China and Russia are rising economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite their proximity, their interactions with each other - and with their third neighbour Mongolia - are rarely discussed. Although the three countries share a boundary, their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Frontier Encounters presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It sheds light on global uncertainties: China's search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia's fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.

Arising from the need to go beyond the semiotic, cognitive, epistemic and symbolic reading of diagrams, this book looks at what diagrams are capable of in scholarly work related to the social sciences. Rather than attempting to define what diagrams are, and what their dietic capacity might be, contributions to this volume draw together the work diagrams do in the development of theories. Across a range of disciplines, the chapters introduce the ephemeral dimensions of scientist's interactions and collaboration with diagrams, consider how diagrams configure cooperation across disciplines, and explore how diagrams have been made to work in ways that point beyond simplification, clarification and formalization.

A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the Russia-China border, one of the world's least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. It's a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the world's political giants. Franck Bille and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the world's most consequential and enigmatic borderlands. It is telling that, along a border consisting mainly of rivers, there is not a single operating passenger bridge. Two different worlds have emerged. On the Russian side, in territory seized from China in the nineteenth century, defense is prioritized over the economy, leaving dilapidated villages slumbering amid the forests. For its part, the Chinese side is heavily settled and increasingly prosperous and dynamic. Moscow worries about the imbalance, and both governments discourage citizens from interacting. But as Bille and Humphrey show, cross-border connection is a fact of life, whatever distant authorities say. There are marriages, friendships, and sexual encounters. There are joint businesses and underground deals, including no shortage of smuggling. Meanwhile some indigenous peoples, persecuted on both sides, seek to "revive" their own alternative social groupings that span the border. And Chinese towns make much of their proximity to "Europe," building giant Russian dolls and replicas of St. Basil's Cathedral to woo tourists. Surprising and rigorously researched, On the Edge testifies to the rich diversity of an extraordinary world haunted by history and divided by remote political decisions but connected by the ordinary imperatives of daily life.

Arising from the need to go beyond the semiotic, cognitive, epistemic and symbolic reading of diagrams, this book looks at what diagrams are capable of in scholarly work related to the social sciences. Rather than attempting to define what diagrams are, and what their dietic capacity might be, contributions to this volume draw together the work diagrams do in the development of theories. Across a range of disciplines, the chapters introduce the ephemeral dimensions of scientist's interactions and collaboration with diagrams, consider how diagrams configure cooperation across disciplines, and explore how diagrams have been made to work in ways that point beyond simplification, clarification and formalization.

The Jains have exerted an influence on Indian society and religion out of proportion with their relatively small numbers. The Assembly of Listeners: The Jains in Society is the first book to address the sociology of the Jains and to discuss the notion of the "community" based on religious affiliation in India. Topics covered include Jain ideals and identity; women in the Jains community; popular Jainism; Jain reform and Jain identity in the UK. This collection is an important theoretical addition to the studies of Indian society, which has previously focused mainly on caste and class politics as the fundamental social units. With much recent fieldwork providing unique information on the ethnography of the Jains, this study will prove indispensable to any scholar interested in this little known but highly influential social group.

Examining the way people imagine and interact in their cities, this book explores the post-cosmopolitan city. The contributors consider the effects of migration, national, and religious revivals (with their new aesthetic sensibilities), the dispositions of marginalized economic actors, and globalized tourism on urban sociality. The case studies here share the situation of having been incorporated in previous political regimes (imperial, colonial, socialist) that one way or another created their own kind of cosmopolitanism, and now these cities are experiencing the aftermath of these regimes while being exposed to new national politics and migratory flows of people.

Examining the way people imagine and interact in their cities, this book explores the post-cosmopolitan city. The contributors consider the effects of migration, national, and religious revivals (with their new aesthetic sensibilities), the dispositions of marginalized economic actors, and globalized tourism on urban sociality. The case studies here share the situation of having been incorporated in previous political regimes (imperial, colonial, socialist) that one way or another created their own kind of cosmopolitanism, and now these cities are experiencing the aftermath of these regimes while being exposed to new national politics and migratory flows of people.

Caroline Humphrey is a Research Director in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She has worked in the USSR/Russia, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Nepal, and India. Her research interests include socialist and post-socialist society, religion, ritual, economy, history, and the contemporary transformations of cities.

Vera Skvirskaja is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Copenhagen University. She has worked in arctic Siberia, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Her recent research interests include urban cosmopolitanism, educational migration in Europe and coexistence in the post-Soviet city.

Capturing a unique historical moment, this book examines the changes in urban life since the collapse of the Soviet Union from an ethnographic perspective, thus addressing significant gaps in the literature on cities, Central Asia and post-socialism.

