Conference papers

What follows is a selected listing of some of the conference papers and seminar presentations I've given over the years. Some have formed the basis for later publications, some will eventually do so, and some have simply drifted off into the academic ether.

I usually use conferences as a chance to present ideas I'm currently working on or thinking about, as opposed to simply presenting (allegedly) finished ideas. They are, in other words, all pretty much works in progress, even the ones I've made available here. Therefore, they are useful as a sort of intellectual history, but often lack fine polishing. You will notice that while I try to avoid just repeating myself, I do return to the same general ideas in different formats, as I work through an idea or try to explore different implications.

I've added a PDF version some of the papers I have given at the American Anthropological Association's annual meetings over the years. These are topics that I'm still interested in and will publish one day, but until then, I offer these versions. The 2003 one, "Morality and violence: political violence and democracy in post-socialist Mongolia," gives a brief view (the time slots are something like 10-12 minutes) of some of the more recent stuff I've been working on, but that hasn't made it into publication yet. The 1998 one, "Idly Drinking and Talking: the Sovietisation of the Mongolian Countryside," looks at the issue of the penetration of socialist ideology and resistance to it in Mongolia in the 1950s.

As I noted above, these papers are often me playing with new ideas or topics. Yet I think they are all, if not brilliant, at least good, solid papers that I'd still more or less agree with. I'd probably write them differently today, but I still stand by them as they are here. (Or else, obviously, they wouldn't be here.)

Many are still lingering on the hard-drive or in files. Feel free to contact me if you would like copies.

Please download the PDF version of my CV for the full listing.

The list

2013 Talking about indeterminate sensations: the mystery of tannins and mouthfeel in wine. International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, Tartu, Estonia.

2013 ‘Tracing the wine-chain: creating and recreating emotions from wine-making to wine-tasting. CUSAS seminar, University of Cambridge.

2013 The Violence of History: Differential social memory and political violence in Mongolia. Workshop on the production of history. Halle, Germany.

2012 Intimate documents: trust and secret police files in post-socialist Mongolia. “The Entangled Tensions of Intimacy, Trust and the Social” Workshop, University of Bergen, Norway.

2011 In documents we trust: secret police files in the rehabilitation of the repressed in Mongolia American Anthropological Association, Montreal.

2011 A most important issue: the slow extermination of the Buddhist establishment in early socialist Mongolia. International Conference, the Anthropology of Political Violence, St. Andrews.

2011 The ‘religious adminsitration’: knowledge, surveillance and governmentality in early socialist Mongolia. MIASU Seminar, University of Cambridge

2010 Counting the living gods (and educated women): lists and the limits of governmentality. SARA Seminar, University of Cambridge.

2010 The many lives of secret police files: repression, rehabilitation and the hermeneutics of documents in Mongolia. Postcolonial Empires Research Group, Cambridge (April).

2010 The language of violence: remembering counter-revolutionaries and traitors in socialist Mongolia. Ideals, Narratives and Practices of Modernities in Former and Current Socialist Countries, Osaka (March)

2010 Black and Yellow Memories: The Legacy of Lamas and Feudals in Post-Socialist Mongolia. East European Memory Studies Research Group, Cambridge (February)

2010 Archived relations: repression, rehabilitation and the secret life of documents in Mongolia. The political life of documents, Cambridge (January)

2009 Archived relations: repression, rehabilitation and the secret life of documents in Mongolia. American Anthropological Association, Chicago (December)

2009 The question of the lamas: violence, sovereignty and exception in early socialist Mongolia. Post-doc seminar, Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge (October)

2009 Archiving Repression: State Relations, Political Violence and the Rehabilitation of Documents in Anthropology. St. Andrews University (October)

2009 Rethinking political violence: Buddhism and the state in early socialist Mongolia. ACMS Research Fellowship Seminar, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (June)

2009 Resorting to violence: the repression of Buddhist lamas in 1930s Mongolia. Buddhism in Mongolia: Rebirth and transformation, Smith College (March)

2009 Chinggis Khaan: an unexpected national hero. Reinventing Eurasian identities: Ghengis Khan revisited, Kahn Institute, Smith College (March)

2008 The paradox of databases: reflections on relations, complexity and data. Oral Histories of Socialist Modernities: Memories and Lived Experiences in Central and Inner Asia, University of Cambridge (December)

2008 A ghost in the archives: repression, rehabilitation and the secret life of documents in Mongolia The Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, Harvard (December)

2008 Archived relations: repression, rehabilitation and the secret life of documents in Mongolia Department of Anthropology, MIT (December)

2008 Confronting the past: human rights and the legacy of political violence in Mongolia Global Studies, SUNY Orange (November)

