Housing Others in Rebirths
Rebecca M. Empson
British Academy eBooks April 14, 2011 DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197264737.003.0007 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Buriad pastoral herders in Ashinga, Mongolia |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key findings | Argues that among Buriad herders in Ashinga, bodies serve as containers that 'house' deceased kin, and that intra-kin rebirths are a means of negotiating the politics of memory and loss tied to displacement from Russian Buryatia and socialist-era persecution. Contends that people born as both a grandfather's rebirth and a present-day parent's child must learn to separate this multiplicity to become a son or daughter of someone in the present. |
Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between memory and kinship, showing how people's bodies can also be viewed as the containers that ‘house’ deceased kin. This is necessary because a sense of being separated from one's relatives embraces many levels of life for pastoral herders in Ashinga. Primarily, there is a sense of absence from place as the Buriads escaped war and disruption in Russian Buryatia and migrated to Mongolia in the early 1900s. In Mongolia, the Buriad were heavily persecuted during the socialist period and people were prohibited from communicating with their ancestors through shamanic performance. Intra-kin rebirths, common to most families in this area, provide a way in which to negotiate the politics of memory and wider feelings of loss. Nevertheless, when people are born into a world where they are both the rebirth of their grandfather and the daughter of someone in the present, life becomes a process of learning how to separate out this multiplicity in order that one may become the son or daughter of a person in the present.