Uradyn E Bulag
Biographic Data
| ID | 198042 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Uradyn E Bulag |
| GIVEN NAMES | Uradyn E |
| FAMILY NAME | Bulag |
| SIGNATURE | BULAG U E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3228-9729 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 164 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
State Death and Survival
This article examines how late Qing and early Republican Chinese and Mongol elites debated the idea of collective survival following the Qing’s collapse. It considers ‘independence’ not as a move towards nationhood but as a solution discussed within a shared yet contested vocabulary of extinction and protection. Using print genres (such as translated histories, newspaper serials, etc.) and the 1912–13 telegrams between Yuan Shikai and the Bogd Kh…
A Chinese Rebel beyond the Great Wall
The wheel of history and minorities’ ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese nation
This article offers a theoretical intervention in new and emergent approaches to analysing China's coercive nation-building policies under Xi Jinping. The author contends that the recent Western framing of CCP policies as genocidal or necropolitical, predicated on notions of settler colonialism and indigeneity, not only strips minority nationalities of their political agency but also prevents them from pursuing anti-colonial self-determination. B…
Minority Nationalities as Frankenstein’s Monsters? Reshaping “the Chinese Nation” and China’s Quest to Become a “Normal Country
This article examines a paradigm shift in the PRC that has occurred over the past two decades which has transformed the meaning of “minority nationality” (shaoshu minzu). Today, the very concept of minority nationalities is perceived by Beijing as entailing a threat to the Chinese state and the Chinese nation. The shift underlies a change of China’s institutional form from a “multinational state” to a “unified community of the Chinese nation.” Th…
Dying for the mother tongue
Nationality
Nomads and Their Inner World
Nomad Relays is an annual non-profit event celebrating nomadic culture on a Saturday of every June. Initiated by film director Uragshaa (Wuershan), musician Yalagch (Ilchi), anthropologist Uradyn E. Bulag and artist Chyanga (Qin Ga) in June 2018, the event aims to bring academic lectures, art exhibitions, films, musical performances and other related activities together to present the charms of nomadic culture, explore its contemporary significan…
Mongolia in 2017
In 2017 Mongolians elected a populist president who is more assertive than his predecessors amid initial uncertainties introduced by a $5.5 billion IMF bailout package. The country continued to be embroiled in a fight over the fate of the 49% private holdings in the Erdenet enterprise. There were signs that Mongolia was becoming less active in engaging its third neighbors
A World Community of Neighbours in the Making
Introduction
Multicultural China
DAN SHAO. Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland
Journal Article Dan Shao. Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland: Manchus, Manchoukuo, and Manchuria, 1907–1985. Get access Dan Shao. Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland: Manchus, Manchoukuo, and Manchuria, 1907–1985. (The World of East Asia.) Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. 2011. Pp. xxi, 413. $55.00. Uradyn E. Bulag Uradyn E. Bulag University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Ameri…
Rethinking Borders in Empire and Nation at the Foot of the Willow Palisade
China, Russia and Mongolia share thousands of miles of border, but their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Presenting varied perspectives on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced and crossed, this book illuminates global uncertainties: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia’s fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious economic independenc…
Twentieth‐Century China
This article invokes a Chinese political concept of ‘sinicization’, aiming to capture the nature of ethnic relations in China historically, and the political fate of ethnic groups in contemporary China. Sinicization has powerful genealogical and governmental dimensions; it is not primarily an ‘acculturation’ process as it is understood generally. Sinicization may not kill people directly, but it murders the non- Chinese sense of genealogical diff…
Seeing like a Minority
This paper outlines the operation of what may be called “political tourism” in China, and analyses the role of the sensorial technology of “seeing” in the kind of narrative this tourism engenders. Beginning in 1950, the newly established People's Republic of China launched an annual tradition of inviting non-communist elites to attend the May Day and the National Day (1 October) parades on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and in some metropolitan citi…
Independence as Restoration
The Mongolian declaration of independence on 29 December 1911 was a monumental event in the modern history not only of Inner Asia, but also of East Asia; it not only contributed to the fall of the Qing Empire, but more importantly it led to the formation of two separate national states on the debris of the Empire: China and Mongolia. In 2011 both China and Mongolia commemorated the centennial, but the moods were more contemplative than celebrator…
