstructing Identity through Shamanism: A Case Study of the Aga–Buryats in Postsocialist Mongolia
Authors: Shimamura Ippei
Published: December 2010

This paper focuses on the Aga–Buryats of Dornod province, a Mongol minority group in post-socialist Mongolia, and examines the role shamanism played in reconstructing their ethnic identity throughout their cultural revival movement. The paper stresses the socio-psychological aspects: their identity crisis after the collapse of the socialist regime and the role played by shamanism in dealing with this crisis and in reconstructing the Aga–Buryat ethnic identity.
The History and the Political Character of the Name of ‘Nei Menggu’ (Inner Mongolia)
Authors: Borjigin Huhbator
Published: December 2010

After the independence of ‘Outer Mongolia’ in 1911, and especially after the founding of the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924, ‘Outer Mongolia’ (Wai Menggu in Chinese or Gadaad Mongol and Ar Mongol in Mongolian) became a historical term. Inner Mongolia, on the other hand, became the focal point of the so–called ‘Mongolian problem’, and its name Nei Menggu (C) or Dotood Mongol (M) remained sinocentric, denoting direct rule as it did in the Qing geographical– administrative demarcation of the Mongols. The question of naming Inner Mongolia in both Chinese and Mongolian has thus become significant not only for the Mongols in China, but also for Mongols in the independent state of Mongolia. The founding of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Government in 1947 introduced a new name in Mongolian: instead of Dotood Mongol, it is now called Öbör (the sunny side of mountain) Mongol, thereby forming a geobody with Ar Mongol (formerly Outer Mongolia), and it no longer connotes internal administration within China. However, this change has not been reflected in Chinese translation, as Inner Mongolia continues to be called Nei Menggu and historicist Chinese continue to refer to Mongolia as Wai Menggu. In recent years, some Mongols began to call Inner Mongolia ‘Nan Menggu’, and with it came the change of English translation from Inner Mongolia to Southern Mongolia.
The Aftertaste of Hope: Elements for a Historical Approach to the Study of Collectives in Mongolia and Buryatia
Authors: Delaplace Grégory
Published: December 2010

This review essay concerns the collective farms in Mongolia and Buryatia. What is considered here is not collectivisation per se, but the way it has been studied by European and American specialists in this field, between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s.
Relationship Between Man and Nature: A Hermeneutical Approach to Interpreting the Affective Thinking of the Mongolian People
Authors: Terenguto Aitoru
Published: December 2010

In the traditional nomadic culture of the Mongols, their philosophy does not centre around people when it comes to relating to the environment. Instead, sky and nature are worshipped as having the significance of a spiritual being with a Divine soul. This manner of worship manifests itself not only in their daily greetings – Höörhii–Amitan, for example – but also is reflected in their literature, their rituals regarding life and death, and in historical events. This philosophy allowed them to protect their natural habitat, and to live in harmony with nature for centuries; it brought them an inner world of profound peace and tranquillity. In this modern world where their natural environment is facing destruction, and their cultural environment is being contaminated, it is important for us to re-evaluate these issues and redefine traditional Mongolian worship and its meanings.
Cadres, Discourse and Late Socialism: Comparative Views of Idealism, Signs and Outcomes
Authors: Nakamura Tomoko
Published: December 2010

Cadres, Discourse and Late Socialism: Comparative Views of Idealism, Signs and Outcomes
The Letters of Eljigidei, Hülegü, and Abaqa: Mongol Overtures or Christian Ventriloquism?
Authors: Aigle Denise
Published: December 2010

This paper deals with the Great Khans and Ilkhans’ letters, and with the question of their authenticity. Generally, these letters were written in Mongolian, but very few of the original documents have come down to us. The author analyses three letters sent by the Mongols to the Latin West. This paper points out the leading role of the Eastern Christians in the translation of the letters, and their hope for an alliance between the Ilkhans and the Latin West. In these letters the Mongols emphasised the protection afforded to the Christians, the legend of Prester John and the possibility of returning Jerusalem to the Franks. But the offer of collaboration went unheeded.
The New Geographical History: A Reply to Bol
Authors: Ryavec Karl E.
Published: December 2010

