collections index
Camel coaxing ritual
Documents related to the “camel coaxing ritual”, accepted to the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, 2015. This collection includes photographs, a nomination video, and various other “ethnographic” documents. See UNESCO decision 6.COM 8.14 in ITH-11-6.COM-CONF.206-8+Corr.+Add.-EN.pdf. From the description of the ritual submitted to UNESCO: Mongol herders perform the coaxing ritual to encourage a female camel to accept a new-born calf or to adopt an orphan. The mother is tied close to the calf and a singer begins a monotone song accompanied by gestures and chanting. The coaxer changes the melody depending on the mother’s behaviour, which may be initially aggressive, and slowly coaxes her into accepting the calf.
Television commercials and marketing videos by milk manufacturers in Mongolia
This collection includes television advertisements, marketing videos, and other items related to commercial dairy production in Mongolia. All of the television commercials included here have aired on TV in Mongolia, and have additionally been published by the sponsoring companies on their respective YouTube channels. This collection is intended to support content analysis focusing on representations of culture and tradition in relation to industrial food production.
Goyo Tarag: Social media and dairy production in Mongolia
This is a collection of websites, blog posts, and public social media pages related to industrial dairy production in Mongolia. The collection focuses on Goyo Tarag, a yogurt beverage that was rumored at one point in 2014 to have been produced in China. See the document “The Goyo Tarag Controversy” (item 829a31a2-a84e-459f-b73e-a71f537ce15e) for an analysis of the documents in this collection by Eric Thrift. SUMMARY: In February 2014, a pair of blurry images taken at the railway station in Ulaanbaatar began to make the rounds of Facebook in Mongolia.
Miscellanea
Websites and other miscellaneous digital publications.
Inner Asia culture area
Maps and documents connected with various definitions of “Inner Asia” as a culture area. These are collected mainly from academic institutions that focus on the study of Inner Asia.
Early ethnographic accounts of Inner Asia
Ethnographic accounts by early Western explorers, 19th and early 20th centuries, in Inner Asia.
Gaëlle Lacaze
Materials from research in Mongolia by Gaëlle Lacaze. Gaëlle’s research concerns “techniques of the body”, gender, and the politics of culture.
Photographs of Handgate, Altai district, Xinjiang (1993)
These photographs were taken by Tsui Yen Hu in Handgate (Mongolian “khandgait”), Altai district, Xinjiang in 1993 as part of the University of Cambridge MacArthur Project “Environmental and Cultural Conservation in Inner Asia”. Image descriptions are taken from the original cpations provided by the author. Photographs were scanned from colour prints held at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge.
Thomas White: Camel culture in Inner Mongolia
Photographs and other field research documents related to the “camel culture” of Inner Mongolia.
Visit to a "Mongolian" village in Yunnan, China
Photographs and other materials from David Sneath’s trip to the Mongolian district of Xingmeng in Yunnan province, China in 1997. Comments on this site were published as “Some Notes on a Visit to a ‘Mongolian’ Village in Yunnan, China”, Inner Asia 1 (1999): 121–130; captions for the photographs included in this article are reproduced in the current collection. Sneath’s investigations focus on why the people of this village strongly emphasize their Mongolian identity, which they trace back to the thirteenth-century Yuan dynasty. He writes: “Opposite the Mongolian village is a nearby Muslim (Hui) village. It is no secret that the Mongolians strongly dislike the Muslims – I was told several times in Xingmeng that the Hui were bad people, and that I should have nothing to do with them.
Photographs from Inner Mongolia in the 1980s by David Sneath
Photographs taken by David Sneath during the course of his ethnographic fieldwork in Inner Mongolia. David Sneath spent 16 months in Inner Mongolia in 1987-1988; based mainly in the city of Hohhot, he spent two summers travelling in Xilingol and Hulunbuir.
Photographs of fieldwork in Govisumber by David Sneath
David Sneath has worked with pastoralists in Govisumber aimag (formerly Govisumber sum of Dornogovi aimag) since the early 1990s. These photographs represent some of the key people, activities, and places from his earlier fieldwork.
Ethnographic video footage from the Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Raw video footage from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum). Videos include interviews and observational footage from Ulaanbaatar and the nearby countryside, taken in summer 2000, as well as some archival footage. Videos were produced in association with the National Museum of Mongolian History (NMMH) in Ulaanbaatar.
Owen Lattimore
Interviews and publications reflecting the work of Owen Lattimore. Owen Lattimore (July 29, 1900 – May 31, 1989) was an American author, educator, and influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1938 to 1963. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on American policy in Asia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England.
