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Editorial Introduction
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The Metaphorical Use of Avuncular Terminology in Buriad Diaspora Relationships with Homeland and Host Society
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The significance of the kinship relationship between the mother's brother and sister's son (avunculate) was one of the most discussed topics in the history of social anthropology. Two theories of pre-Schneiderian age – descent and alliance approaches – both consider avuncular relations as being tense and contradictive, associated with certain privileges of the maternal uncle and his senior hierarchical position in relation to Ego. This paper tries to establish the relevance of this classical anthropological theme to contemporary social and political realities in Buriad society, specifically to extend the discussion of the classificatory/metaphorical use of avuncular kinship terminology to a new context – that of diaspora relationships with homeland and host society. A recent tendency in kinship studies argues that kinship terminology can be employed flexibly to handle relationships of various kinds, and suggests that kinship terms should often be understood as referring to a kind of social relationship rather than to a specifically genealogical connection. Two cases, which I present in the paper, show how Buriad diaspora communities in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia (China) involve the avuncular relationship to define their concerns and tensions in relation both to colonisers in the homeland in Russia and to the social inequality of migrants in their host societies. This local phenomenon shows that kinship terminology continues to have a wider social significance, being used, for example, to express current inequalities of power and the impact of political changes on local experience.
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Sounds and Scripts of Modernity: Language Ideologies and Practices in Contemporary Mongolia
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The change of script from the traditional bichig to Cyrillic that took place in Mongolia in the 1940s brought Mongols closer to the rest of the Soviet world and effected a break with ethnically and linguistically identical populations beyond the borders. While the political ramifications of this transition have been examined at length, much less attention has been given to the impact that the introduction of a new script has had on Mongolian phonology. This paper examines some of the language ideologies currently prevalent in Mongolia as well as the new language practices that have emerged in the last two decades around the use of Latin.
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The Contribution of Socialist Ethnography to Darhad 'Shamanism'
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This article analyses socialist ethnographies of the Darhad in northernmost Mongolia. It compares accounts of the early 1930s by the Buryat scholars Sanjeev and Zhamtsarano with those of the 1960s by the Mongolian ethnographer Badamhatan and the Hungarian scholar Diószegi. It shows how these accounts increasingly identified the Darhad with the shamans among them and laid the ground for the widespread present-day perception of the Darhad as 'shamanists'. Furthermore, it discusses how socialist ethnographies were connected to the larger Mongolian socialist nationality project and contributed to the very ideological foundation of the Mongolian nation-state. A careful analysis of the accounts reveals that in the early 1960s, when Westerners believed that shamanism in Siberia and Mongolia was becoming extinct, socialist ethnographers met with numerous practising Darhad shamans in the Shishget depression in northern Hövsgöl.
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Japanese Imaginings of Tibet: Past and Present
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This article attempts to demonstrate and analyse Japanese images and fantasies that have been projected onto Tibet both in Japan's colonial and contemporary eras. The author focuses particularly on the latter period, investigating literature and social vocabularies demonstrated by important Japanese monks, scholars and travellers who disseminated conflicting and distinctive images of Tibet. In so doing, he argues that Japanese imaginings of Tibet throughout the last century have been inextricably connected both to the nature of Japanese modernity and to the ways in which Japanese interpret their Buddhist traditions and national identity.
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Beyond Assimilation: The Tibetanisation of Tibetan Education in Qinghai
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China's minority education in general – and Tibetan education in particular – is often viewed as a hegemonic tool designed to assimilate minorities, seeking to integrate them into Han culture and society, while at the same time marginalising them through discourses of cultural inferiority and backwardness. The aim of this article is to go beyond seemingly straightforward portrayals of minority education (and especially of Tibetan education) as a device for sinicisation by analysing the historically situated, complex and often contradictory dynamics of how it has facilitated the simultaneous expression and suppression of different aspects of Tibetan 'culture' and language. Through an evaluation of the development of Tibetan-medium education in Qinghai province, it is demonstrated that minorities are not just passive victims at the hand of a dominant state, but strategising agents who can creatively explore and expand the political and cultural space within which they operate.
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Forced Relocation amongst the Reindeer-Evenki of Inner Mongolia
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In 2003 the chinese Reindeer-Evenki were relocated to a purpose-built settlement, justified on the grounds of environmental conservation and development. although some had favoured the move, others interpreted this as an attack on their lifeworld, with a number of herder-hunters choosing to remain in the forest where they reside in five campsites. This paper traces the development of the relocation from the perspective of three competing levels of experience: that of the national state, the regional government, and the Reindeer-Evenki themselves. although the community represents the only reindeer-herding people in china, their experiences reveal insights into the nature of minority-state relations characteristic of Northern and Inner asia, including the contradictions associated with relocation. at the same time, as little research has been carried out amongst china's Evenki minority, I update the situation by providing material from a lesser-known ethnographic region.
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Being Local Outsiders: a Study of Chinese Ethos in East Siberia
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This article is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in East Siberia among local Chinese and Evenki people. Local Chinese people have a double perspective (that of locals, but at the same time that of foreigners), which helps them to establish both business and friendship relationships with Evenki, switching between flexible and long-term frames. a cybernetic approach derived from the work of Bateson enables us to analyse these relationships as manifestations of a self-regulating system of communication, and also allows us to re-examine Marshall Sahlins' concept of reciprocity.
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'A Very Quiet, Outspoken, Pleasant Gentleman [sic]': The United States Military Attaché's Reports on Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, March 1921
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In works dealing with modern Mongolia, the 'Mad' or 'Bloody' Baron UngernSternberg is always mentioned and, more often than not, the picture that is painted of him is a man driven by demons, someone who committed unspeakable atrocities against almost all he encountered. This article does not dispute that Ungern-Sternberg committed atrocities during the Russian civil War, but draws on contemporary english-language sources that suggest that the portrayal of the baron as a 'monster' is open to doubt.
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Book Reviews
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