This response by Peter Bol to my earlier article ‘Manchu Empire or China Historical GIS?’ presents a welcome admission of the China Historical Geographic Information System’s Sinocentric depiction of Inner Asian polities not part of China during the Qing period, though at times loosely included in a greater Chinese empire or claimed by Manchu rulers.With this clarification, I thank Bol for his forthrightness. Bol’s subsequent critique of my article as promoting historical GIS only where detailed historical maps and boundaries are available is, however, a misunderstanding of the central point of my argument.
Performing Ethnic Personhood in Contemporary Khakassia: Academics and Musicians
Authors: Pegg Carole , Ugdezhekov Stanislav
Published: December 2010

This paper looks at how ethnicity as an aspect of personhood is ‘performed’ among academics and musicians in the contemporary southern Siberian Republic of Khakassia, which is a member of the Russian Federation. It gives a nineteenth-century assessment of musical ethnicity among the Abakan Tatars (i.e. Kachins, Sagais, Bel’tirs, Kyzyls and Koibals), describes the introduction during the Soviet period of the ethnonym ‘Khakas’ through the academic arena, and outlines the controversy that still rages in overlapping academic and musical circles over this and its contemporary divisions. Finally, the paper points to the recent move by musicians to contest their official ‘Khakas’ identities by copying onto their instruments ancient Okunev art from standing stones that litter their steppes, and to reaffirm their Sagai, Khaas and Kyzyl ethnicities by reinstating the traditional inheritance of epic performance among these groups and by differentiating between their musical styles.
Cooperation Strategies in Mongolian Pastoralism During the Socialist Collective Economy
Authors: Ressel Christian
Published: December 2010

My analysis of cooperation strategies considers pastoralism in the context of its long-term relationship to the steppe environment, geographical conditions and seasonal climatic changes. Under the influence of socialist state policies, previous socio–economic patterns were superseded by a ‘progressive’ re-organisation of production that created a new frame for economic action. The resultant forms of cooperation, as implemented by herders, related to different modes of production, which D. Sneath describes as ‘specialist’ and ‘domestic’ modes. During the collective period these modes largely correlated with different concepts of animal property.Within large–scale collective farms communal production became central to herders’ activities. Specialist production was carried out with collective-owned animals according to new formal structures, whereas the management of limited private herds was largely unaffected by official regulations and continued to be organised informally. Correspondingly, different cooperation strategies among herders’ groups were implemented in accordance with different kinds of social obligations and interests, each being adjusted adequately to the given socio-economic and environmental conditions. The differences between concepts of socialist society and the way herders acted in practice to some degree enabled the accumulation of larger private herds and facilitated the continuation of ‘old’ pre-collective patterns under ‘new’ socialist conditions.
Ethnographic Study of Privatisation in a Kyrgyz Village: Patrilineal Kin and Independent Farmers
Authors: Yoshida Setsuko
Published: December 2010

It is widely known that Central Asian states in economic transition have been suffering from severe difficulties since their independence. Local people have coped with these difficulties partly by making good use of their social networks. To date, most anthropological studies carried out on this topic have been limited to looking primarily at single households and/or individuals. This paper also examines economic transition, focusing on the conditions of privatising a sovkhoz (state farm) in northern Kyrgyzstan, but it deals with wider kinship frameworks on the village level. First, to clarify the background of collectivisation in a village, I consider the social environment formed historically in the politico-economic contexts of the Soviet regime. Second, I analyse the stages of post-Soviet privatisation from the formation of transitional groups to the creation of independent farming enterprises in 1995–1996. In this paper, the correlation between economic reorganisation (collectivisation and privatisation) in the twentieth century and patrilineal descent subdivisions in the formerly nomadic areas of Kyrgyzstan are analysed and the roles and significance of patrilineal kinship in the economic transition of a Kyrgyz village are revealed.
The Russian Allotment: Moscow and Ulan-Ude
Authors: Zhimbiev Balzhan
Published: December 2010

From early summer the word dacha is frequently mentioned by the inhabitants of apartment blocks throughout Russia, referring to a patch of land allotted to city dwellers where planting of potatoes and other root vegetables is carried out. Over the last four decades a dacha house was commonly constructed on such an allotment and this became a kind of symbol of Soviet-period urbanisation, with the number of dacha plots issued to city dwellers being always quoted in top governmental reports. Nevertheless despite the fact that the dacha plots have become a common sight on the outskirts of any city, and rumours in Russia’s capital, Moscow, that the number of allotments is practically equal to the number of apartment flats, this does not indicate a particular well-being in society but rather highlights the existence of problematic issues which were rarely perceived in the daily routine.
Transhumance in Transition: Consequences of Socio-Economic Reform. A Case Study of Khoito Gol, Buryatia
Authors: Intigrinova Tatyana
Published: December 2010

