The dog that hasn't barked: assimilation and resistance in Inner Mongolia,China

As one of China's five autonomous regions, Inner Mongolia has not been highlighted in the international news, and the Mongols have not demonstrated significant political will for greater autonomy in the way the Tibetans and the Uighurs have in recent decades. Why haven't the Mongols mobilized? This paper argues that the Mongols' lack of aspiration for greater autonomy is in part due to the relationship between Inner Mongolia and Mongolia as an independent kin state. The different trajectories of national identity construction in these two places and the perception of better living conditions in Inner Mongolia have made the Inner Mongols less anxious about their current incorporation within the Chinese state.     

Revelation of the grassland: The Han sent-down youths in Inner Mongolia in China's Cultural Revolution

The Han Chinese migration into Inner Mongolia has been an ongoing process. There have been academic studies on such migration, and on Han Chinese peasant migrants and their interactions with the Mongols. This paper is a study of a particular group of Han migrants, known in English as the sent-down youths, sent by the government to Inner Mongolia, in the movement of ‘going up to the mountains and down to the villages’, or the rustication movement, which reached its height during the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976). Among the total of 17 million urban middle school graduates sent to various parts of China to become farmers, about 200,000 went to Inner Mongolia. By the mid-1980s the majority of these sent-down youths had returned to the cities and regained their urban household status. Based on works written by those who went to Inner Mongolia, and especially the interviews I conducted with some of them, this paper analyses their experiences, what it meant to them and the impact they had on the ecology and the political and ethnic integration of Inner Mongolia. I argue that the rustication movement as a Communist ‘civilizing’ project had negative effects on the ecology of Inner Mongolia. The sent-down youths functioned as instruments in the Han demographic and economic expansion and domination, but in the process, as individuals they underwent journeys of discovery of themselves and of the Mongols. To some, the experiences meant more awareness of ethnic diversity and more consciousness of ethnic rights as well as environmental issues. On the popular level, they played a role in enhancing ethnic integration.     

The Kazakhs of Western Mongolia: transnational migration from 1990–2008

The Kazakhs are the largest minority group in Mongolia, a relatively homogenous country dominated by Khalkh Mongols. Since 1991, Mongolia has transitioned politically and economically and witnessed significant changes in internal and international migration flows. The large-scale movement of ethnic Kazakhs from Western Mongolia to Kazakhstan represents one such emerging international flow. This migration is influenced by economic motivations, historical cultural ties to Kazakhstan, and immigration policies of both countries. This paper assesses the local and national circumstances that shape migration decision-making in Western Mongolia during the transition years and highlights changes in the characteristics and directions of migration flows during this time. We identify three periods of migration with each period characterized by changing economies and national policies in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, as well as changes in communications technologies and extensiveness of social networks among prospective migrants. These periods illustrate how transnational migration flows evolve through time and are affected by national, local, and individual circumstances.     

Ethnopolitics in modern China: the Nationalists,Muslims, and Mongols in wartime Alashaa Banner (1937–1945)

This article reveals the murky political landscape of Alashaa Banner in Inner Mongolia during the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945). By using various archival documents and secondary source materials, this research seeks to present a clearer picture of Inner Mongolian borderlands, involving the Chinese Nationalists, the Sinicized Muslims, and the Inner Mongols. Instead of restating the ‘ineffectiveness’ or ‘weakness’ of the Nationalist frontier administration in China's innermost borderlands during the pre-1949 decades, this article attempts to explore the extent of the war-threatened Nationalist Chinese effort to initiate their state-building tasks and promote their regime's power consolidation in modern China's northern periphery.     

Systematization of Kazakh music in Mongolia: activities of theater and radio station during the Soviet era

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the systematization of Kazakh music in Mongolia during the Soviet era in Bayan-Ölgiy Province, focusing on the music collection and preservation activities led by a theater and radio station. Bayan-Ölgiy is located far from Ulaanbaatar; adjacent to Kazakhstan, Xinjiang (China), and Russia. Using three–years participation observation, this study identified three activities in promoting the systematization of Kazakh music in Mongolia: importing musical knowledge and technology from the Soviet Kazakh Republic (1950–1960s); establishing a radio station and audio archive following the Sino-Soviet split (1960s–1980s); collections of Kazakh music in Mongolia (1960s–1980s). These activities were driving forces for Kazakhs to claim their identity in the post-socialist period in Mongolia. Diener found that Kazakh culture in Mongolia was preserved thanks to the geographic isolation of Bayan-Ölgiy. However, this study clearly identifies international relations and Bayan-Ölgiy’s strategic location as drivers of systematization of Kazakh music in Mongolia.     