Collaborative Nationalism
Cosmopolitanism and friendship have become key themes for understanding ethnicity and nationalism. In this deeply original study of the Mongols, leading scholar Uradyn E. Bulag draws on these themes to develop a new concept he terms "collaborative nationalism." He uses this concept to explore the paradoxical dilemma of minorities in China as they fight not against being excluded but against being embraced too tightly in the bonds of "friendship."…
Mongolia in 2009
In 2009 Mongolia peacefully elected its first president from the Democratic Party. It was also a very lucky year for investors, who saw the signing of a historic agreement to develop the copper-gold mine Oyu Tolgoi. With China and Russia beginning to play vital roles in their neighbor's development, Mongolia may soon need to review its landlocked status to redefine itself as a land-linked country
Can the Subalterns Not Speak? On the Regime of Oral History in Socialist China
Rescuing the voice of 'the people' is arguably the most important mission of oral history, and it is now promoted in post-socialist or late socialist states such as China as an effective measure to rewrite history. This article argues, however, that socialist China was and remains in effect an oral-history regime, in which the people in whose name the Communist Party legitimises itself must speak up and narrate their life histories. Oral history …
Mongolia in 2008
In 2008 Mongolia witnessed the first violent riots in the wake of parliamentary elections since the country became a democracy in 1992, but the crisis was mitigated by the formation of a coalition government. Mining has become a key factor for defining Mongolia's domestic politics and international relations
The Nomonhan Incident and the Politics of Friendship on the Russia-Mongolia-China Border
The summer of 2009 in Ulaanbaatar was unusually bustling for an otherwise sleepy city at a time when almost half of its one million strong population were out in summer camps drinking koumiss (Mo. airag) in the vast countryside. The whole nation was determined to enjoy the precious tranquillity after a peaceful presidential election, avoiding a repeat of last year's violence in the wake of parliamentary elections. Amongst the few momentous events…
Contesting the Words that Wound
Nation is as much a sentimental community as an imagined community. This paper is an attempt to study the role of sentiment as a motor of ethnopolitics in China. Using as a heuristic device the recent Mongolian cadres' protest at 'Mongol Doctor' - a Chinese ethnic slur against the Mongols, the paper examines the formation of the Mongol sentimental community vis-à-vis the Chinese sentimental community historically and especially in the twentieth c…
"The Yearning for "Friendship
Research Article| February 01 2006 The Yearning for “Friendship”: Revisiting “the Political” in Minority Revolutionary History in China Uradyn E. Bulag Uradyn E. Bulag [email protected] Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Asian Studies (2006) 65 (1): 3–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002191180600004…
Where is East Asia? Central Asian and Inner Asian Perspectives on Regionalism
Attempting to observe Central and Inner Asia from North America or Europe is like looking through a glass that is badly refracted, or even like trying to view the invisible. I propose a new approach toward the understanding of Central and Inner Asia that actively takes stock of East Asian countries' activities, interests, perspectives, and scholarship in the region, and that interrogates dominant definitions of Asian regionalism
Film Review - The Wild East
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China
Language is one of the official criteria of defining a nationality in socialist China, but it simultaneously has been subjected to an "ideology of contempt" by the Chinese regime that builds nationality only to destroy it. This article examines the linguistic anxiety displayed by the Mongols and their controversial language revitalization efforts in a social environment in which they have become an absolute minority even while they have formal au…
The Mongols at China's Edge
This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront C…
From Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality
2002). From Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality: settler colonialism and alter/native urbanization in Inner Mongolia. Provincial China: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 196-234
Mongolia in 2008
In 2008 Mongolia witnessed the first violent riots in the wake of parliamentary elections since the country became a democracy in 1992, but the crisis was mitigated by the formation of a coalition government. Mining has become a key factor for defining Mongolia's domestic politics and international relations
The wheel of history and minorities’ ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese nation
This article offers a theoretical intervention in new and emergent approaches to analysing China's coercive nation-building policies under Xi Jinping. The author contends that the recent Western framing of CCP policies as genocidal or necropolitical, predicated on notions of settler colonialism and indigeneity, not only strips minority nationalities of their political agency but also prevents them from pursuing anti-colonial self-determination. B…