This article is devoted to the investigation of factors determining patterns of cattle transhumance in Khoito Gol (BUR. Northern Valley), located in the Republic of Buryatia,Russian Federation. It represents an attempt to understand the causes of and constraints on seasonal migration to alpine pasturage in a time of social and economic reforms. It identifies vertical stratification of natural resources, including temperature regime, nutritional value of palatable vegetation, and propagation of insects and parasites as the main variable encouraging herd transhumance. These natural conditions provide a low-cost opportunity to improve livestock conditions and increase production. Meanwhile, the study demonstrates a sharp decline of the cattle mobility rate in the post-Soviet period. This trend is determined by economic decline and institutional reorganisation, resulting in social stratification and a deterioration of the herds’ security. The results of the research suggest that owners of small herds are more prone to abandon transhumance.
The Social Logic of Disease in Guiyijun Dunhuang
Authors: Mayo Lewis
Published: December 2010

Like its companion ‘Illness, Threat and Systems of Authority in Dunhuang’, this article takes up the relationship between disease and institutional structure. It suggests that action taken towards the sick in Guiyijun Dunhuang was formulated within the larger framework of ritual politics, and was intimately related to the problem of rationing, that is, of differentiation in access to esteemed positions and privileged goods. The notions found in Chinese medical theory cohered with the foundational divisions in Guiyijun society: ideas of the body as a network of storehouse-organs mapped directly on to the material order of a society founded on institutions which were holders of stored energies in the form of a control of storehouses. The power of the government, the Buddhist church and families involved differentiated control over these stored energies and entailed constant monitoring and adjustment of inputs and outputs. The problem of ranking in social relations and the circulation of forces within the body, it is thus suggested, were interrelated phenomena. The form of threat to which this particular system was most prone was simultaneously internal disruption in the balance of relationships between storage-organs and the risk of a wholesale takeover of the system by hostile external forces. This corresponds to two different therapeutic strategies in response to illness in the Guiyijun, those of internal medical adjustment and public ceremony.
The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian epic chronicle of the thirteenth century Translated with a historical and philological commentary
Authors: Rachewiltz Igor De
Published: December 2010

The appearance of this new publication by Igor de Rachewiltz is evidence of the unquenchable interest in the Mongolian medieval literary monument The Secret History of the Mongols. To quote: ‘The real interest of the Secret History lies . . . in its faithful description of the Mongol tribal life in the 12th and 13th centuries’. Why is this text so especially valuable? Firstly, ‘The Secret History stands alone also because it is so close to the events which it relates’ (p. lxiv), and secondly, ‘The Secret History is and remains a true and original Mongol product, unique of its kind, for no other nomadic or seminomadic people has ever created a literary masterpiece like it, in which epic poetry and narrative are so skilfully and indeed artistically blended with fictional and historical accounts’ (p. xxvi). In the present study the author used more than forty translations in different languages. By doing it he pays a tribute to his predecessors: ‘Mostaert’s outstanding contribution’ (p. cxiii), ‘Mostaert’s and Ligeti’s epoch-making studies’ (p. lxxv), ‘Cleaves’ book is nevertheless of paramount importance’ (p. lxxvi) etc. To complete the translation and the commentary, the author used bibliographies, references, and dictionaries, all of which helped him to create a piece of work which revealed different sides of Mongolian life in the period of formation of the Mongolian Empire. For instance, the mentality of the time is revealed through interpretation of various folk motifs. Types of social organisation are revealed by explanation of terms, social positions, ranks and hierarchy, the levels of political organisation, and through analysis of interrelations between social groups and the elite. The present translation is the product of thirty years’ continuous investigation into this difficult text. ‘Over 1,300 primary and secondary sources, as well as monographs and essays in many languages, have been consulted by the author’. One can not disagree with the statement that, despite the longevity of observation and interest in it, the Secret History still remains ‘a true mine of information’.
Contemporary Mongolian sacrifice and social life in Inner Mongolia: the case of the Jargalt Oboo of Urad
Authors: Hürelbaatar A.
Published: December 2010

