bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Letters of Eljigidei, Hülegü, and Abaqa: Mongol Overtures or Christian Ventriloquism?
Authors: Aigle Denise 
Published: December 2010

AbstractThis 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractMy 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

AbstractIt 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

AbstractFrom 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractLike 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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractTibetan 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

AbstractAfter 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

AbstractChina’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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractIn 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

AbstractAfter 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

AbstractBodily 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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractThree 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.