It encompasses Tashkent, Almaty, Astana and Ulan-Ude: four cities with quite different responses to the fall of the Soviet Union. Each chapter takes a theme of central significance across this huge geographical terrain, addresses it through one city and contextualizes it by reference to the other sites in this volume. The structure of the book moves from nostalgia and memories of the Soviet past to examine how current changes are being experienced and imagined through the shifting materialities, temporalities and political economies of urban life. Privatization is giving rise to new social geographies, while ethnic and religious sensibilities are creating emergent networks of sacred sites. But, however much ideologies are changing, cities also provide a constant lived mnemonic of lost configurations of ideology and practice, acting as signposts to bankrupted futures. Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia provides a detailed account of the changing nature of urban life in post-Soviet Asia, clearly elucidating the centrality of these urban transformations to citizens understandings of their own socio-economic condition.

Capturing a unique historical moment, this book examines the changes in urban life since the collapse of the Soviet Union from an ethnographic perspective, thus addressing significant gaps in the literature on cities, Central Asia and post-socialism. It encompasses Tashkent, Almaty, Astana and Ulan-Ude: four cities with quite different responses to the fall of the Soviet Union. Each chapter takes a theme of central significance across this huge geographical terrain, addresses it through one city and contextualizes it by reference to the other sites in this volume. The structure of the book moves from nostalgia and memories of the Soviet past to examine how current changes are being experienced and imagined through the shifting materialities, temporalities and political economies of urban life. Privatization is giving rise to new social geographies, while ethnic and religious sensibilities are creating emergent networks of sacred sites. But, however much ideologies are changing, cities also provide a constant lived mnemonic of lost configurations of ideology and practice, acting as signposts to bankrupted futures. Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia provides a detailed account of the changing nature of urban life in post-Soviet Asia, clearly elucidating the centrality of these urban transformations to citizens' understandings of their own socio-economic condition.

The ethnographies collected here offer a surprising and compelling picture of change in Russia and Eastern Europe found in no other book to date. Looking at the everyday processes by which individuals and groups forge new lives, the authors challenge the idea that we can understand this transformation by the predictable models_whether capitalism, post-socialism, modernity, or postmodernity. The collection brings together a wide-ranging group of authors from sociology, anthropology, and political science to reveal the complex relationships that still exist between the former socialist world and the world today. Through evocative ethnographic research and writing, they bring to light the unintended consequences of change and show how the 'slates' of the past enter the present not as legacies_but as novel adaptations. Often what appear as 'restorations' of patterns familiar from socialism are something quite different: direct responses to the new market initiatives. By showing the unexpected ways in which these new patterns are emerging, this book charts a new and important course for the study of post-socialist transition.

Before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, private marketeering was regarded not only as criminal, but even immoral by socialist regimes. Ten years after taking on board western market-orientated shock therapy, post-socialist societies are still struggling to come to terms with the clash between these deeply engrained moralities and the daily pressures to sell and consume.
This book explores the new market and its resulting contradictions in a rapidly developing Eastern Europe and Russia. Will Western fast-food industries irrevocably alter local culinary practices? What effect has the privatization of land had upon ownership and exchange? What role do new commodities play within the household? Based on original, first-hand ethnography, this book is a long-awaited addition to existing literature on post-socialist societies. It will be essential reading for students of anthropology, sociology, European and cultural studies, as well as professional groups working in Eastern Europe and Russia, including NGOs, development organizations and businesses.

The Jains have exerted an influence on Indian society and religion out of proportion with their relatively small numbers. The Assembly of Listeners: The Jains in Society is the first book to address the sociology of the Jains and to discuss the notion of the "community" based on religious affiliation in India. Topics covered include Jain ideals and identity; women in the Jains community; popular Jainism; Jain reform and Jain identity in the UK. This collection is an important theoretical addition to the studies of Indian society, which has previously focused mainly on caste and class politics as the fundamental social units. With much recent fieldwork providing unique information on the ethnography of the Jains, this study will prove indispensable to any scholar interested in this little known but highly influential social group.

Travel Writing in Mongolia and Northern China, 1860-2020 invites readers to explore Mongolia as an important cultural space for Western travelers and their audiences over three historical eras. Travelers have framed their experiences and observations through imaginative geographies and Orientalizing discourses, fixing Mongolia as a peripheral, timeless, primitive, and parochial place. Readers can examine the travelers’ literary and rhetorical strategies as they make themselves more credible and authoritative and as they identify themselves with Mongolians and Mongolian culture or, conversely, distance themselves. In this book, readers can also approach travel writing from the perspective of women travelers, Mongolian socialist intellectuals, twenty-first-century travelers, and a Han Chinese writer, Jiang Rong, who promotes cultural harmony yet anticipates the disappearance of Mongolian culture in China.

How has it come about that indigenous cultures, body parts, and sequences of musical notes are considered property? How has the movement from collective to privatized systems affected notions of property? At what point in transaction chains do native cultures, indigenous medicines, or cyberdata become 'objects' and therefore 'propertized', and what are the social, economic, and ethical considerations for such transformations?Addressing these hotly contested issues and many more, Property in Question interrogates the very concept of property and what is happening to it in the contemporary world, in case studies ranging from Romania to Kazakhstan, Africa to North America. The book examines not only the changing character of the property concept, but also its ideological foundations and political usages. Authors address bio-transactions, music copyright, cyberspace, oil prospecting, debates over privatization of land and factories, and dilemmas arising with new forms of ownership of businesses.Offering a fresh perspective on contemporary economic transformation, this volume is a long overdue investigation of the power of the 'private property' concept, as well as an exploration of how the global economy may be subtly, even invisibly, changing what 'property' means and how we relate to it.