This article discusses the contemporary Mongolian sacrifice and social life1 in Inner Mongolia, China.2 Rather than discussing sacrifice itself, it will describe the contemporary social practice of traditional Mongolian sacrificial offerings in the wider context of the changing power structures of the Mongols and Han Chinese at the national level, and in the context of changing social authority and economic life at the local level.
Mongolian Buddhist monasteries in present-day northern China a comparative study of monasteries in Liaoning and Inner Mongolia
Authors: Erhimbayar
Published: December 2010

Tibetan Buddhism is still being practised today in many monasteries of northern China. Influenced as they are by the local characteristics of the region in which they are located, these monasteries all have specific features. At the same time, they all share certain traits characteristic of Buddhist monasteries throughout northern China. This article has a primarily descriptive aim, as materials on such monasteries are not widely available. I will first introduce and compare the general situation of four monasteries: two in Liaoning and two in Inner Mongolia. They are: Gegen Süme, Dehui Si, Da Zhao and Shiramüren monasteries. Secondly, I will provide information on the origins of the monks in the four monasteries and compare the financial and economic situation of the four monasteries.
Modern Tuvan Identity
Authors: Mongush Marina
Published: December 2010

After the collapse of the USSR, the Tuvans, in common with all the other non- Russian populations of the former Union, went through a period of radical reaction against Soviet norms. Perceiving themselves to be buried beneath the wreckage of Soviet rule, the Tuvans began strenuously to search for values and aspirations which could form a basis for new identities. The vacuum created by the dismantling of Soviet social and cultural systems began slowly to be filled with new possibilities for identity formation – connected to language, clan, family, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender and so on. Each of these social realms has its own meaning, and its own stimuli. This article discusses recent developments in contemporary Tuvan culture, under four interconnected headings: clan, family, ethnicity and religion. As will be seen, these in Tuva are the areas where values and cultural understandings intersect with political and economic constraints – and therefore where the conceptual and emotional attachments necessary to personal identification are formed.
Pen of the Jahriyya: A commentary on The History of the Soul by Zhang Chengzhi
Authors: Garnaut Anthony
Published: December 2010

China’s leading Muslim writer, Zhang Chengzhi, published in 1991 an historical novel about a Sufi Islamic community, entitled The History of the Soul. The novel covers the two hundred years leading up to 1919, the year of the May Fourth Movement that is conventionally considered as the beginning of modern Chinese history. During this period, the Sufi community that is the subject of Zhang’s novels, called the Jahriyya, was involved in a series of violent clashes with the Qing imperial state. The author weaves through his historical narrative of a Chinese spiritual community the story of his own spiritual crisis, which he underwent in the 1980s and finally overcame through his encounter with the Jahriyya.
The Mongolian Nationality Lexicon: From the Chinggisid Lineage to Mongolian Nationality (From the seventeenth to the early twentieth century)
Authors: Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene
Published: December 2010

The main theme and motivation of Mongolian historiographical works of the seventeenth century onwards was the perpetuation and glorification of the Chinggisid lineage. The Mongol chroniclers presented the Chinggisid lineage as sacred and everlasting, like the flow of the sacred Ganges. This paper examines the significance of this perpetuation of the Chinggisid lineage in the construction and reconstruction of the Mongolian identity by examining the historiographical works of the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries.
The Legend of Muna Mountain
Authors: Elverskog Johan
Published: December 2010

This article explores the development and transformation of the legend of Muna Mountain, which describes Chinggis Khan’s funeral cortège. In particular, it argues that this legend arose among the post-Yuan Mongols in order to sanctify ‘Inner Mongolia’ as the new homeland through the establishment of the cult of Chinggis Khan at the Eight White Tents. Over time, however, both the legend and the cult changed and these developments are further explored in relation not only to the socio-political fragmentation of the sixteenth century but also the introduction of tantric Buddhism.
The Human Perspective
Authors: Kristensen Benedikte Møller
Published: December 2010

