An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange, edited by Jacob Copeman, Nicholas J. Long, Lam Minh Chau, Joanna Cook and Magnus Marsden, 2023
This article traces the intellectual path of a young Mongolian aristocrat, Gombojab Mergen, who r... more This article traces the intellectual path of a young Mongolian aristocrat, Gombojab Mergen, who rejected his heritage and embraced socialism in the early 1920s. Sent to study linguistics in Leningrad and Paris, he both learned from professors in Oriental Studies and contributed to their work. The chapter aims to contribute to understanding of the early ‘socialist ecumene’ by showing how ethnic subjects were incorporated but also pushed into incessant travel assignments, and in Gombojab’s case, silenced and eventually destroyed, by the evolving state and Party structures of the USSR and Mongolia.
This article examines the role of smiling as a performative gesture at the northeast border betwe... more This article examines the role of smiling as a performative gesture at the northeast border between Russia and China. It argues that the border is a place where 'myth' in the sense proposed by Roland Barthes is manifest in the comportment of people when they see themselves as representing the civilization of one side or the other. In this situation, smiling and not smiling are elements of particular communicative registers that enact political myths in life. Highly gendered, these agentive-performative gestures exist amid other functional and affective registers, which can override them. The article also discusses the 'helpers' who mediate in cross-border trade, whose image is also sometimes subject to mythic imagination.
This paper analyses the omen as a particular technique by which human subjects attempt to underst... more This paper analyses the omen as a particular technique by which human subjects attempt to understand the uncertainties and misfortunes of their lives by way of receiving signs from the world. This method folds a singular event into a social form, a stabilized way of perceiving and responding to intimations of something about to change in the future. It is argued that perceiving omens is a practice of cosmological engagement and hence that its character is different in monotheist environments from those in which the world is conceived to be composed of disparate and separate elements, such as in in Mongolian regions. In the latter, the things and beings in the world that produce, or 'offer', omens are equivalent agents to the people who receive them. Both agents come with temporal and spatial attributes that collide in the event of the omen.
... For a religious person it is one of 'three eternal truths' (gurban ... more ... For a religious person it is one of 'three eternal truths' (gurban mönx ünen). ... There are many stories of the bereaved recognising the dead person in dreams during this period, and this always indicates that the dead one requires merit be made (buyan xii-) to help his soul to a ...
At a dinner-party last year a Rumanian dealer in primitive art, based in Paris, described his del... more At a dinner-party last year a Rumanian dealer in primitive art, based in Paris, described his delightful trip to the depths of the Celebes.'I often have to trade', he said.'Just a month ago, for example, I discovered a wonderful carving of a god but the owner wouldn't sell it to me. ...
An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange, edited by Jacob Copeman, Nicholas J. Long, Lam Minh Chau, Joanna Cook and Magnus Marsden, 2023
This article traces the intellectual path of a young Mongolian aristocrat, Gombojab Mergen, who r... more This article traces the intellectual path of a young Mongolian aristocrat, Gombojab Mergen, who rejected his heritage and embraced socialism in the early 1920s. Sent to study linguistics in Leningrad and Paris, he both learned from professors in Oriental Studies and contributed to their work. The chapter aims to contribute to understanding of the early ‘socialist ecumene’ by showing how ethnic subjects were incorporated but also pushed into incessant travel assignments, and in Gombojab’s case, silenced and eventually destroyed, by the evolving state and Party structures of the USSR and Mongolia.
This article examines the role of smiling as a performative gesture at the northeast border betwe... more This article examines the role of smiling as a performative gesture at the northeast border between Russia and China. It argues that the border is a place where 'myth' in the sense proposed by Roland Barthes is manifest in the comportment of people when they see themselves as representing the civilization of one side or the other. In this situation, smiling and not smiling are elements of particular communicative registers that enact political myths in life. Highly gendered, these agentive-performative gestures exist amid other functional and affective registers, which can override them. The article also discusses the 'helpers' who mediate in cross-border trade, whose image is also sometimes subject to mythic imagination.
This paper analyses the omen as a particular technique by which human subjects attempt to underst... more This paper analyses the omen as a particular technique by which human subjects attempt to understand the uncertainties and misfortunes of their lives by way of receiving signs from the world. This method folds a singular event into a social form, a stabilized way of perceiving and responding to intimations of something about to change in the future. It is argued that perceiving omens is a practice of cosmological engagement and hence that its character is different in monotheist environments from those in which the world is conceived to be composed of disparate and separate elements, such as in in Mongolian regions. In the latter, the things and beings in the world that produce, or 'offer', omens are equivalent agents to the people who receive them. Both agents come with temporal and spatial attributes that collide in the event of the omen.
... For a religious person it is one of 'three eternal truths' (gurban ... more ... For a religious person it is one of 'three eternal truths' (gurban mönx ünen). ... There are many stories of the bereaved recognising the dead person in dreams during this period, and this always indicates that the dead one requires merit be made (buyan xii-) to help his soul to a ...
At a dinner-party last year a Rumanian dealer in primitive art, based in Paris, described his del... more At a dinner-party last year a Rumanian dealer in primitive art, based in Paris, described his delightful trip to the depths of the Celebes.'I often have to trade', he said.'Just a month ago, for example, I discovered a wonderful carving of a god but the owner wouldn't sell it to me. ...
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Papers by Caroline Humphrey