EMBASSY OF MONGOLIA AND THE MONGOLIAN CULTURAL CENTER ANNOUNCE XIII ANNUAL MONGOLIA STUDIES CONFERENCE (FEBRUARY 15-16, 2019)

The Embassy of Mongolia and the Mongolian Cultural Center in Washington, DC are pleased to invite those interested in Mongolia to the XIII Annual Mongolia Studies Conference, scheduled to take place during February 15-16, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Presentations will cover such subjects as Mongolian language, history, religion, arts, literature, anthropology and other subjects that speak to social, economic and cultural issues related to Mongolia.

The conference will be held at Clarewood University, located at 1840 Michael Farady Drive (Suite 100), Reston, VA 20190.

Please address queries to info@mongolcc.org and khulan@mongolianembassy.us

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ANNOUNCEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN MONGOLIA PANEL AT ANNUAL ASSOCIATION FOR ASIAN STUDIES (AAS) MEETING IN DENVER IN LATE MARCH 

ACMS members and other interested in Mongolia attending the upcoming AAS annual meetings in Denver will be interested in a recently announced panel A Fragile Future: Climate Change in Mongolia, scheduled for Saturday, March 23 and beginning at 10:45 AM in Plaza Court 3, Plaza Building.

The panel is being organized by Caverlee Cary (University of California at Berkeley) and chaired by Sara Jackson Shumate (Metropolitan State University of Denver); Maria Fernandez-Gimenez (Colorado State University) will serve as discussant.

Several papers will be presented, including contributions from:

-- Kirsten Dales, University of British Columbia: Water, Climate Change and the Political Ecology of Transboundary Resource Conficts in Mongolia and Beyond

-- Marissa J. Smith, De Anza College: Complicating Beyond 'Climate Change': Index-Based Livestock Insurance in Mongolia as a Counterproductive Measure to Address Environmental Risk

-- Yuma Argo, Marin County Environmental Health Services: Water Resources and Policy of Mongolia

-- Sara Jackson Shumate, Metropolitan State University of Denver: Bringing Spring Floodwaters to the Gobi Desert: Mongolia's Radical Climate Change Adaption Plan

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UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG SPONSORS WORKSHOP ON EURASIAN PARLIAMENTS AND POLITICAL MYTHOLOGIES

The University of Heidelberg invites proposals for a workshop titled Eurasian Parliamentarian Practices and Political Mythologies: Duma, Rada, Khural, Legislative Yuan, and Beyond. The conference will take place in Heidelberg, Germany from June 17 through June 19, 2019.

The workshop will focus on historical and "reestablished" institutions of collective decision-making on the territories of the former Russian and Qing Empires, as well as adjacent regions of Eastern Europe and Inner and East Asia. The intent is to stimulate dialogue among historians, anthropologists, political scientiests and other scholars, along with an effort to "breach the divide between Eastern European and Asian Studies".

This is a book workshop and the goal is to submit a coherent selection of papers to Heidelberg University Publishing, an open-access, peer-reviewed publication platform, eventually resulting in a book. Christopher Atwood (University of Pennsylvania) and Caroline Humphrey (University of Cambridge) have agreed to deliver keynote lectures.

The workshop is part of the Entangled Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and Mongolia, 1905-2005. Funding sources include the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The organizers will be able to provide accomodation to participants but cannot cover travel costs.

Please submit a 300-word abstract along with a paragraph containing  biographical information prior to January 31, 2019. Invited participants will be expected to submit their drafts of 7,000-10,000 words by June 1, 2019

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TANG CENTER FOR SILK ROAD STUDIES AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY SPONSORS CONFERENCE/SYMPOSIUM ON "POINTS OF TRANSITION: OVOO AND THE RITUAL REMAKING OF RELIGIOUS, ECOLOGICAL, AND HISTORICAL POLITICS IN INNER ASIA" (FEBRUARY 22, 2019)

As part of the Mongolia Initiative at the University of California at Berkeley's Institute of East Asian Studies, a conference/symposium will be held at Doe Library from 10 AM to 6 PM on February 22 in Berkeley, CA on "Points of Transition: Ovoo and Ritual Remaking of Religious, Ecological and Historical Politics in Inner Asia".

Ovoo, the structures of stones, trees, scarves, skulls, steering wheel covers and an array of other objects, are ubiquitous across the landscape of contemporary Mongolia, Buryatia, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai, having long marked sites where ritualistic (though often highly spontaneous) practices often take place.

Built and maintained by various members of the public, gatherings at ovoo have over past centuries been major sites of political action, where the identities of and relationships between shamans, lamas, imperial officials, businesspeople, bureaucrats, politicians, and nonhumans are narrated, contested and re-defined. At the same time, ovoo are often engaged individually, by travelers stopping at roadside ovoo or at places generally unspoken of to others and not visible on the wider landscape that may nonetheless be important to an individual or smaller group.