The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia
This collection includes a selection of translated interviews from the Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia project (http://amantuuh.socanth.cam.ac.uk/). The initiative was launched in July 2007 as a collaborative project between the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) of the University of Cambridge and the National University of Mongolia with funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project collected over 600 interviews on a variety of themes and about a wide range of life experiences during Mongolia’s turbulent twentieth century. The interviews range from about one hour in length to over five hours long and were conducted all across Mongolia. The oldest person interviewed was born in 1911, the youngest in 1980.
Natasha Fijn: Living with herds
Videos and images about human-animal coexistence in Mongolia by visual anthropologist Natasha Fijn (https://vimeo.com/fijnproductions/about). The items in this collection were mainly published as supplementary materials for Fijn’s book “Living with herds: Human-animal coexistence in Mongolia”, which discusses the nature of human-animal interactions among Mongolian pastoralists, suggesting that Mongolians have co-evolved with domesticated livestock species. Natasha Fijn’s research crosses often preconceived boundaries between human-nonhuman, nature-culture, domestic-wild, ethnography-ethology, and written ethnography-visual anthropology.
Herders of the Mongun-Taiga
In 1989, Caroline Humphrey collaborated on a film for the Royal Anthropological Institute on the herders of Mongun-Taiga, Tuva. This collection assembles a published article and some other materials related to the film.
Caroline Humphrey: Karl Marx Collective
Images and similar resources related to Caroline Humphrey’s research in Bayangol, Buryat Republic, Russian Federation (formerly the Buryat ASSR). This site was documented in Humphrey’s book “Karl Marx Collective” and later publications.
Kalmyk camels
Videos from the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project. The project is based at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, the University of Cambridge. Its principal output is a database of Kalmyk and Oirat cultural heritage in Russia and China. This collection includes a series of videos on “Camels”. Traditionally, the Kalmyks bred four kinds of livestock, including sheep, cattle, horses, and camels. Being the main wealth of nomads, livestock provided not only food but also materials used for the construction of traditional dwellings, costumes, and utensils. In the past, depending upon the season, livestock were grazed in the open fields in summer (zusln), spring (khavrzn), autumn (namrzn), and winter pastures (uvlzn).
Kalmyk Buddhist rituals, holidays, and pilgrimage
Videos from the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project. The project is based at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, the University of Cambridge. Its principal output is a database of Kalmyk and Oirat cultural heritage in Russia and China. This collection includes a series of videos on “Buddhist Rituals, Holidays and Pilgrimage”. In Kalmykia all national holidays, including the Tsagan Sar, Ur Sar, and Zul, are celebrated both as national and religious holidays. On these days people hold celebrations at home and go to a temple. The ritual of calling in the Buddha Maitreya is another Buddhist holiday performed annually in the temples across Kalmykia.
Caroline Humphrey: Super-8 films from Mongolia in the 1970s
These clips were recorded by Caroline Humphrey using a super-8 film camera during a visit to Mongolia in the late 1970s. The films were transferred to VCR VC-60 and VC-30 magnetic tapes in January 1979, then digitized and lightly edited in 2017. The clips, which were recorded around the July Naadam festival, show scenes from Ulaanbaatar, Tsesterleg sum (Arkhangai aimag), and Erdene Zuu Monastery and Khujirt sum (Ovorkhangai aimag), as well as pastoral life in the Central Mongolian coutryside.
Environmental and Cultural Conservation in Inner Asia
Handwritten and typed notes, planning documents, etc. submitted by researchers affiliated with the Cambridge MacArthur project “Environmental and Cultural Conservation in Inner Asia”. This multinational project, directed by Caroline Humphrey (Principal Investigator) and coordinated by David Sneath, studied the correlation of cultural and environmental change across several sites in Mongolia, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tuva, and Buryatia.
Carole Pegg, ethnomusicologist
Carole Pegg is a musician and ethnomusicologist, based in Cambridge, UK. Many aspects of her professional work have focused on the traditional music of Mongolia, including khoomii (overtone singing) and morin khuur (horse-head fiddle). This collection includes interviews with Carole Pegg and other documents related to her Mongolian work.
Uradyn Bulag: Mongolian nationalism and ethnicity
Interviews, discussion papers, and other materials published by Uradyn Bulag, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. As a Mongolian intellectual born in Inner Mongolia, Bulag has used his position as an anthropologist to indigenize public debates on nationalism in the Chinese state.