̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Caroline Humphrey

Creating a shared resource for the endangered culture of the Kalmyks

amb206 — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:00:00 +0000

Early in the 1600s, several groups of Mongols travelled thousands of miles west in search of new pastures for their herds. ̽��ֱ��migration of the people who became known as the Kalmyks was prompted by tensions between Mongol communities. Their journey lasted several decades and they travelled around 3,000 miles to settle in the wide pastures west of the Caspian Sea. Here they formed the Kalmyk khanate.

In 1771, more than half the Kalmyk population attempted to return to their original homeland of Dzungaria, a region of central Asia then depopulated as a result of the Qing-Dzungar war. Only a third of those who set out on this return migration survived the perilous journey. Those Kalmyks who remained on the southern edge of Europe were incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire.

Today the Kalmyk communities living in the Republic of Kalmykia and the neighbouring region of Astrakhan (part of the Russian Federation) are remarkable in being the only Buddhist nation in Europe. Kalmyk culture, however, has long been considered critically endangered by Western scholars. Existing Western research on their distinctive way of life has been directed chiefly at the relatively small Kalmyk diaspora in the USA.

Now researchers at the Mongolia & Inner Studies Unit of the Department of Social Anthropology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have started work on an ambitious project to document the cultural heritage of a people who are estimated to number around 300,000 worldwide. ̽��ֱ��objective of the project is to provide Kalmyk communities with a resource that can be used to compare, revive and popularise their endangered culture.

Making use of audio and video, the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project will document Kalmyk culture in its broadest sense, including traditional songs and melodies, musical instruments, dances, oral literature, cuisine, crafts, festivals and many other. This unique body of knowledge will be deposited in open-access digital archives so that it can be shared worldwide.

̽��ֱ��five-year project is being funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund dedicated to the preservation of at-risk cultural heritage and the environments. ̽��ֱ��principal investigator is Dr Uradyn Bulag, a social anthropologist known for his research into transnational studies of people, politics and culture – and particularly for his work on Mongolia and Chinese minorities.

“ ̽��ֱ��project will focus on the Republic of Kalmykia and the adjoining Astrakhan region which is home to more than half the worldwide Kalmyk population. It will also look more broadly at Kalmyk communities in China and elsewhere in order to understand the inter-connectedness of Kalmyk culture in the Eurasian context,” said Dr Bulag.

“From the outset the project will involve local Kalmyk scholars and students. We hope that the resource we create will provide a means for long-separated communities to understand, communicate and exchange cultural information with each other.”

Throughout history, the Kalmyk people have been repeatedly displaced and oppressed. Many of the Kalmyks who attempted to return to Dzungaria in the second half of the 18th century perished. Those who survived the trip found themselves divided into various segregated settlements by the powerful Qing Empire. In the late 19th century they suffered major devastations in the Muslim rebellions in Xinjiang.

̽��ֱ��increasingly marginalised Kalmyks who remained in south west Russia were drafted by the Russian government to fight various wars of conquest which exerted a heavy toll on the population. Between 1943 and 1957 the entire community was exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, charged with betraying the Soviet motherland and collaborating with the invading German army.

̽��ֱ��fractured nature of the Kalmyk community – and the shifting identity of groups within it - represents a challenge to those seeking to document their culture. “In terms of the project, we are defining as Kalmyk the people who separated from the Oirats of Dzungaria in the 17th century, travelled to Russia where they formed the Kalmyk khanate, and later scattered,” said Dr Bulag.

“We hold that these people have a common culture even though, as a result of historical migration processes, some of them later adopted other identities and are now no longer called Kalmyk. In China and Mongolia, for example, they are known as Torghut.”

Under the Soviet Union, observance of traditional cultural practises was discouraged or banned. With the collapse of the Soviet regime, opportunities opened up for minority cultures to rediscover themselves.

“ ̽��ֱ��Kalmyks in Russia lost many of their traditional knowledge bearers in exile and, when were allowed to return in 1957, they found themselves living as a minority in the autonomous republic that bears their name. In these circumstances, post-Soviet Kalmyk cultural revitalisation has been slow and ineffective,” said Dr Bulag.