Scholars from the US, Europe, and Asia will discuss these and other issues, focusing on how these sites are useful in juxtaposing historical and political narratives, ecological and environmental movements, religious practices, and the productive logics of households, businesses, and states.

Please address queries to: ieas@berkeley.edu (e-mail) or 510-642-2809 (phone)

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NEW DOCUMENTARY ON MONGOLIA ENTERS POST PRODUCTION PHASE

Robert H. Lieberman, novelist, film director, former Fulbrighter and long time member of the physics faculty at Cornell University, provides the following update on a new documentary, filming for which largely took place in Mongolia during summer 2018:

A new feature film, Hoof Beats --  Mongolia Swept Up in Change -- is now in postproduction. It comes from the award-winning team that produced Angkor Awakens and They Call it Myanmar. Anticipation is high since both films were New York Times Critics' Picks and screened theatrically in major cities around the world. The films were broadcast on BBC and are now available on many digital platforms.

A brief teaser of Hoof Beats can be seen here.

This film will reveal the Mongolia of "then and now" -- a society which is complex and ever-changing. Covering both nomadic and urban life, the film is drawn from over 50 hours of footage and includes stunning cinematograpy. It is populated by a large cast of Mongolians who tell their stories, taking the viewer into this vast country which remains largely unknown.

The film opens with best-selling author Jack Weatherford who takes us through the early, tumultous history when the vast Mongolian Empire occupied lands stretching all the way across Asia to Hungary as well as reaching the Jordan River in the Middle East. We experience the brutality of the Soviet period in which 30,000 Mongolians were killed, but also discover the Soviet legacy of universal literacy and the arts, including world class ballet and opera. Famed national poet Mend-Oyoo, a child of herders from the Gobi, tells of his remarkable upbringing, how he began riding horses at the age of four. He demonstrates the calligraphy he hopes will replace the Russian Cyrllic alphabet.

The Mongolians featured are many and varied: individual musicians and whole orchestras, throat singers and people of the steppe singing the famed long song. We encounter painters, a grafitti artist, a shaman and, of course, the people of the steppe who continue a nomadic life that has barely changed in thousands of years.

Rhythm of Life is directed by Robert H. Lieberman and produced by Deborah C. Hoard, who were the creators of the Myanmar and Cambodia films. The work also involves experienced editors, sound people and graphic artists.

Those interested in helping to make this new film a reality should contact Robert H. Lieberman (RHL10@cornell.edu) and Deborah C. Hoard (deborah@pspny.com).

The Green-Eyed Lama by Oyungerel Tsedevdamba and Jeffrey L. Falt; 458 pages; paperback ($24); (Independently published and available on Amazon, 2018)

First published in Mongolian in 2008, this epic novel is set in the 1930s when Buddhist lamas were executed or imprisoned and Buddhist temples across the country were destroyed. It became an immediate best-seller, having sold more than 80,000 copies in Mongolia over the last decade. A subsequent French translation was also well received, with one reviewer describing it as a "singular novel saga, ambitious and successful". Now this recently published translation makes the book available to an English-speaking audience.

As Former Minister of Sports, Culture and Tourism (and former Member of Parliament) Oyungerel Tsedevdamba recalled at the launch of the original version in Mongolia back in 2008, "I dreamt of writing the stories of my ancestors, my great-grandparents and their sons and daughters, and how they were purged". 

That dream is successfully realized in this volume which brings to life people and events from more than eighty years ago, providing a sympathetic rendition of one of the more momentous and moving periods in Mongolian history. As another French reviewer recently noted, this "solidly documented" novel "takes place in grand, almost mystical places," providing opportunities for the reader to "discover the habits and customs of a country little known but endearing". Perhaps most notably, this book ensures that the stories of Oyungerel's ancestors -- and indeed the stories of an entire generation of seemingly forgotten Mongolians -- can once again be heard, remembered and celebrated.

Oyungerel Tsedevdamba grew up as a herder girl during the Soviet era, receiving a scholarship to study economics in the USSR; subsequently she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Stanford University. She later served as advisor on human rights to both the Mongolian President and Prime Minister. In 2012 she was elected to Parliament and appointed as Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The author of eleven books and co-author of two more, she was awarded the Chevalier de L'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of France, in part for her efforts to end the death penalty in Mongolia.

Her husband Jeffrey L. Falt was educated at the University of California-Berkeley. He is also a lawyer with a strong interest in human rights and legal reform, having worked in Africa, Asia and Latin America with a number of international organizations including the Asia Foundation, Amnesty International, USAID and the American Bar Association, among others.

NOTE: Oyungerel and Jeff will be launching this English language edition of Green-Eyed Lama at an event at the Friends Meeting House in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia on February 7, 2019. Further details will be provided in the February 2019 edition of This Month in Mongolian Studies.