Minority Nationalities as Frankenstein’s Monsters? Reshaping “the Chinese Nation” and China’s Quest to Become a “Normal Country
This article examines a paradigm shift in the PRC that has occurred over the past two decades which has transformed the meaning of “minority nationality” (shaoshu minzu). Today, the very concept of minority nationalities is perceived by Beijing as entailing a threat to the Chinese state and the Chinese nation. The shift underlies a change of China’s institutional form from a “multinational state” to a “unified community of the Chinese nation.” Th…
Models and Moralities
Mongolia in 2009
In 2009 Mongolia peacefully elected its first president from the Democratic Party. It was also a very lucky year for investors, who saw the signing of a historic agreement to develop the copper-gold mine Oyu Tolgoi. With China and Russia beginning to play vital roles in their neighbor's development, Mongolia may soon need to review its landlocked status to redefine itself as a land-linked country
Seeing like a Minority
This paper outlines the operation of what may be called “political tourism” in China, and analyses the role of the sensorial technology of “seeing” in the kind of narrative this tourism engenders. Beginning in 1950, the newly established People's Republic of China launched an annual tradition of inviting non-communist elites to attend the May Day and the National Day (1 October) parades on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and in some metropolitan citi…
"The Yearning for "Friendship
Research Article| February 01 2006 The Yearning for “Friendship”: Revisiting “the Political” in Minority Revolutionary History in China Uradyn E. Bulag Uradyn E. Bulag [email protected] Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Asian Studies (2006) 65 (1): 3–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002191180600004…
Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative
Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities. Carole Pegg. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. 376 pp
Contemporary Kazaks
Contemporary Kazaks: Cultural and Social Perspectives. Ingvar Svanberg. ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. vi. 152 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index
From Inequality to Difference
Through an historical ethnography of the imbrication of class and ethnicity in socialist China, this paper studies socialism as another kind of colonialism with its peculiar, contradictory ramifications of universalism and particularism. The ‘colonial’ cultural politics of socialism is explored in Inner Mongolia, the northern frontier of China, where the historical formation of the social and ethnic relationship defies any clear-cut dichotomy of …
Can the Subalterns Not Speak? On the Regime of Oral History in Socialist China
Rescuing the voice of 'the people' is arguably the most important mission of oral history, and it is now promoted in post-socialist or late socialist states such as China as an effective measure to rewrite history. This article argues, however, that socialist China was and remains in effect an oral-history regime, in which the people in whose name the Communist Party legitimises itself must speak up and narrate their life histories. Oral history …
Contesting the Words that Wound
Nation is as much a sentimental community as an imagined community. This paper is an attempt to study the role of sentiment as a motor of ethnopolitics in China. Using as a heuristic device the recent Mongolian cadres' protest at 'Mongol Doctor' - a Chinese ethnic slur against the Mongols, the paper examines the formation of the Mongol sentimental community vis-à-vis the Chinese sentimental community historically and especially in the twentieth c…
The cult of Ulanhu in Inner Mongolia
(1998). The cult of Ulanhu in Inner Mongolia: History, memory, and the making of national heroes. Central Asian Survey: Vol. 17, Mongolia, pp. 11-33
Rescuing history from the nation
I have been asked to touch on the history that Prasenjit Duara rescues in Rescuing History, rather than on the theoretical apparatus employed in his attempt. The two are not easily separated in any case, but here the customary distinctions among empirically verifiable evidence, explanatory strategies, and historical method are especially tenuous. Duara goes well beyond the relativist claim that historical “facts” are selective and partial records…
Dark quadrangle in Central Asia
Rescuing history from the nation
I have been asked to touch on the history that Prasenjit Duara rescues in Rescuing History, rather than on the theoretical apparatus employed in his attempt. The two are not easily separated in any case, but here the customary distinctions among empirically verifiable evidence, explanatory strategies, and historical method are especially tenuous. Duara goes well beyond the relativist claim that historical “facts” are selective and partial records…
The cult of Ulanhu in Inner Mongolia
(1998). The cult of Ulanhu in Inner Mongolia: History, memory, and the making of national heroes. Central Asian Survey: Vol. 17, Mongolia, pp. 11-33
New Ghosts, Old Ghosts
Models and Moralities
From Inequality to Difference
