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Interesting Links -- A variety articles related to Mongolia were posted during November 2019; here are some of the more notable ones:
- Xinhua, posted on December 1: "Snowfall hits China's Inner Mongolia"
- The Orange County Register, posted on December 3: "Meet the Hu: A Mongolian band conquering heavy metal and soon California"
- Radio France Internationale, posted on December 4: "Wild Przewalski horses: a journey from France to Mongolia"
- AKIPress, posted on December 4: "Mongolian PM announces launch of gas pipe project from Russia to China through Mongolia"
- The American Interest, posted on December 10: "Why Mongolian Democracy is Worth Defending"
- Archaeological Institute of America, posted on December 10: "Tomb of the Silver Dragons"
- Vanity Fair, posted on December 11: "Donald Trump Jr. Killed an Endeangered Sheep in Mongolia, Got Government Approval Days Later"
- AKIpress, posted on December 16: "Mongolian cultural heritage promoted at UNESCO Headquarters"
- Buddhist Door Global, posted on December 23: "Faces of the Buddhist Goddesses: An Interview with Aryuna Balzhurova"
- Buddhist Door Global, posted on December 27: "Eighth Kamby Lama Enthroned to Lead Buddhist Sangha in Tuva"
- RadioFreeEurope, posted on December 30: "Kalmyks Mark Anniversary of Stalin Deportations to Siberia"
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Long Song Heritage of Inner Mongols (Өвөр Монголчуудын уртын дууны өв) by Dorjdagva Myagmarjav (Erdenezul, 2019)
Based on a survey done in 2009 across 5 banners of Inner Mongolia (Ordos, Alasha, Chahar, Horchin-Zarud, Buryat, Barga), the book categorizes long song styles of over 271 songs by 139 singers. The book comes with a DVD of the said singers.
ISBN: 978-99978-4-888-8
To purchase or order this book, please write to: info@nomadic.mn
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MULTISPECIES HOUSEHOLDS IN THE SAIAN MOUNTAINS:ECOLOGY AT THE RUSSIA-MONGOLIAN BORDER, edited by Alex Oehler and Anna Varfolomeeva (Lexington Books, 2019)
Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains brings together new ethnographic insights from the mountains of Southern Siberia and Mongolia. Contributors to this edited collection examine Indigenous ideas of what it means to make a home alongside animals and spirits in changing alpine and subalpine environments. Set in the Eastern Saian Mountain Region of South Central Siberia and northern Mongolia, this book covers an area famous for its claim as the birthplace of Eurasian reindeer domestication. Using ethnographic nuance, the contributors highlight the many connections between humans and other species, stressing the networks of relationships that transcend idioms of dominance or mutualism. This book is recommended for students and scholars of anthropology, environmental studies, and Asian studies.
"Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border highlights the complex attunements between humans, animals, and invisible entities in the taiga, using a historical and anthropological perspective. Through rich and original ethnographical vignettes, this volume offers subtle insights into the taiga landscape, perceived as a home shared by human and non-human sentient beings, and adds to our understanding of the shaping of multispecies coexistence in a time of change and uncertainty in Inner Asia" • Charlotte Marchina, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales
Alex Oehler is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Northern British Columbia.
Anna Varfolomeeva is assistant professor at School of Advanced Studies at Tyumen State University.
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The Anti-Social Contract: Injurious Talk and Dangerous Exchanges in Northern Mongolia by Lars Hojer: (Berghahn, 2019)
Set in a remote district of villagers and nomadic pastoralists in the northernmost part of Mongolia, this book introduces a local world where social relationships are cast in witchcraft-like idioms of mistrust and suspicion.
While the apparent social breakdown that followed the collapse of state socialism in Mongolia often implied a chaotic lack of social cohesion, this ethnography reveals an everyday universe where uncertain relations are as much internally cultivated in indigenous Mongolian perceptions of social relatedness, as they are externally confronted in post-socialist surroundings of unemployment and diminished social security.
“This book is a very important and vibrant ethnographic work… By emphasizing the dynamics of distancing, suspicion and avoidance in anti-social relations, the author introduces a new, and much fuller, conceptual purchase onto the anthropological term ‘other’, which has underpinned a great deal of classical and contemporary analysis in the discipline.” • Katherine Swancutt, King’s College London
Lars Højer is an associate professor at the Centre for Comparative Culture Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Mongolia and Inner Asia. His previous anthropological research has mainly focused on social, economic, religious, and political aspects of transition processes in urban and rural post-socialist Mongolia.
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The Mongols and the Armenians (1220-1335) by Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog: 270 pages; Open Access (Brill, 2011)
This book is an invitation to a journey to the medieval world, which, in author’s opinion, is the most picturesque period of human history to embark back to, and it is definitely one of the fascinating moments of the Great Mongol Empire. It is an interesting journey in many way: historically, geographically and culturally. It will take the reader from the Inner Asian plateau to the Caucasus, Anatolia, Middle and Near East; from a nomadic culture to sedentary civilizations; from a warrior’s mindset to the subjects’ survival policy.