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G. Munkherdene and David Sneath, "Enclosing the Gold-Mining Commons of Mongolia: the Vanishing Ninja and the Development Project as Resource," Current Anthropology (forthcoming)

As described in the abstract of this forthcoming article in Current Anthropology, "Since its emergence in the mid 1990s, unauthorized and small-scale gold mining -- widely known as 'ninja' mining -- has grown to become a central element of Mongolia's informal economy, engaging tens of thousands of people in seasonal, unregulated and occasionally dangerous labor."

According to the authors, "The story of ninja mining is illustrative of the wider transformation of political economy that Mongolia has experienced, in which a de facto public resource was created in the wake of the collapsed state socialist economy, only to be progressively privatized and enclosed by increasingly powerful mining company interests".

Examining "implementation of a development project aimed at providing sustainable livelihoods for those engaged in unauthorized mining" the article uses anthropological critiques of development to "explore the ways in which the project, while arguably succeeding on its own terms, failed to meet the expectations of the miners involved," noting that it was "ultimately unable to address the fundamental issues of property relations and access to resources that lie at the heart of the ninja phenomenon".  

G. Munkherdene is a Lecturer in the Department of Humanities, Mongolian University of Science and Technology in Ulaanbaatar. David Sneath is Reader and Director of the Mongolian and Inner Asia Studies Unit in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.

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Manduhai Buyandelger, "Asocial memories, 'poisonous knowledge', and haunting in Mongolia," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2018)

This very recent article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute notes that "Shamans in postsocialist Mongolia claim that previously supressed origin spirits demand that their descendants become initiated as shamans in exchange for ceasing to harass them for forgetting and abandonment. Some clients refuse to become initiated as shamans and thus choose to sever their relationship with their past".

The article goes on to "explore one such refusal, which led to a disintegration of existing social ties, while also yielding unexpected memories".  According to the author, "These memories are different from the shared memories that emerge in the context of organized shamanic rituals," setting the stage for a discussion of such issues as "poisonous knowledge," "unattended spirits" and "haunting by unwanted memories". 

Manduhai Buyandelger is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. She received her BA and MA in Literature and Linguistics from Mongolia National University and her MA and PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. She is the author of Tragic Spirits: Gender and Memory in Contemporary Mongolia (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

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Orhon Myadar and Sara Jackson, "Contradictions of Populism and Resource Extraction: Examining the Intersection of Resource Nationalism and Accumulation by Dispossession in Mongolia", Annals of the American Association of Geographers (2018)

This recent article will be of special interest to those who follow political and economic developments in Mongolia. In particular, it focuses on "contradictions of populism and resource extraction in Mongolia in the context of the recent presidential election of Khaltmaa Battulga, who is often portrayed as a dangerous populist. We consider Battulga's victory as an echo of Mongolian voices' sense of dispossession and discontent driven by gross wealth disparity and precarious livelihoods."

Much of the article focuses on the controversy surrounding Oyu Tolgoi, the world's second largest undeveloped copper/gold mine, viewing it as "a window into the country's turbulent resource politics". According to the authors, "Public resentment is directed toward the disparity between the very few whom mining benefits and the third of the population trapped in poverty." Against this backdrop, the election of President Battulga can perhaps best be understood as both "a response to the neo-liberal regime" and as "a moment of resistance to structural dispossession".

Orhon Myadar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. Sara Jackson is a Geography Lecturer in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Metropolitan State University of Denver in Denver, CO.  

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Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolia/Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia (ISSN 0440-1298)

Starting from 1981, this journal summarizes results from various field expeditions conducted by researchers from Mongolia and Germany. The early years included mostly researchers from Mongolian State University (now National University of Mongolia) and Martin Luther University Halle/Salle. A link is available here. 

Thanks to Sue Ann Gardner (Communications Librarian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for loading and arranging the material. Thanks also to Altangerel T. Durshahinhan (doctoral student in the Manter Laboratory of Parasitology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln) for doing the initial scanning.

Reportedly, "this journal includes amazing natural history data on birds, mammals, plants, protista, herps, fishes, archaeology, paleontology and more than cannot be found anywhere else. It is truly a precious source of information that will enhance and enable researchers on the natural biota of Mongolia for the future".