"We hope that the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project will help to redress the balance by capturing and archiving an endangered culture and thus breathing new life into its richly distinctive practices.”

̽��ֱ��team contributing to the project reflects its ambitious transnational reach. Dr Bulag and Dr Borjigin Burensain ( ̽��ֱ�� of Shiga Prefecture, Japan) will be overseeing the gathering of material among Oirat/Kalmyk groups in China. Dr Baasanjav Terbish and Dr Elvira Churuymova (both ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge) will be working in Kalmykia in collaboration with local Kalmyk scholars. ̽��ֱ��project benefits from the expertise of Professor Caroline Humphrey ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge) who is renowned for her work on Mongolian cultures.

Inset images: a pagoda in the centre of Elista; opening of a stupa in Shatta village, Kalmykia; an interview in progress (Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project)

Arcadia is the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Since its inception in 2001, Arcadia has awarded grants in excess of $326 million. Arcadia works to protect endangered culture and nature. For more information please see: www.arcadiafund.org.uk

Almost four centuries ago, ancestors of the Kalmyk people trekked across central Asia to form a Buddhist nation on the edge of Europe. Today Kalmyk communities are scattered across Eurasia, with the largest group in the Republic of Kalmykia.

A new project will document Kalmyk heritage to produce an open-access online resource to help Kalmyk communities revive their culture.

From the outset the project will involve local Kalmyk scholars and students. We hope that the resource we create will provide a means for long-separated communities to understand, communicate and exchange cultural information with each other.

Uradyn Bulag

Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Project

Dancing at the opening of a stupa in Shatta village

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

̽��ֱ��life of borders: where China and Russia meet

amb206 — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 09:50:00 +0000

China and Russia are growing economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite this proximity, their practical, local interactions with each other — and with their third neighbour Mongolia — are rarely discussed. There is no better place than the border to compare the remarkably dissimilar ways that economic development, the rule of law, citizen rights, migration and inequality are managed. It is here that many incipient trends are emerging. On one hand, the border is where cultural differences and divergent international strategies become evident; on the other hand, it is where new partnerships are developing.

Last month saw the launch of a new project, “Where Rising Powers meet: China and Russia at their north Asian border”, within the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, in Cambridge's Division of Social Anthropology. ̽��ֱ��project will run for three years under the leadership of Professor Caroline Humphrey, a renowned expert on the region. Professor Humphrey will head a multidisciplinary team of 16 researchers who will carry out research at various sites along the border, from Mongolia in the west to Vladivostok in the east. ̽��ֱ��researchers are all specialists in their field, with years of experience of research along this strategic border. Several of them are native to the region.

̽��ֱ��new research programme builds on an earlier project that ran from January 2010 to January 2011. It brought together anthropologists, sociologists, economists and stakeholders with specialist knowledge of the region into productive dialogue. Their work was presented at two workshops where multiple political, economic and sociocultural dimensions of the border were explored. ̽��ֱ��workshops led to the publication of Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border (Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, 2012), the first book in English to focus on the border between China and Russia.

̽��ֱ��researchers contributing to the new project are drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds and national institutions. Among them is Dr Natalia Ryzhova, an economic sociologist at the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. Her research has shown that while Russian media have consistently associated criminal networks at the border with the Chinese, in reality many of these networks have emerged through partnerships between Russians and Chinese, who both exploit legal loopholes and navigate a complex bribery system.

̽��ֱ��past two decades have also seen the renewal of ancient ties between the indigenous populations on either side of the border. For most of the Soviet period, and particularly during the final three decades when the border was sealed shut and heavily militarised, there was very little contact between them. Yet the region is home to many ethnic groups, such as the Mongols and Buryats whose traditional nomadic lifestyle did not recognise national boundaries. When the border reopened in the early 1990s, divided communities were able to renew their kinship ties. Many of these groups, such as Mongols, Evenki or Koreans, have been able to exploit their connections and take on the role of middlemen.