FROM INEQUALITY TO DIFFERENCE: COLONIAL CONTRADICTIONS OF CLASS AND ETHNICITY IN 'SOCIALIST' CHINA

Through an historical ethnography of the imbrication of class and ethnicity in socialist China, this paper studies socialism as another kind of colonialism with its peculiar, contradictory ramifications of universalism and particularism. The ‘colonial’ cultural politics of socialism is explored in Inner Mongolia, the northern frontier of China, where the historical formation of the social and ethnic relationship defies any clear-cut dichotomy of colonizer and colonized. In the first half of the twentieth century, Inner Mongolia was colonized by Chinese warlords. Yet, at the same time, the majority of the Chinese population in Inner Mongolia were poor peasants leasing Mongol land. Nonetheless, the Mongols won a limited ethnic autonomy within China in 1947 by applying Leninist colonial liberation ideology, defining the Mongols as a collective group colonized by the Chinese. However,the socialist ideology based on class analysis of the social relationship during the land reform, effectively enabled the Chinese to designate many Mongols as class enemies, thereby justifying the redistribution of Mongol land among the Chinese who constituted the majority in Inner Mongolia. The ensuing ethnic violence forced Mongol leaders, who were both agents of the Chinese Communist Party and representatives of the Mongolian nationality, to press for an explicit nationality policy to defend the nominal ethnic autonomy of Inner Mongolia. Yet, this deployment of ethnic priniciple amid China's class struggle campaign was interpreted as betrayal of the socialist principle, thus leading to a collective Chinese violence against the Mongols during the Cultural Revolution. The paper suggests that, instead of a sterile debate of subaltern representation, which often reflects the scholars' own ‘position’ devoid of social context, an historical ethnography may better illustrate the historical contingencies in the practice of subalternity in socialist China.     

‘Pure milk’: dairy production and the discourse of purity in Mongolia

In this article I explore some of the ways in which consumer discourse related to factory-produced tarag (drinkable yogurt) reflects concerns about food safety and cultural identity in Mongolia. Providing examples of how Mongolian industrial dairy producers position products made from imported milk powder as ‘local’, ‘pure’, and ‘natural’, I contrast consumers’ views of ‘artificial’ or ‘poisonous’ milk from Inner Mongolia (China), uncertainty over the nature of Mongolian milk products, and the increasing terminological confusion brought about by dairy process standardization. This paper draws on an analysis of comments posted to Mongolian-language online news sites, in response to rumours that ‘Goyo Tarag’ – a popular yogurt beverage manufactured by Orgil Foods – might in fact be Chinese in origin.     

‘Civilising’ Deaf people in Tibet and Inner Mongolia: governing linguistic,ethnic and bodily difference in China

The People’s Republic of China is home to over 20 million d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, many among them belonging to ethnic minorities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two minority regions, the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, this article comparatively discusses findings on sign language use, education and state welfare policies. The situation in these domains is analysed through the framework of the ‘civilising project’, coined by Harrell, and its impacts on the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing among ethnic minorities are shown. For instance, through the promotion of Chinese and Chinese Sign Language over and above the use of local sign and written languages as well as through education and the medicalisation of disabilities.     

The River Movements' Struggle in Mongolia

For decades, the landlocked local homelands of the Mongolian nomads were isolated from the global market. But in recent years, they have been crowded out by those who are looking for the untapped natural resources in their ‘homelands’. The River Movements' struggles of local civil society groups seeking to protect the environment and livelihood, or the ‘homeland’, of the local people from the threats imposed by mining operations, have come to be the most sustained grassroots movement in Mongolia during the past decade. Based on data collected between 2006 and 2010, this article traces the trajectory of the movement and discusses the conditions that shaped the course and consequences of the movement. The discrepancy between local values and opportunities and transnational norms and ideas had a significant effect on the trajectory of the movement.     