How has it come about that indigenous cultures, body parts, and sequences of musical notes are considered property? How has the movement from collective to privatized systems affected notions of property? At what point in transaction chains do native cultures, indigenous medicines, or cyberdata become 'objects' and therefore 'propertized', and what are the social, economic, and ethical considerations for such transformations?Addressing these hotly contested issues and many more, Property in Question interrogates the very concept of property and what is happening to it in the contemporary world, in case studies ranging from Romania to Kazakhstan, Africa to North America. The book examines not only the changing character of the property concept, but also its ideological foundations and political usages. Authors address bio-transactions, music copyright, cyberspace, oil prospecting, debates over privatization of land and factories, and dilemmas arising with new forms of ownership of businesses.Offering a fresh perspective on contemporary economic transformation, this volume is a long overdue investigation of the power of the 'private property' concept, as well as an exploration of how the global economy may be subtly, even invisibly, changing what 'property' means and how we relate to it.

Before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, private marketeering was regarded not only as criminal, but even immoral by socialist regimes. Ten years after taking on board western market-orientated shock therapy, post-socialist societies are still struggling to come to terms with the clash between these deeply engrained moralities and the daily pressures to sell and consume.
This book explores the new market and its resulting contradictions in a rapidly developing Eastern Europe and Russia. Will Western fast-food industries irrevocably alter local culinary practices? What effect has the privatization of land had upon ownership and exchange? What role do new commodities play within the household? Based on original, first-hand ethnography, this book is a long-awaited addition to existing literature on post-socialist societies. It will be essential reading for students of anthropology, sociology, European and cultural studies, as well as professional groups working in Eastern Europe and Russia, including NGOs, development organizations and businesses.

The first English-language book to focus on northeast Sino-Russian border economies, Trust and Mistrust in the Economies of the China-Russia Borderlands examines how trans-border economies function in practice. The authors offer an anthropological understanding of trust in juxtaposition to the economy and the state. They argue that the history of suspicion and the securitised character of the Sino-Russian border mean that trust is at a premium. The chapters show how diverse kinds of cross-border business manage to operate, often across great distances, despite widespread mistrust.

Shamans and Elders is a ground-breaking study of Mongolian shamanism and society, past and present. Lavishly illustrated and containing a wealth of new information, it presents a fresh understanding of the widespread phenomenon of shamanism. Caroline Humphrey and Urgunge Onon offer much-needed insight on a little-known world, and point the way to a new method of doing anthropology.

"A Monastery in Time" is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery - the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia - from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural Revolution, Caroline Humphrey and Hurelbaatar Ujeed tell a story of religious formation, suppression, and survival over a history that spans three centuries. Often overlooked in Buddhist studies, Mongolian Buddhism is an impressively self-sustaining tradition whose founding lama, the Third Mergen Gegen, transformed Tibetan Buddhism into an authentic counterpart using the Mongolian language. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork, Humphrey and Ujeed show how lamas have struggled to keep Mergen Gegen's vision alive through tremendous political upheaval, and how such upheaval has inextricably fastened politics to religion for many of today's practicing monks. Exploring the various ways Mongolian Buddhists have attempted to link the past, present, and future, Humphrey and Ujeed offer a compelling study of the interplay between the individual and the state, tradition and history.

Economists treat barter as an inefficient alternative to market exchange, assuming that it is normal only in primitive economies. For their part, anthropologists are more concerned with the social and moral complexities of the "gift," and treat barter as mere haggling. The authors in this collection do not accept that barter occupies a residual space between monetary and gift economies. Using accounts from different parts of the world, they demonstrate that it is more than a simple and self-evident economic institution. Barter may constitute a mode of exchange with its own social characteristics, occupying its own moral space. This novel treatment of barter represents an original and topical addition to the literature on economic anthropology.

This book presents a new and radical general theory of ritual by drawing on an ethnographically rich account of the ritual worship of the Jains of western India. The authors argue that ritual is not a logically separate type of activity, but rather a quality that can be attributed to a much wider range of everyday activity than is usually supposed.

This book explores the historical and contemporary processes that have made and remade Mongolia as it is today: the construction of ethnic and national cultures, the transformations of political economy and a 'nomadic' pastoralism, and the revitalization of a religious and cosmological heritage that has led to new forms of post-socialist politics. Widely published as an expert in the field, David Sneath offers a fresh perspective into a region often seen as mysterious to the West.

China and Russia are rising economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite their proximity, their interactions with each other - and with their third neighbour Mongolia - are rarely discussed. Although the three countries share a boundary, their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Frontier Encounters presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It sheds light on global uncertainties: China's search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia's fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.