The present work tries to understand the connection between the various aspects of East and West in Medieval times by exploring relations between two nations, the Armenians and the Mongols, who began interacting with each other during the thirteenth century. During that time the Mongols became widely known to the world for building the most extensive land empire in human history that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic Sea, covering mosts of Asia all the way to Korea, excluding India and Eastern Europe, but including Hungary.
Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog currently works at the History Department at the National University of Mongolia. Bayarsaikhan does research in History of Mongol Empire; Mongol-Armenian Relationship; History of Religion and Historiography of the Mongols. Her current project is 'Chancellery Practice of the Mongols.'
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Urban Hunters: Dealing and Dreaming in Times of Transition by Lars Hoger and Morton Axel Pederson; 288 pages; $85 (Yale University Press, 2019)
 Urban Hunters is an Ethnography of the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, during the nation's transition from socialism to a market-based economic system. Following the Soviet collapse in 1991, Mongolia entered into a period of economic chaos characterized by wild inflation, disappearing banks and closing farms, factories and schools. During this time of widespread poverty, a generation of young adults came of age. In exploring the social, cultural and existential ramifications of a transition that has become permanent and acquired a life of its own, the authors present a new theorization of social agency in post- socialist as well as post-colonial contexts.
Lars Hoger is Associate Professor and Deputy Head at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. Morten Axel Pederson is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and Vice Director of the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science.
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Mongolia: A Political History of the Land and its People by Michael Dillon; 232 pages; $29.95 (IB Tauris, 2019)
 In the words of pre-publication material from the publisher, "Mongolia remains a beautiful barren land of spectacularly clothed horse riders, nomadic romance and windswept landscape. But modern Mongolia is now caught between two giants: China and Russia; and known to be home to enormous mineral resources they are keen to exploit. China is expanding economically into the region, buying up mining interests and strengthening its control over Inner Mongolia.
"Michael Dillon, one of the foremost experts on the region, seeks to tell the modern history of this fascinating country. He investigates its history of repression, the slaughter of the country's Buddhists, its painful experiences under Soviet rule and dictatorship, and its history of corruption. But there is hope for its future and it now has a functioning parliamentary democracy which is broadly representative of Mongolia's ethnic mix. How long it can last is another question. Short, sharp and authoritative, Mongolia will become the standard text on the region as it begins to shape world affairs.
Michael Dillon was founding director of the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Durham where he taught modern Chinese history. He is a Fellow at the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society and was Visiting Fellow at Tsingha University in Beijing. He has travelled throughout China and Central Asia for over 40 years and speaks and reads both Chinese and Mongolian. He is the author of China: A Modern History.
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Le Droit Mongol Dans l'Etat Sino-Mandchou, 1644-1911: Entre autonomie et assimilation (Mongolian Law in the Sino-Manchu State, 1644-1911: Between Autonomie and Assimiliation) by Frederic Constant; (35 Euros); (Editions de Boccard, 2019)
 According to the release information related to this just-published book in French, this volume "provides a comprehensive description of legislation enacted by the Qing government for the Mongols and subsequent problems of enforcement. Relying on a wealth of legal resources -- including pre-conquest Mongol codes, Qing legislation, and administrative regulations and judgements rendered both at the central and local levels of administration -- Le droit mongol examines the interplay between the legal realm and crucial questions such local autonomy, legal pluralism, poitical assimilation and center-periphery relation
"The author argues that in crafting and enforcing legislation that was specific to the Mongols, the Qing emphasized the traditional legal approaches inherited from the Ming and earlier dynasties, leading to the gradual displacement of much of the indigenous Mongol legal concepts and procedures. Despite forceful efforts by the Manchu state to control and normalize the administration of the Mongol region, such that it became an extension of China proper rather than the protectorate entrusted to the local Mongol aristocracy, and despite the impact of Han Chinese immigration; nonetheless, Mongolian laws, principles, and judicial practices did not disappear altogether. The result was a multi-layered and hybrid legal system that integrated indigenous Mongol, traditional, Chinese and Qing dynastic legal traditions and practices"
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Several non-traditional books on Mongolia have been published this year or are anticipated in 2020. Though entirely non-academic in nature, some of these titles may nonetheless be of interest to ACMS members.
Examples of the types of unusual, offbeat, interesting and at times intriguing English language books related in some way to Mongolia that find their way into print include Easy Mongolian Cookbook: Enjoy Authentic Mongolian Cooking with 50 Delicious Mongolian Recipies (Independently Published, 2019); The Mongolian Conspiracy by Rafael Bernal (Kindle Edition, 2019); Girl Forward: A Tale of One Woman's Unlikely Adventure in Mongolia by Heather Wallace (Water Horse Press, 2019); Tend My Sheep: A Veterinarian in Mongolia by Gerald Mitchum (Independently Published, 2019); and a new Lonely Planet Mongolian Phrase Book and Dictionary (Lonely Planet, 2020).
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In this presentation, Dr. Gantulga Bayasgalan talked about the Mongolian University of Science and Technology's long-standing tradition of cooperation with western universities, particularly with American universities since 1991.