Poverty and disabled households in the People’s Republic of China: experiences with a new rural health insurance scheme

This article discusses what in international literature has commonly been termed the ‘vicious circle’ of poverty and disability. Our aim is to shed light on recent policies that attempt to break the vicious circle in rural areas in the People’s Republic of China. Drawing on data produced from fieldwork conducted in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China, our approach is to explore experiences that households with people with disabilities have had with a newly implemented rural health insurance reform. The introduction of this reform is significant as lack of insurance and high healthcare expenses are currently perceived as crucial to causing poverty in rural China. We show that people with disabilities have been able to access this new insurance. At the same time, as currently practised, the new insurance does not prevent poor households from sinking deeper into poverty when using healthcare services as healthcare expenses increase.     

Institutionalization of Mongolian shamanism: from primitivism to civilization

This article traced the construction of the Mongolian term and concept böö mörgöl, which denotes ‘shamanism’, later developed to böögiin shashin meaning ‘shamanic religion’. Although the term bö’e (alternatively böge or böö), referring to spiritual practitioners such as shamans, appears early in the literature from the thirteenth century onward, the combination böö mörgöl and khara shajin meaning ‘black religion’ is fairly recent and first appeared in sources from the nineteenth century. Its latest version, böögiin shashin, has an even shorter history dating as recently to 1980s, and has spread rapidly over the last two decades. I argue that ‘shamanism’ in Mongolia has been constructed in scholarly works mostly by public involvement and shamans themselves. More precisely, academic discourses have played a key role in institutionalizing individual spiritual practitioners in two fields, first by creating a history for ‘Mongolian shamanism’ and second by creating archetypes for miscellaneous spiritual practices and practitioners. The concept böö mörgöl have been used in translating and importing the Western construction of ‘shamanism’ while in the next step of development, böögiin shashin was important in institutionalizing a national religion of shamanism versus world religions. As a result, Mongols have an original religion which has been the main building block in constructing Mongolian ‘nomadic civilization’.     

A discourse of civilization/culture and nation/ethnicity from the perspective of inner Mongolia,China

After tracking the Chinese historical trajectory on the discursive relationship between Chinese civilization and the northern nomadic group, this paper examines the official discursive construction of the ‘civilization’ and ‘culture’ of ethnic minorities in contemporary China. Through the analysis of the Grassland Culture Research Project (caoyuanwenhua yanjiu xiangmu), an official project conducted in China in recent decades in response to the emergence of nomadic civilization studies as a distinct academic field, this article aims to show the way in which the concepts of civilization and culture are utilized in order to correspond to the official discourse of nation state and ethnicity in China, and the process by which Mongolian culture is thereby transformed. Civilization as a larger body supposed to include cultures was/is entitled to Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu), and a culture (wenhua) of a certain ethnic minority could only be a part of the Chinese civilization in Chinese academia today. ‘Grassland culture ’ is defined as a culture that is static, ahistorical, and therefore has to be reframed within the larger system of Chinese civilization. The concept of ‘grassland culture’ seems to be based more on the particular territory, rather than on the types of culture that have created and are owned by different ethnic groups. Therefore, it might be concluded that the project emphasized the geo-body of the Chinese nation state in order to retain the culture within the territory of China.     

宗教因素对伊斯兰帝国民族关系之影响

民族问题已成为二战后政治秩序中的重要问题之一。宗教与民族存在着密切的关系,宗教不仅对民族的形成、发展和演变产生了巨大推动作用,还对民族间的交往产生了重要影响。中世纪早期的西班牙是伊斯兰教、基督教和犹太教三个一神教的共存之地,也是阿拉伯、柏柏尔、西哥特罗马和犹太各民族的大融合时期。以这一时期民族关系的宗教因素为研究目标,有助于我们更好地探索二者之间的关系,为现代阿拉伯国家民族关系的发展提供一定的借鉴。     

Nationalising civilisational resources: sacred mountains and cosmopolitical ritual in Mongolia

This paper is concerned with the historical process by which elements drawn from a religious ‘civilisation’ have been reinvented as specifically national phenomena. It examines the Mongolian state ceremonies for sacred mountains conducted by the President as an example of the reinvention of an institution originally produced by the wider culture or civilisation of the Buddhist ecumene encompassing both Mongolia and Tibet. Such ritual, I argue, can be thought of as ‘cosmopolitical’ in that sense that they engaged with non-humans as actors in the political arena. Furthermore, the contemporary reinvention of these practices has generated a space for a very different, but also cosmopolitical, register for conceiving of relations between human persons and the landscape.     