This article examines possible perspectivist phenomena in the ritual practices and ontology of the Duha reindeer herders of Northern Mongolia. My theoretical point of departure is Viveiros de Castro’s recent theories on perspectivism in the Amazon, and Pedersen’s theories about a distinct Inner Asian perspectivism limited to the human realm. Based on my fieldwork amongst the Duhas, I propose that, laypersons’ manipulations of amulets and shamanic rituals are indeed perspectivist phenomena, where humans switch perspective with the ongons (shamanic helper spirits) and vice versa. It will be shown how the fundamental dialectic in Duha perspectivism is one between seniority (mastery) and juniority (submission), and howthis dialectic serves to challenge and broaden the mainly hierarchical nature of everyday social life.
Troubled Perspectives in the New Mongolian Economy
Authors: Højer Lars
Published: December 2010

In the last fifteen years, Mongolians have experienced rapid socio-economic change, and most people have faced a universe of unsettled socio–economic relations. In this article, the cases of two women, who are exploring the new fields of socio-economic relations, are investigated. The cases are discussed with reference to Viveiros de Castro’s ideas on perspectivism, but rather than comparing a Mongolian cosmology with an Amerindian one, perspectivism is critically engaged with as an ontology of social life in the Maussian tradition against which the ethnographic cases are discussed. It is concluded that whereas perspectivism points to a primordial identification with ‘the other’, the present Mongolian context points to the danger of such coming into being through others as well as to precautions taken to avoid it.
Transcendental Perspectivism: Anonymous Viewpoints from Inner Asia
Authors: Willerslev Rane , Holbraad Martin
Published: December 2010

After Spinoza, and apropos Buddhist cosmology in Tibet, Da Col asks:What can a body do? In perspectivism this is always the question. Viveiros de Castro proposes it by analogy to themore familiar concern, intuitive to usWestern intellectuals: ‘What can a mind do?’We are accustomed to worrying about our minds because we assume that even if our mental powers are ultimately generated by our brains (bodily parts we have in common with others), it is what we can do with our minds – the ideas we come up with, our way of thinking about things – that makes us different from others (other people, other cultures, or even other species or spirits).
The Ontological Spiral: Virtuosity And Transparency In Mongolian Games
Authors: Swancutt Katherine
Published: December 2010

Bodily affects, in Viveiros de Castro’s sense of the term, are not just physical characteristics, such as the comportment, mannerisms or tastes consistently ascribed to a given subject. They are also ‘forces’, ‘energies’ or ‘talents’ which are taught, acquired and refined over time. This article argues that virtuosity and fortune are bodily affects which Mongols hold to varying degrees. Through the Mongolian game called ‘The Stag’, the article shows how players refine their virtuosity affect while receiving sudden influxes of fortune. Virtuosi and novice game players exchange perspectives in the pedagogy of play, travelling along an ‘ontological spiral’ of knowledge which renders the winning moves transparent.
Inside and Outside the Mirror: Mongolian Shamans’ Mirrors as Instruments of Perspectivism
Authors: Humphrey Caroline
Published: December 2010

This article explores the implications of the fact that shamans’ mirrors, and mirrors in general, have two quite different sides, one reflecting images and the other a dull blank or imagined as a teeming other world. It is argued that, for shamanists, the far side of themirror is conceived as the world of the dead, which is populated by spirits. Living people can, in certain circumstances such as divination, see ‘through’ the mirror into that world, and shamans when interacting with spirits in trance place themselves inside it. Two different perspectives, of the living and of the souls/spirits, are thus produced. The article ends with some speculations about the non-symmetrical character of these perspectives and concludes that the Mongols upholding these traditions are not post-moderns.
The Crystal Forest: Notes on the Ontology of Amazonian Spirits
Authors: Castro Eduardo Viveiros De
Published: December 2010

The ideas sketched out in this paper date back to my work with the Yawalapíti and Araweté in the 1970s and 1980s, where, like any ethnographer, I had to confront different indigenous notions about nonhuman agency and personhood. However, the event catalysing them in the here and now was my much more recent reading of a remarkable narrative issuing from another Amazonian culture. This was the exposition given by Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami thinker and political leader, to the anthropologist Bruce Albert apropos the xapiripë, the ‘animal ancestors’ or ‘shamanic spirits’ who interact with the shamans of his people (Kopenawa 2000; Kopenawa & Albert 2003). These texts are part of an ongoing dialogue between Kopenawa and Albert, in which the former presents Whites, in the person of his interlocutor-translator, with a detailed account of the world’s structure and history; a narrative which also doubles as an indignant and proud claim for the Yanomami people’s right to exist. Here I shall transcribe the shorter version of the narrative, published in Portuguese in 2004.
Tsogt Taij and the Disappearance of the Overlord: Triangular Relations in Three Inner Asian Films
Authors: Barnett Robert
Published: December 2010

