WORLD BANK ANNOUNCES VISUAL ARTS EXHIBITION ON MONGOLIA: "THE ART OF INNOVATION" (APRIL 2019)

Although an opening date has yet to be announced, the World Bank Group Art Program will host a visual arts exhibit on Mongolia in Washington, DC later this year. The exhibition is meant to highlight the importance of innovation and Mongolia's economic competitiveness, as well as showcase what it means to be Mongolian in the 21st century.

The ACMS newsletter will continue to track this event, providing further details on this exhibit as they become available. ACMS members living in the Washington, DC will be especially interested. Details on the call for submissions are provided here. The opening date for this exhibit will likely be in April 2019.

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CENTRAL EURASIA STUDIES SOCIETY ANNOUNCES ANNUAL CONFERENCE FOR CENTRAL EURASIAN SCHOLARS (OCTOBER 2019)

The Central Eurasia Studies Society announced that its annual meeting will be held at George Washington University in Washington, DC from October 10-13, 2019. The annual conference regularly features up to 70 panels and attracts approximately 300 scholars from around the world.

Calls for proposals are open through March 21, 2019. A call for photos as part of the first-ever photo contest associated with the conference continues through May 31, 2019. Registration for the conference will open in May 2019 and on on-line version of the program will be available from July 2019.

More information on this conference is available at the Central Eurasia Studies Society website here

XIII ANNUAL MONGOLIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE -- CO-HOSTED BY THE EMBASSY OF MONGOLIA AND THE MONGOLIAN CULTURAL CENTER (FEBRUARY 2019)

Once again, the Embassy of Mongolia and the Mongolian Cultural Center implemented a highly successful Mongolia Studies Conference, the thirteenth such conference in as many years. 

The conference took place at Clarewood University in nearby Reston, VA. At the end of the event, it was announced that next year's conference will be held in space provided by the Smithsonian Institute.

Published proceedings for the conference were distributed at the start of the conference, providing an informative compendium of events and in some cases a detailed account of individual presentations. Ambassador Otgonbayar Yondon and Mongolian Cultural Center President Saruul-Erdene Myagmar opened and closed the conference.

As in past years, the Library of Congress hosted a book exhibit, with Susan Meinheit introducing participants to the Library of Congress's impressive Mongolian collection. It also provided a wonderful venue for a fascinating lecture on "Lessons Learned from the Repatriation of Mongolian Dinosaurs," provided by Bolortsetseg Minjin from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Other conference sessions covered a variety of topics including translations of the Secret History of the Mongols; Early History of Mongolia; Buddhist Diplomacy; New Religious Movements in Mongolia; the Mongolian Community in the United States; Relations between Mongolia and Korea; Relations between Mongolia and Taiwan; Philology; Journalism including "Fake News" on the Mongolian internet; Modernization of the Mongolian Military; and Architecture including the monasteries of Altan Khan and Amarbayasgalant.  

FEBRUARY SEEMS TO HAVE INCLUDED AN UNUSUALLY LARGE NUMBER OF JOURNAL ARTICLES, BLOG POSTS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS RELATED TO MONGOLIA, A NUMBER OF WHICH ARE LISTED WITH LINKS BELOW:

"The Potential of Citizen Groups in Ulaanbaatar" by T. Bayartseteg and R. Margaret Rawsthorne (February 28, 2019; University College London; available here)

"Symposium on Ovoo and Ritual Remarking Held in California" (February 27, 2010; Montsame; available here)

"Ancient Art of Mongolian Mask Making" by June Soh (February 20, 2019; VOA News, available here)

"Free Universal Health Care Access to Primary Health Care in Mongolia: The Service Availability and Readiness Assessment" by Altantuya Jigjidsure et all (February 20, 2019; BM Health Service Research; available here)

"High Precision Dating of Ceremonial Activity Around a Large Ritual Complex in Late Bronze Age Mongolia" by Antoine Zazzo, Sebastien Lepetz, Jerome Magail and Jamylan-Ombo Gantulga (February 19, 2019; Antiquity; available here)

"Mongolia's Prostitute Zones, Where Women Trade Sex for Fuel in Sub-Zero Temperatures" by Meghan Davidson Ladley (February 19, 2019; Telegraph, available here)