Another member of the research team is Dr Sayana Namsaraeva, herself a Buryat. She will examine the practices of ethnic traders and the personal and professional ties they weave with their co-ethnics beyond the border. She will also map out the cross-border routes taken by people and their commodities. This kind of research is crucial to an understanding of the enduring significance of the cultural and ethnic links that have historically underpinned the region and continue to do so. Dr Namsaraeva’s research will also highlight the many ways in which communities on either side have developed along divergent axes, and the different worldviews they have come to adopt as citizens of Russia, China or Mongolia.

̽��ֱ��chasm between different worldviews is especially visible in border cities such as Blagoveshchensk in Russia and Heihe in China, which stand opposite each other on the banks of Amur River, separated by just 500 metres yet reflecting strikingly different cultures. These two cities have been a focus of research by Dr Franck Billé, co-ordinator of the project in Cambridge’s Division of Social Anthropology. His work looks at the ideological dimension of Sino-Russian interaction and t he tectonic shifts that accompany China’s rise as a world power. Whereas local Russians previously assumed a certain cultural superiority and saw their city as a beacon of progress and modernity in Asia, unparalleled numbers of Russians are now studying Chinese with the ambition to work in China.

These recent developments appear to reflect wider geopolitical and economic trends. While the Russian Far East has witnessed strong outmigration in the last two decades, China’s economic footprint has increased. As a result, Moscow has grown increasingly wary of Chinese involvement and is seeking to reassert its presence in the Far East. But regional centres do not always share the views expressed in capital cities. In many ways Vladivostok (meaning ‘Ruler of the East’ in Russian) symbolises this growing tension between central and regional powers. It is a city where important world and regional summits are being held, but it is also a city with a history of resistance against Moscow’s rule. Professor Humphrey’s work in Vladivostok will examine the crucial role of this strategic city in the context of a complex geopolitical background.

Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It also sheds light on global uncertainties: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia’s fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious economic independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources.

̽��ֱ��volume is available in hardback, paperback and e-book. It can also be read for free on the publisher’s website, at http://www.openbookpublishers.com

More information about the project is available on the website www.northasianborders.net

A new project based in Cambridge’s Division of Social Anthropology is looking at interactions between China, Mongolia and Russia at the point where these nations meet – on the immense border that separates them.

On one hand, the border is where cultural differences and divergent international strategies become evident; on the other hand, it is where new partnerships are developing. 

John S.Y. Lee (flickr Creative Commons)

Chinese frontier guard at the Manzhouli-Zabaikalsk border

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Where empires meet

lw355 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:09:53 +0000

As rising economic and political powers, China and Russia often attract attention in relation to the West, but their interactions with one another, and comparisons between them, are less understood. Yet the two powers share thousands of miles of border, with the country of independent Mongolia lodged in-between them in the central part of the long frontier.

Our multidisciplinary project, based in the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU), has for the first time brought together international discussion on the theme of the border economies of the three countries.

Over the course of the past year, with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the network has provided a unique opportunity for social scientists from Russia, China and Mongolia to meet with their counterparts in the UK at two workshops and through an online network. And to maintain collaboration among the physically dispersed scholars, a virtual experimental and empirical research environment – a ‘collaboratory’ – has been built, in which researchers can share research and ideas and, ultimately, trace the cross-border trajectories taken by people, goods and ideas.

Global relevance

Global uncertainties are at issue in this region: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population; Russia’s fear of Han infiltration of its Siberian expanses; and the precarious independence of Mongolia as both neighbours negotiate to obtain rights to extract resources there.

Greater knowledge is needed on how the changing socioeconomic conditions of neighbouring states affect migration flows between China and Russia, as well as the different citizenship regimes that are practically operative between the three countries.

Deeper understanding is also needed about conflicts of interest – in cross-border practices, local governments and central state policies – and what the reality is of Chinese expansion into Siberia and Mongolia. With international ventures, such as oil or gas pipelines, or uranium mines, it is important to establish what the local reactions are and what implications such ventures have for environmental policies.

