Wednesday, December 3, 2014 (please note that this presentation takes place Wednesday, not Thursday as usual)

Presenter: Ujin Kim, Anthropology
Faculty Discussant: Pär Cassel, Associate Professor of History, LRCCS Associate Director

Abstract:

“A Brief History of Kyzyl Tas Village”

This chapter presents a brief history of Kyzyl Tas – a Kazak herding village (muyecun) in Kaba county (Habahe), Altai Prefecture, Xinjiang, China. Kazak nomads’ history in this area can be divided into three time periods, namely, pre-commune period (1922~1958), commune period (1958~1984), post-commune period (1984~present). The pre-commune period is characterized by so-called tribal organization of society, whereas the commune-period herders were grouped into muyedui (herding teams) and communes. After the dissolution of People’s Communes in 1984, social organization is now mainly based on two principles: the boundaries of official administrative units (almost identical to the commune-period division of units) and the Kazak kinship structure that operates within (and across) the official boundaries. As reported in many other parts of China, kinship was never eradicated under Mao; it was largely preserved within the confines of production units, most of which consisted of one or a small number of patrilineal kin groups throughout rural China. After surviving the commune period, kinship is once again a powerful organizing principle of pastoral production among the Kazak nomads in this area, in addition to official pasture allocation by the local government to individual herding households. Simply put, seasonal pasture is allocated and controlled by the village and township governments, while the actual grazing of animals on specific pastures is in large part arranged by individual herding households, which actively exploits various types of kinship ties, as well as their old muyedui membership, in forming seasonal camping groups. Forming a camping group, rather than herding as an individual household, helps herders optimize their use of limited pasture and labor. The reinvigorated kinship principle works side by side with the commune-period socio-spatial divisions to create distinctively post-commune patterns of herding arrangement among the Kazak nomads.

Bio:

Ujin Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Department of Anthropology at University of Michigan. His interests include linguistic anthropology, honorific speech, ethics and morality, kinship, nomadic pastoralism, and China. Having recently come back from his CCS-funded field research in Northern Xinjiang, Ujin Kim is currently working on his dissertation, titled Ethical Management of Speech among Kazak Nomads in Western China. (ujinkim[at]umich[dot]edu)