"Hip Hop in Politics" by Pawel Szezap (February 19, 2019; Mongolian Focus, available here)

"Tooth Plaque Shows Drinking Milk Goes Back 3,000 Years in Mongolia" by Carolyn Gramling (February 17, 2019: Science News, available here)

"Mongolian Art and the Dilemma of Himalayan Affiliation" by Uranchimeg Tsultemin (February 15, 2019; Taylor Francis On-Line, availailable here)

"Epidemiological Characteristics and Trends of a Nationwide Measles Outbreak in Mongolia, 2015-2016" by Oyunchimeg Orsoo et al (February 15, 2019; BMC Research Notes, available here)

"What Next for Mongolia's Troubled Oasis of Democracy?" by David Sneath (February 13, 2019; Globe Post, available here)

"An Ancient Rural Culture Deals with Wolves Halfway Around the World" by Rebecca Watters (February 13, 2019; Mountain Journal, available here)

"Mongolian Proto-Thief Dinosaur had Egg Crushing Jaw" (February 9: Plos Blogs, available here)

"Snow Leopards Confirmed in Mongolia's Khorkh Mountains for the First Time" (February 3, 2019; Snow Leopard Trust, available here)

"Mongolia Hamstrung by Political Paralysis and Corruption" by Julian Dierkes (February 1, 2019; East Asian Forum, available here)

"Alaska and Mongolia: More Alike than You Might Think" by Ambassador Otgonbayar Yondon (January 31, 2019: Anchorage Daily News, available here)

"Mongolia's Crisis of Democracy Continues" by Peter Bittner (January 31, 2019; The Diplomat, available here)

"Ancient Mongolian Skull is the Earliest Modern Human Yet Found in the Region" (January 30, 2019; Oxford News, available here)

"Exploding Demand for Cashmere Wool is Ruining Mongolia's Grassland" by Kathleen McLaughlin (January 30, 2019; Science, available here)

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Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, Enlightenment and the Gasping City: Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Disarray;  265 pages ($95 Hardback; $26.95 Paperback); (Cornell University Press, forthcoming in June 2019)

According to pre-release material provided by Cornell University Press, "With air pollution now intimately affecting every resident of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko seeks to understand how, as a physical constant throughout the winter months, the murky and obscuring nature of air pollution has become an active part of Mongolian religious and ritual life.

Enlightenment and the Gasping City identifies air pollution as a boundary between the physical and the immaterial, showing how air pollution impresses itself on the urban environment as stagnation and blur. She explores how air pollution and related phenomena exist in dynamic tension with Buddhist ideas and practices concerning purification, revitalisation and enlightment. By focusing on light, its intersections and its oppositions, she illuminates Buddhist practices and beliefs as they interact with the pressing urban issues of air pollution, post-socialist economic vacillations, urban development, nationalism, and climate change.

Early comment has been positive, with Johann Elverskog (Southern Methodist University) describing it as "the best book I have read on the revival of Buddhism -- or even more broadly -- of religion in contemporary Mongolia" and Martin Mills (University of Aberdeen) stating that the author "successfully captures core aspects of religious life in Mongolia at a key stage in its post-communist transition".

Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko is a Teaching Fellow at New York University, Shanghai, and an Associate at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology.

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Thomas T. Allsen, The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire; 240 pages ($34 Hardback); (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)

As advance publication material describes it, "Pearls, valued for aesthetic, economic, religious and political reasons, were the ultimate luxury good of the Middle Ages, and the Chingissid imperium, the largest contiguous land empire in history, was their unmatched collector, promoter and conveyer."

Against this backdrop, the book looks at the importance of pearls as both a luxury good and as a political investment in the Mongolian Empire, beginning with its establishment in 1206 and continuing through its expansion, division and ultimate decline in 1370. Unusually, it also tracks the cultural and commercial interactions between the "northern steppes" and the "southern seas".

Pearls are at the center of this narrative, with Allsen showing "how the very act of forming such a vast nomadic empire required the massive accumulation, management and movement of prestige goods and how this process brought into being new regimes of consumption on a continental scale". Allsen further suggests that "overland and seaborne trade flourished simultaneously, forming a dynamic exchange system that moved conmodities from east to west and north to south, including an enormous quantity of pearls".

According to J.J.L. Gommans (University of London), Allsen's focus on pearls "offers new insights into the wider socioeconomic and cultural history of the Mongol Empire." He further describes this book as "An extremely rich study of the process of southernization and the interaction between the maritime and the continental trade".

The late Thomas Allsen was Professor Emeritus of the College of New Jersey and wrote several books including Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles and Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. He is also author of The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History, also available from University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Matthew W. King, Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire; 304 pages ($65 Hardback): (Columbia University Press, 2019)

Against the backdrop of the fall of the Qing Empire involving upheaval and change in Mongolia, monks there faced "a chaotic and increasingly uncertain world". This book details the story of one of those monks who sought to "defend Buddhist monasticism in revolutionary times, revealing an unexplored landscape of countermodern Buddhisms beyond old imperial formations and the newly invented national subject".

In part, King looks at the perspective provided by Sawa Damdin (1867-1937), "a historian, mystic, logician and pilgrim whose life and works straddle the late Qing period and its socialist aftermath, between the monastery and the party scientific academy". Insights from a wide range of figures with whom Damdin had contact are provided, ranging from the Dalai Lama to mystic monks in China to European scholars. As the book describes it, Damdin worked for three decades to "protect Buddhist tradition against what he called the 'bloody tides' of science, social mobility, and socialist party antagonism".

According to pre-publication material provided by Columbia University Press, this is the "first book to explore countermodern Buddhist monastic thought and practice along the Inner Asian frontiers during these tumultous years," thus shedding light on "previously unknown religious and legacies of the Qing" while also providing "an unparalled view of Buddhist life in the revolutionary period".

Matthew W. King is assistant professor in transnational Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California-Riverside

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Roxanne Prazniak, ed., Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief and Art; 304 pages ($68 Hardcover); (University of Hawaii Press, 2019)

Part of the University of Hawaii Press's continuing series Perspectives on the Global, this new book will be of special interest to ACMS members, given its emphasis on the "artistic creations and political transformations" fostered across Eurasia as part of a "new historical consciousness visible in the artlstic legacy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries . . . common themes, styles, motifs and pigments circulated to an unprecedented extent during this era, creating an equally unprecedented field of artistic exchange".

Examples of this impact are wide-ranging and include many "art historical puzzles" including the Siiyah Kalem paintings, the female cup-bearer in the Royal Drinking Scene at Alchhi and the Mongol figures who appear in the Sienese mural . . . Drawing on primary sources both visual and literary as well as scholarship that has only recently achieved critical mass in the area of Mongolian studies and Eurasian histories, Roxanne Prazniak orchestrates an inquiry into a critical passage in world history, a prelude to the spin-off to modernity".

Notably, this volume does not resort to the usual geographic "markers" such as China, Europe, the Middle East and India; rather, it moves the focus away from the nation-state and instead moves the analysis "toward a borderless world of creative commerce".

Roxanne Prazniak is Professor of History at the Robert A. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. Her PhD is from the University of California-Davis; she also has degrees from San Francisco State University and the University of California-Berkeley.

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Christian Sorace and Sanchir Jargalsaikhan, "Lost in the Fog," Jacobin, Available On Line from January 2019 and available here.
 
As this recent on-line articles describes it, "Environmental, political and corruption crises have collided to threaten the core of Mongolia's democracy". The analysis that follows will be of particular interest to those following recent political events in Ulaanbaatar including the protests on Sukhbaatar Square, the ongoing Small and Medium Enteprise (SME) scandal and the continued crisis in parliament.

Intriguingly, the article notes the coining of a new word -- MANAN, the Mongolian word for "fog" that also happens to be the acronym of Mongolia's two major political parties, the Mongolian People's Party (MAN) and the Democratic Party (AN). Readers will appreciate the informative and thought-provoking discussion on corruption as well as disenchantment with aspects of the democratic process in Mongolia

Christian Sorace is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colorado College and will participate in the ACMS Speaker Series in Ulaanbaatar later this year. Sanchir Jargalsaikhan is a political scientist, activites and development policy advisor who gave an ACMS lecture last year on environmental governance in Mongolia.

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D. Boldbaatar, N.C. Kunze and E. Werker, "Improved Resource Governance Through Transparency: Evidence from Mongolia," Extraction Industries and Society, Available On-Line from January 2019 and available here.