An in-depth analysis of these dynamics requires not only the kinds of accounts provided by political science and economics, but also the information and insights that anthropology can furnish. ̽��ֱ��rationale for this project lies in the lack of accessible and reliable accounts of the practical workings of the Chinese and Russian states, especially in minority-inhabited regions such as those along the frontier. Where new information about the situation on the ground does exist, much of it is ongoing and unpublished, or is buried in local publications and published in languages that are difficult for all to access.

If Russia and China are to be properly understood, both by scholars and policy makers based in the West and by those of the countries concerned, there is a need to collect, translate and disseminate this research and to analyse it comparatively.

Frontier knowledge

̽��ֱ��frontier zone linking China and Russia with eastern Mongolia is a region where MIASU has built strong links, engaging in policy debate as well as academic research. Although this 4,400-mile border is not an area of global economic advertisement for either country, it is a significant region for strategic policy.

Already, findings from the network are identifying how these hinterlands out of the public eye can tell us much about emergent processes of economic and political governance, through analysis of the practical operations of these post-imperial states.

For instance, two ongoing, and so far little-studied, regional processes are likely to be particularly illuminating. Russia has a policy of amalgamating small, ethnically defined territories into larger units with Moscow-appointed leadership. And China has a policy of relocating herding populations, almost all of which are from ethnic minorities, and closing pastures for purposes of environmental protection. Each of these policies may be compared with parallel, but different, solutions to problems of governance and environment on the other side of the border.

Such comparison is aided by the fact that the main indigenous population of the studied frontier zone consists of one ethnic group, the Buryat, a people of Mongolian origin. ̽��ֱ��two above-mentioned administrative decisions have aroused considerable anxiety for the Buryat and other local people. Work has begun through the network to assess existing information on the forms of protest and compliance found, and the effects on migration and trade.

̽��ֱ��inclusion of Mongolia in the network is also significant because it allows us to explore how Russia and China attempt to include such countries in their sphere of interest. Mongolia is resource-rich but underdeveloped, and a prominent object of resource extraction for both China and Russia.

This study allows us to examine processes of infrastructure construction and resource extraction that are comparable with Chinese and Russian ventures elsewhere in the world. It also enables us to investigate what particular consequences Russia and China’s rise might have for future regional divisions of labour, and for examining the social consequences of economic adjustment within Mongolian society.

Zones of uncertainty

Both Russia and China like to imagine themselves as centralised, vertically organised states that control all of the territories up to their borders. Yet, distant hinterlands remain zones of uncertainty, where there may be a potentially flammable mix of anxieties surrounding the extraction of valuable resources and mobile ethnic populations.

Recent anthropological research by MIASU members on the topic has shown that another phenomenon is to be added to the mix: laterally organised, informal, partially legal, local economies operate to some degree in opposition to central state policy and make their profits precisely because of the existence of the border.

One example is illegal salmon fishing and fish trade in the Amur River (the border), where ethnographers have shown the existence of networks of poachers and phoney companies linked across the border. ̽��ֱ��Siberian–Chinese–Mongolian frontier is alive with ‘transmigrants’, guestworkers, joint ventures, smuggling, mediators, shuttle-traders, illegal work gangs and fictitious companies.

Our discussions of the real situation on the border are addressing policy stakeholder’s concerns, such as poverty and survival strategies, transparency and social adjustment. ̽��ֱ��relation of this burgeoning frontier economy to more formal ventures, such as the Russia–China gas pipeline, Russian mining in Mongolia, or Chinese railways in Mongolia, as well as to potential ethnic conflict, will also be investigated, especially given that the same conditions do not apply everywhere.

But our end goal will be to contribute some answers to questions of global significance: is China expanding, and if so, how? And how do China and Russia actually govern their frontier provinces and potential disturbances therein?

For more information, please contact Professor Caroline Humphrey (ch10001@cam.ac.uk), Dr Gregory Delaplace (gd307@cam.ac.uk) and Dr Franck Billé (franck.bille AT gmail.com) at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (http://innerasiaresearch.org/).

How two ‘rising powers’ – China and Russia – interact across the border they share with resource-rich Mongolia is the focus of a network led by the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, as the researchers involved explain.

Global uncertainties are at issue in this region.

Sayana Namsaraeva

Siberian timber being delivered to China

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes