Event

In Mongolia, elections run the country instead of the country running its elections. Electoral campaigns are not just a prelude to governing: they are the de facto governing; they reshape Mongolian social organization in public and private domains and build infrastructures for moving and distributing resources. The author calls this system electionization. To compete in electionization the electoral candidates must govern like elected officials. The situation is particularly challenging for many women candidates, who do not enjoy as much resources as their male counterparts despite the official rhetoric of gender equity. Conversant with international debates about what kind of women are worthy of being in political leadership, Mongolian women candidates undertake elaborate “self-polishing” to craft and leverage electable selves. By treating their bodies and minds as pliable, infinite, and continuously perfected, they influence the nation’s ideas of womanhood, which is yet another way that elections run the country.

Manduhai Buyandelger, professor of anthropology at MIT, studies religion, gender, and politics. Her first book Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Gender, and Memory in Contemporary Mongolia (2013) won the 2014 Francis L.K. Hsu prize from the Society of East Asian Anthropology and was shortlisted by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) in 2015. Her second book, A Thousand Steps to the Parliament: Constructing Electable Women in Mongolia(2022), won the 2022 Mongolian Anthropology Association Best Book Prize, and Mongolian Writers Association 2023 Golden Quill Pen award. Manduhai Buyandelger's new project examines relations between humans and domesticated animals, such cats and dogs and what these relations might tell us about the politics of care and neglect as well as infrastructures of urban settings in Mongolia and in the US.

Co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies

The event will also be open by Zoom with (free) advance registration