宗教因素对伊斯兰帝国民族关系之影响

民族问题已成为二战后政治秩序中的重要问题之一。宗教与民族存在着密切的关系,宗教不仅对民族的形成、发展和演变产生了巨大推动作用,还对民族间的交往产生了重要影响。中世纪早期的西班牙是伊斯兰教、基督教和犹大教三个一神教的共存之地,也是阿拉伯、柏柏尔、西哥特罗马和犹太备民族的大融合时期。以这一时期民族关系的宗教因素为研究目标,有助于我们更好地探索二者之间的关系,为现代阿拉伯国家民族关系的发展提供一定的借鉴。     

‘Run after time’: the roads of suitcase traders

Since the 1990s, the development of informal trade in trans-frontier places bordering Mongolia has offered opportunities for Mongolian people to develop new trade links with China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. These ‘businessmen of the transition’ or informal ‘suitcase traders’ go abroad along roads opened to and through Russia and China. My article analyses the ‘circulatory roads’ opened by suitcase traders. I take two examples of this activity: Mongolian Kazakh traders who go to Russia and Mongolian traders who go to China. The trans-frontier places reveal the particular ways of being and skills of drivers, retailers and wholesalers.     

The legacies of history? Colonization and immigrant integration in Britain and France

This article scrutinizes the widely held belief that British and French colonial models have influenced each countrys immigrant integration structures. It assesses the core assumptions underlying the argument: that British colonial and integration policies have relied on indirect rule of groups defined by race or ethnicity; and that corresponding French policies have emphasized direct rule and have been highly assimilationist. It demonstrates that the two countries are not as different as often portrayed. It also pinpoints the specific paths through which colonial legacies influenced integration policies, while rejecting the thesis that colonial institutions have broadly informed integration policies in Britain or France. The article thus challenges a series of received ideas, replacing them with a more precise assessment of the relations between the colonial past and the integration present.     

牧民应对气候变化的社会脆弱性——以内蒙古荒漠草原的一个嘎查为例

在全球变暖的影响下,干旱区本身易变的气候条件呈现暖干趋势和更高的不可预测性。面对变化的自然条件,牧民适应能力的强弱取决于当地的社会经济制度是否有利于牧民采取有效的应对和适应策略。本文选择内蒙古锡林郭勒盟荒漠草原的一个嘎查为例,基于近40年的气象数据以及两次田野调查数据,从社会脆弱性的两个过程——风险暴露和应对能力——出发,分析案例地牧民应对自然灾害能力的脆弱性。研究表明,在全球气候变暖的影响下,案例地近40年有暖干趋势,协同灾害增多;而草场划分到户和市场机制的引入不仅增加了牧民的风险暴露程度,而且使牧民原有低成本的灾害应对策略失效,牧民不得不依赖高成本的贮备和移动策略。此外,中央和地方政府实施的一系列草场保护项目又给牧民的灾害应对施加了诸多限制,由此导致牧民应对气候变化的能力减弱,脆弱性增加。     

National and ethnographic groups in Central Asia as reflected in ethnic statistics (Part 2)

This is the second part of an article in which the author examines trends in population growth and development among the national and ethnographic groups of the republics of Central Asia. The historical process of ethnic group consolidation is studied, with a focus on the roles of bilingualism, cross-national marriage, and socioeconomic development in inter-ethnic integration     

The politics of gender in the UN Security Council resolutions on women,peace and security

Women’s groups have worked diligently to place gender and women’s vulnerability on the transnational security agenda. This article departs from the idea that negotiating and codifying gender and women’s vulnerability in terms of security represent a challenge to mainstream security contexts. By contrasting the UN Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security with feminist theory, this article aims to analyze what is considered to be threatened when women’s vulnerability is negotiated. The article identifies two approaches to the gender/security nexus: gendering security, which involves introducing ideas regarding gender-sensitive policies and equal representation, and securitizing gender, which proceeds by locating rape and sexual violence in the context of war regulations. We demonstrate that, although these measures are encouraged with reference to women’s vulnerability, they serve to legitimize war and the male soldier and both approaches depoliticize gender relations.