Michelet, Aude
(2013)
No longer 'kings': learning to be a Mongolian person in the middle Gobi.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This doctoral dissertation examines the inter-subjective processes through which young children are shaped and shape others into persons (hün), as they learn to
interact through the Mongolian mode of hierarchical relations. Based on twenty
months of ethnographic fieldwork in the middle Gobi, the research focuses on the
period when children (between two and eight years of age) lose their status as
indulged and protected babies and learn to assume the role of older brother/sister
(ah/egj) and younger sibling (düü). To investigate how children become
competent at interacting through the Mongolian mode of hierarchical relations, the
study considers three questions: how do children learn to enact etiquette (yos)?
How do children develop relations within and outside of their family (ger bül) and
family network (ah düü)? How do children learn to work and to become helpful?
The research reveals that Mongolian social hierarchy is structurally produced by,
and is the product of, an irreconcilable moral tension. On the one hand, children
learn to form relations of interdependence and to actively take part in the
production of asymmetrical but mutual obligations. On the other hand, children
learn to use etiquette to establish relations at the safe distance of respect, and to
develop social and emotional skills to protect themselves from the potential
dangers of relatedness. By documenting the processes through which children
learn to form relations as ah/egj and düü, this study uncovers the social
mechanisms which sustain the re-production of Mongolian social hierarchy and
the individual skills necessary to be a socially and morally competent Mongolian
person. More generally, the dissertation contributes to the anthropological study
of personhood by rethinking ‘the cultural construction of the person’ as an ongoing process of learning.
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