As this recent article notes, programs such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) involving 49 resource-rich countries have emerged in recent years as part of an ongoing attempt to combat corruption and increase public benefits from the extractive sector. This article looks at the effectiveness of the EITI effort, specifically with respect to Mongolia's mining sector.

In particular, a framework is developed and applied to Mongolia as part of an effort to consider how Mongolia might improve governance within its natural resource sector. Based on an assessment of contract case studies involving water usage agreements and community benefit-sharing agreements, the authors assess the stages of such frameworks in Mongolia thus far as "incomplete". In their view, "greater attention to mobilization and citizen empowerment is needed to ensure that contract transparency can meaningfully contribute towards improved governance".

D. Boldbaatar is affiliated with the University of British Columbia's School of Public Policy and Global Affairs; N.C. Kunz is associated with the University of British Columbia's Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering; and E. Werker is associated with the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University, also in Vancouver, Canada.

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Stephen Lezak, "Re-Replacing the Desert in the Conservation Landscape: Charisma and Absence in the Gobi Desert," Land, Available On-Line from December 29, 2018 and can be accessed here.

This recent article, available on-line, focuses on the millions of newly planted trees spread across the Gobi Desert in both China and Mongolia. Although often planted amidst much fanfare and publicity, they usually struggle to survive. Many public and private actors are typically involved, using a variety of reasons to rationalize the effort including a stated desire to protect, restore or modify the local environment "despite evidence of their negative consequences upon local ecosystems".

As the abstract notes, "This paper investigates how these afforestation projects both challenge and affirm recent theoretical work on conservation, while also providing key insights into the decision-making framework of land management across the world's third largest desert region".  The article builds on the work of Jamie Lorimer and others who "identify the charisma of certain species as a primary driver of contemporary conservation".  Taking their observations farther, Lezak uses examples from the Gobi in an effort to better understand land use and environmental governance in ways that could have implications well beyond Mongolia and the Gobi Desert.

Stephen Lezak is associated with the School of Geography and Environment at Oxford University. He was a recent presenter as part of the regular ACMS Speaker Series in Ulaanbaatar.

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Hermione Spriggs, ed., Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi): Art, Anthropology and Mongol Futurism; 136 pages (15 Euros); (Sternberg Press, 2018)

As reviewer Lilly Markaki at the University of London describes it, this book "brings together visual and verbal documentation of the art-anthropology exchange processes alongside further reflections on Mongolian art and culture, deep time and the art-anthropology hybrid. Situating itself within the 'chaotic forces of transition' shaping Mongolia, this collaborative effort not only offers insight into contemporary Mongolia, but also future-oriented and hopeful encounters".

The book's backcover provides further commentary as well as several intriguing questions: "What does the future look like, or feel like, from the perspective of a yak in the coal-mining district of Khovd? From the perspective of a Mongolian root extracted, illegally traded and sold internationally as a pharmaceutical product? Or from that of the toolkit of an urban shaman securing economic futures for professional women in Ulaanbaatar?"

The London exhibition on which this book is based was organized by University College London and funded by the European Research Council under its "Emerging Subjects of the New Economy" program, led by Dr. Rebecca Empson from the Department of Anthropology at University College London.

Hermione Spriggs is an artist, researcher and exhibition-maker. Originally from the northeast of England, she is currently a researcher at University College London's Department of Anthropology and Slade School of Art. She has an MFA in Applied Art from the University of California-San Diego and a BS in Anthropology from University College London.

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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)


ANNOUNCEMENT AND INVITATION

The University of California-Berkeley's Mongolia Initiative schedule for spring 2019 includes a launch of the Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology, as detailed below.

WHEN:
Monday, April 29 beginning at 3 PM

WHERE:
180 Doe Library
University of California-Berkeley 

Further information on this event provided by the University of California-Berkeley's Mongolia Initiative includes the following:

This event celebrates the publication of the Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology by inviting two editors of this volume, both of whom are prominent scholars in the field of Asian Archaeology. John W. Olsen (University of Arizona) will talk about his recent archaeological expeditions in Mongolia and Tibet with a focus on Paleolithic archaeology in these regions. Peter V. Lape (University of Washington) will disuss his recent survey of small islands in eastern Indonesia and new information about the island Southeast Asia Neolithic period.