Through an historical ethnography of the imbrication of class and ethnicity in socialist China, this paper studies socialism as another kind of colonialism with its peculiar, contradictory ramifications of universalism and particularism. The ‘colonial’ cultural politics of socialism is explored in Inner Mongolia, the northern frontier of China, where the historical formation of the social and ethnic relationship defies any clear-cut dichotomy of …
Mongolia in the Twentieth Century
Contemporary Kazaks
Contemporary Kazaks: Cultural and Social Perspectives. Ingvar Svanberg. ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. vi. 152 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index
By Way of Introduction
Part I Producing and Reproducing National Unity
Part III Models and Morality
Index
Part II Tensions of Empire
The Mongols at China's Edge
This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront C…
From Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality
2002). From Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality: settler colonialism and alter/native urbanization in Inner Mongolia. Provincial China: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 196-234
Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China
Language is one of the official criteria of defining a nationality in socialist China, but it simultaneously has been subjected to an "ideology of contempt" by the Chinese regime that builds nationality only to destroy it. This article examines the linguistic anxiety displayed by the Mongols and their controversial language revitalization efforts in a social environment in which they have become an absolute minority even while they have formal au…
Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative
Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities. Carole Pegg. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. 376 pp
Film Review - The Wild East
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Hybridity and Nomadology in Inner Asia
Identity, especially modern national identity, entails ideas of authenticity and hybridity. For much of the history of Mongolian studies, authenticity has been a staple of scholarly concern, whereas hybridity or diversity is brushed aside. This is as much an Orientalist imperative as a nationalist quest for the homogeneity of the Mongolian nation/nationality. Every country which has a substantial number of Mongols - Mongolia, China, and the Sovie…
Where is East Asia? Central Asian and Inner Asian Perspectives on Regionalism
Attempting to observe Central and Inner Asia from North America or Europe is like looking through a glass that is badly refracted, or even like trying to view the invisible. I propose a new approach toward the understanding of Central and Inner Asia that actively takes stock of East Asian countries' activities, interests, perspectives, and scholarship in the region, and that interrogates dominant definitions of Asian regionalism
"The Yearning for "Friendship
Research Article| February 01 2006 The Yearning for “Friendship”: Revisiting “the Political” in Minority Revolutionary History in China Uradyn E. Bulag Uradyn E. Bulag [email protected] Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Asian Studies (2006) 65 (1): 3–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002191180600004…
Contesting the Words that Wound
Nation is as much a sentimental community as an imagined community. This paper is an attempt to study the role of sentiment as a motor of ethnopolitics in China. Using as a heuristic device the recent Mongolian cadres' protest at 'Mongol Doctor' - a Chinese ethnic slur against the Mongols, the paper examines the formation of the Mongol sentimental community vis-à-vis the Chinese sentimental community historically and especially in the twentieth c…
Mongolia in 2008
In 2008 Mongolia witnessed the first violent riots in the wake of parliamentary elections since the country became a democracy in 1992, but the crisis was mitigated by the formation of a coalition government. Mining has become a key factor for defining Mongolia's domestic politics and international relations
The Nomonhan Incident and the Politics of Friendship on the Russia-Mongolia-China Border
The summer of 2009 in Ulaanbaatar was unusually bustling for an otherwise sleepy city at a time when almost half of its one million strong population were out in summer camps drinking koumiss (Mo. airag) in the vast countryside. The whole nation was determined to enjoy the precious tranquillity after a peaceful presidential election, avoiding a repeat of last year's violence in the wake of parliamentary elections. Amongst the few momentous events…
Collaborative Nationalism
Cosmopolitanism and friendship have become key themes for understanding ethnicity and nationalism. In this deeply original study of the Mongols, leading scholar Uradyn E. Bulag draws on these themes to develop a new concept he terms "collaborative nationalism." He uses this concept to explore the paradoxical dilemma of minorities in China as they fight not against being excluded but against being embraced too tightly in the bonds of "friendship."…
Political science (29 works) · China (28 works) · Law (23 works) · History (22 works) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (20 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Politics (17 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (15 works) · Geography (14 works) · Law (13 works)