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Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology edited by Junko Habu, Peter V. Lape and John W. Olsen; 771 pages; ($299); (Springer, 2017)

This comprehensive handbook published in late 2017 includes a number of chapters on Mongolia which will be of special interest to those conducting archaeology in that country:

-- Byambaa Gunchinsuren, "A History of Mongolian Archaeological Studies" (pp. 59-77)
-- Byambaa Gunchinsuren, "The Development of Prehistoric Archaeology in Mongolia (pp. 293-308)
-- William Honeychurch, "The Development of Cultural and Social Complexity in Mongolia" (pp. 513-532)
-- Byamba Gunchinsuren, "The Archaeology of Mongolia's Early States" (pp. 707-732)

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Birds of Mongolia by Gombobaatar Sundev and Christopher W. Leahy; 224 pages; includes 83 plates with color illustrations; color distribution maps; Paperback ($35); (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2019)

As the publisher of this forthcoming reference book notes, "Mongolia is a huge, landlocked central Asian country encompassing a wide range of habitats, including forests, vast treeless plains, the Altai Mountains and, of course, the Gobi desert. With an avian population that reflects this diverse landscape, the country is rapidly becoming a popular destination for birders. The first field guide dedicated to the birds of Mongolia, this beautiful volume provides in-depth details for every species to be found in the region . . . Birds of Mongolia is an indispensable guide for birders, adventurers and all those interested in this central Asian nation."

Gombobaatar Sundev is professor at the National University of Mongolia. President of the Mongolian Ornithological Society for more than twenty years, he has led many birding and photography tours across Mongolia for scientists and photographers from around the world. Christopher W. Leahy holds the Gerard A. Bertrand Chair of Natural History and Field Ornithology at Massachusetts Audubon. He is the author of A Birdwatcher's Companion to North American Birdlife (Princeton) and has visited Mongolia many times.

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Breaking Barriers: Leveraging Mongolia's Transport and Logistics Sector prepared by the Asian Development Bank (ADB); 94 pages; Paperback ($24); electronic version available at no cost here (ADB, 2018)

Written by multiple authors working for the Asian Development Bank, this useful study was issued in September 2018, providing a wealth of facts, figures and analysis related to trade and infrastructure in Mongolia. Separate chapters include an analysis of the logistics associated with Mongolia imports and exports; the assessment also covers key areas such as domestic freight and transit trade. In addition, it includes interesting comparative information, providing information on issues faced by other land-locked Asian countries such as Nepal as well as the various land-locked countries of southern Africa. 

According to the ADB, "recommendations may be used by policymakers, as well as nongovernment organizations and industry associations to delve deeper into some of the key areas of the trade and logistics sector in Mongolia". Economists and development scholars who follow Mongolia will be interested as well, given the paucity of reliable data that sometimes makes it difficult to move beyond inference and conjecture when it comes to assessing and understanding the challenges and opportunities that have been so much a part of Mongolia's sector-specific development experience.

Note: Another recent ADB publication that may be of interest to the ACMS membership is Tsolmon Begzsuren and Veronica Mendizabul Joffre, Translating Women's Voices into Action in Mongolia: Addressing Gender-Based Violence through Investments in Infrastructure; 26 pages; posted in October 2018.

The Asian Development Bank, based in Manila but with offices in Ulaanbaatar, undertakes analytical research and sectoral studies in many Asian countries; it also plays a major role in financing infrastructure and other development initiatives in Asia.

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Mongolia: Internal Migration Study prepared by the International Organization for Migration (IOM); 66 pages; electronic copy only (IOM, 2018)

Visitors to Mongolia will appreciate almost immediately the extent to which internal migration has emerged as an important economic, political and cultural feature of present day Mongolia. Perhaps most apparent by the rapid growth in ger districts surrounding Ulaanbaatar, it is also an important factor in a number of provincial towns, even as certain rural parts of the country are being depopulated.

As this study points out, "Internal migration within Mongolia has a long tradition that continues up until today. More recent trends, however, are exceptional in that the share of households moving from rural to urban areas (including the capital of Ulaanbaatar) is relatively high, resulting in urbanization and the depopulation of certain rural areas of origin. Given the challenges in both urban and rural areas because of internal migration, it is no surprise that the issue has become a main policy concern for the country."

This study packs a lot of detail into only 66 pages, covering such important topics as basic characteristics of migrants; living conditions including housing, water, sanitation, health and education; drivers of migration; challenges in both the place of origin and destination; and plans, if any, for future migration. It also includes a useful set of conclusions and recommendations, all available for free at the IOM "bookstore" website.

The last such detailed internal migration survey was conducted nearly a decade ago, making the statistics availble in this latest IOM contribution especially welcome. Also, the study provides opportunities for policymakers and researchers alike to move beyond the anecdotal. In particular, this study draws on household surveys across both rural and urban Mongolia, covering 3,715 individuals living within 1,001 households.

This quantitative data is supplemented by qualitative observations based on focus group discussions and stakeholder interviews. These observations combined with the statistical presentation will be very useful for both policymakers and academics attempting to better understand contemporary Mongolia and especially the main features and impact of the movement of people within the country, primarily to Ulaanbaatar.

The International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva but with offices in Ulaanbaatar and around the world, sponsors research as well as development programs related to both internal and international migration. 

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