Joseph Bristley
Biographic Data
| ID | 882690 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Bristley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Bristley |
| SIGNATURE | BRISTLEY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3307-608X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Thomas White, China’s Camel Country. Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier
This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Forests and Rivers
Unlike other regions of the world that also experience anthropogenically generated environmental problems, Inner Asia is particularly vulnerable to ecological catastrophes. In such a context, scholars of the region - like social scientists elsewhere - extensively use ideas of periodisation to temporally situate analysis of human intervention in the natural world. This article also attends to the temporality of human intervention in Inner Asia's e…
Risk and its others
Anthropological studies of risk have long focused on how people respond to and aim to manage potential harm. But despite its long and important genealogy, this article suggests that risk can pose an analytic blind spot that potentially occludes other ways of understanding how people aim to live well in potentially harmful situations. In doing so, it argues for anthropological attention to a Mongolian "protection" concept: an optimistic idea that …
Silence and history
On 'Wise Cunning' and 'Clever Methods
Tears of Rejoicing Spirits
Accounts of Mongol mountain sacrifices (ovoo takhilga) variously focus on transactional offerings that elicit benefits from local spirits and on the patron-like position held by spirits towards those who supplicate them. In contrast this article explores how, in such ceremonies, human-spirit relations are shaped through the enactment of emotions: in this context, happiness. Bringing classic literature on sacrifice into dialogue with recent studie…
Times of debt
Recent scholarship in economic anthropology examines how the intersection of multiple forms of temporality shapes the time of debt relations. This article builds on and refines these approaches by analysing debt as a social relation that 'folds' the time of other relations within itself. It does so through deploying the concept of the 'fold' drawn from continental philosophy and anthropological literature on personhood. This approach provides a n…
Scale and Number
Much recent anthropology reflects on how scales are contested and contingent products of heterogeneous social interactions, not the ‘ontological givens’ (sensu Carr and Lempert) described in earlier scholarship. This article examines the importance of number in the formation of scales of measurement. It does so regarding a pastoral Mongolian scale of livestock-counting based on the number ten thousand, or tüm[en]: a qualitative-cum-quantitative t…
Nomads on Pilgrimage
Transformation and Multiplicity
This paper explores perceptions ofzoos, objects which are generally replicas of Manchu-era coins attached to the surfaces of some shamans' coats in present-day Mongolia. Beginning by noting that the general perception of these objects in shamanic praxis is to protect the shaman who wears them, I explore another way in which they are perceived: as things which connote particular aspects of money used in present-day Mongolia. I take two aspects of …
Tears of Rejoicing Spirits
Accounts of Mongol mountain sacrifices (ovoo takhilga) variously focus on transactional offerings that elicit benefits from local spirits and on the patron-like position held by spirits towards those who supplicate them. In contrast this article explores how, in such ceremonies, human-spirit relations are shaped through the enactment of emotions: in this context, happiness. Bringing classic literature on sacrifice into dialogue with recent studie…
Times of debt
Recent scholarship in economic anthropology examines how the intersection of multiple forms of temporality shapes the time of debt relations. This article builds on and refines these approaches by analysing debt as a social relation that 'folds' the time of other relations within itself. It does so through deploying the concept of the 'fold' drawn from continental philosophy and anthropological literature on personhood. This approach provides a n…
Risk and its others
Anthropological studies of risk have long focused on how people respond to and aim to manage potential harm. But despite its long and important genealogy, this article suggests that risk can pose an analytic blind spot that potentially occludes other ways of understanding how people aim to live well in potentially harmful situations. In doing so, it argues for anthropological attention to a Mongolian "protection" concept: an optimistic idea that …
On 'Wise Cunning' and 'Clever Methods
Transformation and Multiplicity
This paper explores perceptions ofzoos, objects which are generally replicas of Manchu-era coins attached to the surfaces of some shamans' coats in present-day Mongolia. Beginning by noting that the general perception of these objects in shamanic praxis is to protect the shaman who wears them, I explore another way in which they are perceived: as things which connote particular aspects of money used in present-day Mongolia. I take two aspects of …
Transformation and Multiplicity
This paper explores perceptions ofzoos, objects which are generally replicas of Manchu-era coins attached to the surfaces of some shamans' coats in present-day Mongolia. Beginning by noting that the general perception of these objects in shamanic praxis is to protect the shaman who wears them, I explore another way in which they are perceived: as things which connote particular aspects of money used in present-day Mongolia. I take two aspects of …
Nomads on Pilgrimage
Scale and Number
Much recent anthropology reflects on how scales are contested and contingent products of heterogeneous social interactions, not the ‘ontological givens’ (sensu Carr and Lempert) described in earlier scholarship. This article examines the importance of number in the formation of scales of measurement. It does so regarding a pastoral Mongolian scale of livestock-counting based on the number ten thousand, or tüm[en]: a qualitative-cum-quantitative t…
Tears of Rejoicing Spirits
Accounts of Mongol mountain sacrifices (ovoo takhilga) variously focus on transactional offerings that elicit benefits from local spirits and on the patron-like position held by spirits towards those who supplicate them. In contrast this article explores how, in such ceremonies, human-spirit relations are shaped through the enactment of emotions: in this context, happiness. Bringing classic literature on sacrifice into dialogue with recent studie…
Times of debt
Recent scholarship in economic anthropology examines how the intersection of multiple forms of temporality shapes the time of debt relations. This article builds on and refines these approaches by analysing debt as a social relation that 'folds' the time of other relations within itself. It does so through deploying the concept of the 'fold' drawn from continental philosophy and anthropological literature on personhood. This approach provides a n…
Forests and Rivers
Unlike other regions of the world that also experience anthropogenically generated environmental problems, Inner Asia is particularly vulnerable to ecological catastrophes. In such a context, scholars of the region - like social scientists elsewhere - extensively use ideas of periodisation to temporally situate analysis of human intervention in the natural world. This article also attends to the temporality of human intervention in Inner Asia's e…
Risk and its others
Anthropological studies of risk have long focused on how people respond to and aim to manage potential harm. But despite its long and important genealogy, this article suggests that risk can pose an analytic blind spot that potentially occludes other ways of understanding how people aim to live well in potentially harmful situations. In doing so, it argues for anthropological attention to a Mongolian "protection" concept: an optimistic idea that …
Silence and history
On 'Wise Cunning' and 'Clever Methods
Thomas White, China’s Camel Country. Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier
This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Geography (5 works) · History (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (4 works) · History (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works)