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ebook The Human Being in Social and Cosmic Orders. Categories of Traditional Culture and the Problems of Contemporary Buryat Identity Ayur Zhanaev

Wydawca: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego

Rok wydania: 2019

Kwestia porządku społecznego była zwykle rozwijana w teoriach poziomu makro, takich jak funkcjonalizm czy marksizm, które postrzegały porządek jako konstruowany przez wspólne normy, wartości, podział pracy, władzy czy własności.

Książka jest próbą przyjrzenia się za pomocą metody interpretatywnej koncepcjom porządku społecznego w kulturze buriackiej, a także jego metaforycznej strukturze przedstawianej jako wspólnotowe dążenie do zrozumienia świata. Badania terenowe oraz analiza różnorodnej literatury przedmiotu tworzą podstawy dobrze ugruntowanej teorii porządku społecznego, która może przyczynić się do rozwoju obecnych perspektyw socjologicznych oraz antropologicznych.

The matter of social order was developed as a rule in macro-theories such as functionalism or Marxism, which saw the order as constructed by shared norms, values, distribution of labour, power or property. The book attempts to trace the ideas of social order in the Buryat culture and its metaphoric structure using the interpretivist approach as shared sense-making practices. The fieldwork data and analysis of various literature form a grounded theory of social order that could contribute to existing sociological and anthropological perspectives.

Spis treści ebooka The Human Being in Social and Cosmic Orders. Categories of Traditional Culture and the Problems of Contemporary Buryat Identity

Acknowledgements 9

Note on transliteration 11

Introduction 13
Theoretical considerations on the problem of social
order 15
Questions and claims 21
Methodology of data collection 23
Guest researchers in Buryatia 24
Researcher “at home” and the Buryat social order 29
Summary 34

1. The cultures of knowledge in Buryatia 36
1.1. The emergence of “Asia” and “Siberia” in
European intellectual thought 37
1.2. Producing colonial knowledge about Siberia 43
1.3. Russian tradition of Oriental Studies 46
1.4. Buryat epistemic culture 49
1.5. Buryat attitude to the Western culture of
knowledge 54
1.6. Soviet replacement of the traditional culture of
knowledge 59
Summary 63

2. The history of social structures and their conceptions 65
2.1. The critique of the kinship society notion 65
2.2. A brief historical introduction: Buryat “clans”
and their leaders before and after incorporation into
the Russian state 71
2.3. The “tribal” vocabulary in selected Buryat
sources 78
2.4. Focusing on the fi eldwork area 80
2.4.1. “Clan” and “tribes” of Khori Buryats 80
2.4.2. Soviet state and the traditional ideas of
social order 87
2.4.3. The uses of genealogies: Creating and
contesting Buryat identity 98
Summary 110

3. The human being in the flow of the vital forces 112
3.1. Kinship “materialities” 113
3.2. The relatedness of vital forces 115
3.3. The ideas of vital force 120
3.4. The hierarchy of vitality: Some practices of
maintaining the relatedness 131
3.5. The order of vitality distribution 138
3.5.1. Yosun – the social order of vitality
distribution 138
3.5.2. The universal order and the universal bonds
140
3.5.3. The individual engagement with the order
146
3.5.4. The human agency in the orders 152
3.6. The relation of individual and society 156
Summary 161

4. The social and cosmic orders 163
4.1. The relation between the social sphere and the
non-social environment 164
4.2. Yosun as the order of a non-transcendental
universe 171
4.3. Heuristic context of understanding the order:
Selected aspects of Buryat-Mongolian social thought
176
4.4. The harmony of duality 183
4.5. On the way to defi ning the social sphere 189
4.6. Multiple orders of the universe 192
4.6.1. Ritual and dogma versus order and method
192
4.6.2. Yosun and the political order 201
Summary 205

5. The disturbed order: Categories of traditional culture and challenges of assimilative processes 207
5.1. The Buryat order and the problem of its
continuity 207
5.2. The procedures of negotiating the yosun order
210
5.3. Language in the order 216
5.4. Inside and outside the order 223
5.5. The loss of the order and the decline of
vitality 226
5.6. The restoration of vital forces – reconsidering
the minority position 230
5.7. Problems of contemporary Buryat identity 237
Summary 240

Conclusion 241

Bibliography 248

Index of names 264

List of illustrations 267

Photographs 269