A talk by : Manduhai Buyandelger, MIT, Department of Anthropology

When: Tuesday, 12 November, 1-2 pm

Where: PER 21, room D130

Abstract: All animals are sentient beings, Mongolian Buddhism teaches, and humans are believed to have been dogs in their past lives. Yet unlike in livestock-centered countryside, the unregulated breeding, animal cruelty, and homelessness of dogs and cats in urbanizing Mongolia, defy this belief. Radiating from the concerns of the Mongolian animal rescuers, this talk asks: is a complex and dynamic habitat for multispecies existence possible in our rapidly transforming world? It explores urbanization in terms of new understandings of sociality, morality, and uhamsar (conscience) in the context of more than human world. Why and how some cultures and infrastructures tend to accommodate "living with animals"? And is it possible to imagine, through the “eyes” and experiences of animals, what urbanization entails beyond human-centered modernity?

Bio: Manduhai Buyandelger is an anthropologist of religion, gender, and politics, with regional expertise in Mongolia. Her early work centered on cultural memory and religious practices among ethnic Buryats. In her current project, Manduhai Buyandelger examines relations between humans and domesticated animals, such cats and dogs and what these relations might tell us about the politics of care and neglect as well as infrastructures of urban settings in Mongolia and in the US.

Manduhai Buyandelger is the author of Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Gender, and Memory in Contemporary Mongolia (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and A Thousand Steps to the Parliament: Constructing Electable Women in Mongolia (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Her articles have been published in, among others, American Ethnologist, Journal of Royal Anthropological Association, Inner Asia, and Annual Review of Anthropology.