2008 Monks will be monks: religion and anti-clericism in Mongolian and beyond Department of Anthropology, William Paterson University (November)

2008 Forgetting the lamas: the politicization of death in post-socialist Mongolia Contemporary Mongolia: Transitions, development and social transformations. University of British Columbia. (November)

2008 Resorting to violence: the repression of Buddhist lamas in 1930s Mongolia Senior Research Seminar, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge (November)

2007 The singularity of memory: coming to terms with the past in post-socialist Mongolia China Forum, Univ. of Cambridge (March)

2007 Revolutions, lamas and soup: the oral history of twentieth century Mongolia Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Univ. of Cambridge (March)

2006 Tagnuul and esergüü: spies, counter-revolutionaries and the narrative of political violence in post-socialist Mongolia. New Directions in Post/Socialist Research Workshop, University College London (June)

2006 Neither truth nor reconciliation: political violence and the surfeit of memory in post-socialist Mongolia. Symposium, Reckoning with the Past: Perpetrators, Accomplices and Victims in Post-Totalitarian Narratives and Politics University of Wisconsin-Madison (April)

2006 The textuality of violence: show trials and representations of state power. International Symposium,Representing power: legitimising, consecrating, contesting, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris (March)

2006 The violence of language: show trials, representation and state power in 1930s Mongolia. The Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, Harvard (March)

2004 Dorj and Dulmaa go dancing: morality and repression in Mongolia. "Alternativ" Center Seminar, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (April)

2004 Exemplars and commemoration: the role of the individual in the Mongolian political imagination. International Symposium on Inner Asian Statecraft and Technologies of Governance, University of Cambridge (March).

2003 Morality and violence: political violence and democracy in post-socialist Mongolia. American Anthropological Association, Chicago (November).

2003 Rights and obligations: changing conceptions of law in Mongolia. Association of Asian Studies, New York (March).

2003 Voting on history: democracy, revolution and Chinggis Khaan. SOYUZ annual symposium. Amherst, MA (February).

2002 Democracy comes to Mongolia. Central Asian and Caucasus Working Group, Harvard University. Cambridge, MA (November).

2001 False victims and true purges: the instrumentality of victimhood in Mongolia. Association of Asian Studies annual meeting. Chicago (March).

2001 Monuments and memories: commemorating political repression in post-socialist Mongolia. Royal Geographical Society annual meeting. Plymouth, UK (January).

2000 : vv (Black and white: some issues of political repression) International Mongolian Studies Conference, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (November).

2000 Victims and Victimhood: The Moral Logic of Political Repression in Post-Socialist Mongolia. American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Chicago (November).

2000 Reconfiguring Mongolian Nationalism: the View Ten Years On . Mongolian Political And Economic Development In the Past Ten Years And Future Prospect. Taiwan (August).

2000 Victims and Victimhood: the Moral Legacy of Political Repression in Post-socialist Mongolia. Lecture given at University of Cambridge. (March).

1999 Democracy and Political Repression. Seminar given at the School of Mongolian Studies, Mongolian State University, Ulaanbaaatar, Mongolia. (November)

1999 Thirty Thousand Bullets: Remembering Political Repression in Mongolia . "Remembering and forgetting: the political and social aftermath of intense conflict in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe". Lund, Sweden (April).

1998 Idly Drinking and Talking: the Sovietisation of the Mongolian Countryside. American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia, PA (December).

1998 Collected Memories: Sovietisation and Resistance in 1950s Mongolia. Mongolia Society Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. (March).

1997 Women and National Politics in Post-Socialist Mongolia. Association of Asian Studies Annual Meetings, Chicago (March).

1996 The Geopolitics of Indifference: Mongolia and the History of Anthropology. American Anthropological Association Meetings, San Francisco, CA (20 November).

1996 The Nomads of Inner Asia and Their Impact on the Eurasian Steppe. American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies conference, Boston, MA (14 November).

1996 Evoking the Past: Official and Unofficial Histories Under State Socialism.. Oral History Association conference, Philadelphia, PA. (10 October).

1996 Contesting Identities: Multiple Histories and National Sentiment under State Socialism . American Ethnological Society conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico (19 April).

1995 Creating National Identity in Socialist Mongolia. AAA Annual Meetings, Washington D.C. (November)

1995 Legitimating the Mongol State: Creating a Useable Past. Conference on Greater Mongolia in the Twentieth Century, Princeton University. (February)

1990 At the Far End of town: Folklore and Ideology in Dr. Seuss. American Folklore Society, Oakland California (21 October).
No, this one has nothing to do with Mongolia, and not much with other current interests, but it was my very first conference presentation, so it's here for sentimental reasons.

More coming soon!

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