Native-izing Therapies: shamanic healing and the value of homeland connection in Mongolia

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• Elizabeth Turk, University of Cambridge
• Tuesday 01 December 2020, 18:00-19:30
• Online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Bianca De Sanctis.

The Cambridge Psychedelic Society and the Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society are teaming up for the first time to host this exciting talk! The zoom link for this talk is here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84704727345?pwd=K0FVWkRma1dLaUN5MFg1b2lKeWU0Zz09

Abstract: Being native to rural homelands carries particular value in contemporary Mongolia. This value is especially salient for shamans, considered proximate and able to ‘speak for’ the natural world, both localized landscape (particular mountains, rivers, etc.), and the nation’s nature writ large. In this paper, I argue that this dual local/national understanding of the natural world was inadvertently shaped by Soviet-era indigenization policies that encouraged a sense of ethno-national belonging in borderland republics. Throughout much of the 20th century, being local was simultaneously a way to identify with the larger socialist ecumene. In recent decades marked by heightened urbanization, shamanic healing practices involve re-forging rural homeland connections, as shamans mediate relations between clients and deities associated with earth and water attributed with causing illness. Such practices and discourses ‘root’ people into localized, national soil. This case study reveals indigeneity not as essence, but as a form of positioning (Li 2000) in which the body is central.

Elizabeth Turk is a Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. She is currently working on the AHRC -funded project ‘Mongolian Cosmopolitical Heritage: Tracing Divergent Healing Practices Across the Chinese-Mongolian Border’. She earned her doctoral degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2018

Dr Turk’s research focuses on nature-based and ‘alternative’ medicine in contemporary Mongolia, exploring themes in both medical and environmental anthropology. She first began research in Mongolia in 2010 as a Fulbright scholar exploring shamanic healing practices, specifically the connection between spiritual illness and the impending mining boom. Research interests since then have shifted towards a practice-focused approach to the study of healing, historicizing such practices as they have and continue to relate to political economy. Dr Turk is in the process of preparing her first manuscript which explores the articulation of healing practices with nationalist and social progressivist discourses.

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The Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society (CUSAS) is the student-led society of the Department of Social Anthropology. CUSAS aims to provide a forum for undergraduates and postgraduates of the University to discuss and debate anthropological issues. As a student-led society, we also function as a platform for students to organise events of interest to the society’s membership. As our membership includes both undergraduates and postgraduates, CUSAS also serves as a hub for different cohorts in the Department to come together, to discuss ideas and to meet socially.

More information on the Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society here: https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/about-us/cusas

This talk is part of the Cambridge Psychedelic Society series.

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