Heroic Mother and Wise Wife

Thirteenth-century sources provide us with striking images of Mongol noblewomen, which are not eclipsed by the heroic conquests and military exploits of their men. While recognising the complexity of gender roles in pre-imperial Mongol society, this article aims to explore the specific responsivities carried by Hö’elün and Börte in the narrative of The Secret History of the Mongols. The selective presentation of their characters and duties further reveals the goal of the Secret Historian to create a ruling model, which includes a brave widowed mother and an intelligent wife for the Qan of the empire.

Transgressing National ‘Green Culture’ and the Moral Authority of Nature in ‘Age of the Market’ Mongolia

This article explores the concept of nature (baigal) and the natural world (baigal delkhii, baigal khangai) as cosmological ‘beyond’ (tsaana) that derives particular moral authority in contemporary Mongolia. Interlocutors detailed an agentive nature, able to punish and save, cause illness and restore health that has become increasingly fierce (dogshin) and distant from humans in recent years. This trend was narratively linked to increased disorderly and ‘uncultured’ actions that disrupt the balance between humans and the natural environment which Mongolians’ ‘nature culture’ (baigaliin soyol) notionally upholds. Although notions of natural and nomadic culture were transformed during the twentieth century from concepts associated with ‘backwardness’ to celebration of unique forms of heritage, culture’s fundamental tie to nature endured. As ideas of nature uphold social order and ‘stand in’ for order itself, baigal normatively governs, reacting to lack of moral guidance and state-led regulation today.

The Politics of History in Russia and Theatricalisation of Traumatic Events

This article examines how historical representation of the deportation of Kalmyks to Siberia has changed in compliance with the politics of history in Russia. It traces the shift from silence on this topic under communism to the dramatisation of it in the 1990s when the communists lost their power, and finally to the softening of this event in the last decades when state ideology under Putin’s administration is striving to unite the peoples of Russia around the victory in the World War II, leaving the history of the ‘purged peoples’ on the sidelines of this triumph. This evolution from a tragic to a more positive narrative is reflected in the messages of public spectacles about the deportation. The softened approach to this traumatic event was also linked to generational change: its eldest witnesses today are the people who were born between 1943 and 1956 and who were too young to remember its hardships. The author analyses classic theatre performances (‘Arash’, 1995, and ‘Kalmychka’, 2018) and mass agitational campaigns, such as the Trains of Remembrance which took present-day Kalmyks to Siberia to express gratitude symbolically to Siberians who helped them in the difficult period. These spectacles are not mere historical illustrations of the past, but new revisions of it.

The Shugden-Controversy in Contemporary Mongolia

Since the political upheavals in Mongolia in 1989, the traditional Tibetan-Mongolian protective deity Dorj-Shugden has been rediscovered. Today the Buddhist monasteries Delgeriin khiid, Amarbayasgalant Monastery and Tögsbayasgalant töv venerate him. This paper analyses the role of this deity with particular emphasis on Gungaachoilinig datsan in Gandandegchilin and the Amarbayasgalant Monastery in Mongolia, based on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with monks from six monasteries and visitors of Amarbayasgalant conducted in 2016, 2019 and 2020. The paper also outlines the current state of research, including recent Mongolian literature. Finally, it presents findings about him sourced from social media. By exploring pro- and anti-Shugden religious practices, this article sheds some light on the Shugden controversy in contemporary Mongolian Buddhism.

Flesh and Blood

Normative understandings of Mongolian kinship have long revolved around metaphors of flesh, blood and bone, while substantive approaches have focused on materials such as umbilical cords and photographic montages. In this article, I argue that the flesh of livestock has been largely overlooked in considerations of Mongolian kinship, and I address the role of meat in making and maintaining relations, both among people and between people and their homelands (nutag). In pastoral Mongolia, herd animals enact and enable a wide range of social relations. However, in the ethnographic context discussed here – the Ulaanbaatar ger districts – urban-rural migrants live at a distance from animals. No longer herders, their access to nutag meat is reliant on their connections to countryside relatives, rendering meat a kinship-making substance in new ways. This paper begins the work of analysing the shift from animal to meat-based enactments of relatedness in the age of the market.

The Making and Remaking of a National People’s Hero and Exemplar in Mongolia’s Socialist, Nationalist and Democratic Mobilisations

This paper examines the case of Ard Ayush [the commoner Ayush], a widely recognised national hero constructed in the socialist movement and an exemplar who survived the post-socialist rejection of socialist heroes and was reconstructed within the post-socialist democratic and nationalist movements. The paper’s title borrows the notion of a ‘national people’ from David Sneath and the notion of the ‘exemplar’ from Caroline Humphrey. Extending Sneath’s discussion of ard [commoner and/or people] and ard tümen [national people], this paper shows how the concept of ard that was constructed through the use of exemplars has become ard tümen. Then, extending Humphrey’s discussion of the moral influence of exemplars, this paper shows how some exemplars constructed during socialism helped the socialist government shape and govern a national people.