[Sci-tech-public] Anthropology Talk TODAY

[Amberly Steward]

Please join us for the following talk:

 

"Exchanging History for Sheep: 

Proliferation of Shamanic Practices in the

Aftermath of the Collapse of 

Socialism in Mongolia"

 

Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn, Harvard University

 

TODAY! Wednesday, January 24 @ 11:30 am

MIT Building 16, Room 220

 

 

This talk is about the responses of marginalized ethnic Buryats of Mongolia
to the collapse of socialism through the revival of their previously
suppressed shamanic practices. The shamanic resurgence began as a means for
dealing with sudden impoverishment during Mongolia's transition from
socialism to a market economy in 1990s. Yet it quickly turned into a quest
for establishing the authenticity of the knowledge that is necessary for
alleviating the misfortunes. The lack of written genealogies containing the
names of shamanic spirits and the disruption of a tradition of passing down
such knowledge within families makes the recovery a highly complex endeavor.
A persistent anxiety about the loss of the past and suspicions about the
knowledge that has been recovered become some of the catalysts for the
proliferation of shamanism.

As the Buryats sponsor their public shamanic rituals, they weave together
dispersed histories out of the stories of the spirits they encounter in
ritual arena. Because this history is not created by states and empires, but
by the Buryats who crossed borders and regimes, it has absorbed various
features of nationalism, ethnicity, and colonialism, without being
restricted by them. Enfolded in shamanic spirits -- disembodied mobile
memorials - and dispersed in the vast terrain of southern Siberia and
Mongolia, this history destabilizes the taken-for-granted geographical
boundaries between Asia and Europe. On an individual level, the Buryats'
encounters with their spirits from the past, open up the possibility for
acquiring additional identities besides their current national belonging to
Mongolia. 

 

 

Amberly Steward
Administrative Assistant

Anthropology Program

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Bldg. 16-267
Cambridge, MA 02139
p) 617.253.3065
f) 617.253.5363  

 

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