Three major history films were produced in Mongolia and Tibet in the socialist era that dealt with the role of earlier Chinese dynasties in those areas. Two of the films – Tsogt Taij (1945) and Budala gong mishi (1989) – portray events in Tibet in the seventeenth century and include portrayals of the Fifth Dalai Lama and the Mongolian leader, Gushri Khan. The third film, Mandukhai setsen khatun (1989), deals with fifteenth century history in Mongolia and the effort to maintain national unity. The three films were produced during brief periods of relative relaxation in socialist ideology, and each reflected the considerable influence of local historians and intellectuals in the views they presented of local history, producing epic accounts of nationalist heroes or heroines and of their efforts to defend or build up the nation or nationality against powerful foreign enemies. The films seem to have been understood locally at the time or later as criticising a colonising power or occupier, but in fact the stories of each film focus on internal or neighbouring enemies who from an outside perspective appear less significant. The paper discusses the relative absence of the external enemy from these films and analyses the forms of emotional characterisation used to mark the different ethnic and political groups portrayed in the films. This analysis suggests that views held by subaltern communities towards other dominated groups or minorities, often dismissed as forms of erroneous displacement, deserve serious consideration as reflections of complex, emic understandings of political relations and priorities in colonial- type conditions.
Attempts to Buddhicise the Cult of Chinggis Khan
Authors: Hurcha N.
Published: December 2010

Buddhism and the cult of Chinggis Khan are part of the Mongolian cultural and religious heritage. Through extensive textual and historical analysis, N. Hurcha argues that the cult of Chinggis Khan instituted in the thirteenth century has survived repeated attempts of Buddhist monks to incorporate it into the Buddhist ritual and cosmology. The paper poses important questions as how to balance the conflicting moral qualities represented by these two cultural and religious institutions of the Mongols.
Millenarian Representations of the Contemporary Buryats
Authors: Stroganova Elena
Published: December 2010

The Buryats of Tory speak of an original homeland in Mongolia, from which they were driven northwards some centuries ago, and signs and prophesies indicate that they are destined to return there soon. The ‘promised land’ will be reached with great difficulties in three waves preceded by cataclysms, such as the flooding together of the Baikal and Khuvsugul ‘seas’ presaging the end of the world. These millenarian ideas are linked to current economic and political crises by fears of loss of Buryat lands, the association between land and sacred powers, and experiences of Russian persecution and enroachment. Stroganova argues that the millenarian myths express a striving for national regeneration in the face of current political disunity and uncertainty.
EDUCATION IN TIBET
Authors: Empson Rebecca
Published: December 2010

EDUCATION IN TIBET Catriona Bass Education in Tibet: Policy and Practice since 1950 London: Zed Books, in association with Tibet Information Network, 1998. ISBN 1-85649673-2 (HB) £45.00, 1-85649674-0 (PB) £15.95
Who ‘Makes’ the Shaman?: The Politics of Shamanic Practices among the Buriats in Mongolia
Authors: Buyandelgeriyn Manduhai
Published: December 2010

The number of shamans among the Buriats of Dornod in Mongolia has been dramatically increasing since the mid 1980s, when the gradual dissolution of the socialist system and Soviet domination took place. By placing the shamanic practices in a context of historico-political changes, the paper questions what constitutes a shamanic practice and what makes and what unmakes a shaman nowadays. The paper examines the shamanic experience of the Dagdan shaman and his relationship with his community, in order to illustrate the complex and dynamic nature of shamanic practice. While the locals’ knowledge of spirits (ongons), the belief in their own lineage ongons and the local standards for moral disposition all control and limit a shaman’s power and prestige, the shaman attempts to supersede the local standards by restoring symbolic capital and by seeking power and recognition outside of the community. The search for power and recognition outside of the community becomes the shaman’s arena for creating, transforming and acting out multiple identities: ethnic, national and personal.