Mongolian Cosmopolitical Heritage: Tracing Divergent Healing Practices Across the Mongolian-Chinese Border

近年来，全世界对艺术和文化遗产在促进健康和福祉方面的作用越来越感兴趣。例如，在英国，跨党派议会艺术、健康和福利小组于2017年7月发布了一份关于艺术对健康的终身益处的综合报告，向政治领导人和医疗保健专业人员提出了重要建议。在国际话语中，藏药洗浴作为藏医学的一个方面，一直被中国和印度之间的地缘政治竞争所纠缠，前者于2016年向联合国教科文组织申请将药浴注册为该国非物质文化遗产的一部分，而印度则试图将整个Sowa Rigpa传统注册。该项目旨在从民族志上探索将健康与文化遗产联系起来的政治。更具体地说，它旨在通过以下问题了解文化政治如何影响与健康相关的实践：地缘政治力量和国家文化建设以何种方式塑造影响健康和福祉的实践？蒙古和中国内蒙古自治区（IMAR）代表了一个理想的比较案例研究，可以探索政治、经济和历史力量对治疗实践形成的影响。在这些领域中，不同的20世纪和21世纪的背景影响了对共同的蒙古宇宙学遗产的不同重新分配。这个项目将探讨萨满教和其他“另类”治疗方法是如何被从业者、患者和国家视为合法的。它提供了“世界政治”一词，指的是世界被想象和参与的政治秩序原则。该项目将探索在这两种情况下，在评估医疗越来越困难和对医疗专业人员普遍不信任的时期，随着国家医疗体系的解体，人们在健康和福祉方面的多个权威机构中导航的方式（见土耳其2018）。该研究将围绕蒙古文化区域内两个关键地点的治疗实践进行综合比较分析，选择其不同的政治经济背景影响治疗实践：中国IMAR的通辽市和蒙古，重点是乌兰巴托。治疗实践和日常感知中的局部细微差别需要人种学提供的持续、长期的研究。实地工作将包括参与者观察、半结构化访谈和患者/客户调查，以患者、从业者、治疗技术以及从业者群体、诊所和公共卫生部等政府机构和地方干部之间的组织间和机构关系为目标。摄影和电影记录将侧重于在历史背景下设定比较目标的治疗技术。博物馆将为该项目提供重要的资源和见解，特别是考虑到它们在促进英国和其他地方的健康和福祉方面的动员作用。剑桥考古与人类学博物馆将提供一个重要的资源，以追踪民族背景在不同的治疗实践重新挪用中的作用，因为他们的收藏早于现代蒙古和中国民族国家的建立。将建立一个公开的电影和摄影数据库，以比较历史背景下的治疗技术，这些技术来自于MAA资源，以及蒙古和IMAR通辽的主要博物馆和档案馆。

Recent years have witnessed a growing world-wide interest in the role of the arts and cultural heritage in cultivating health and wellbeing. In the UK, for instance, the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Arts, Health and Wellbeing published a comprehensive report in July 2017 on the lifetime benefits of arts in health, making key recommendations to political leaders and healthcare professionals. In international discourse, Tibetan medicinal bathing, an aspect of Tibetan Medicine (or Sowa Rigpa), has been entangled in a geopolitical rivalry between China and India, as the former applied to UNESCO in 2016 to register medicinal bathing as part of the nation's intangible cultural heritage, while India has sought to register the entire Sowa Rigpa tradition. This project seeks to ethnographically explore the politics of linking health and cultural heritage. More specifically, it aims to understand how the politics of culture affect health-related practices by asking: In what ways do geopolitical forces and national constructions of culture shape practices that influence health and wellbeing? Mongolia and China's Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR) represent an ideal comparative case study to explore the impact of political, economic and historical forces on the shaping of healing practices. In each of these areas, disparate 20th and 21st century contexts influenced divergent re-appropriations of a common Mongolian cosmological heritage. This project will explore how shamanism and other 'alternative' healing practices, are cast as, and have come to be seen as, legitimate by practitioners, patients and the state. It offers the term 'cosmopolitical' to refer to the political principles of odering along which worlds are imagined and engaged. The project will explore the ways in which people navigate the multiple authorities on health and wellbeing that have become increasingly popular following the dismantling of state healthcare systems in both contexts, during a time typified by increasing difficulty in assessing medical treatment and widespread mistrust in medical professionals (see Turk 2018). The research will revolve around integrated, comparative analysis of healing practices at two key field sites within the Mongolian cultural region, selected for their divergent politico-economic contexts that impact healing practices: Tongliao municipality in China's IMAR and Mongolia, with a focus on Ulaanbaatar. The localized nuances in healing practices and everyday perceptions of them require sustained, long-term research afforded by ethnography. Fieldwork will include participant observation, semi-structured interview and patient/client survey, targeting patients, practitioners, healing techniques and inter-organizational and institutional relations among practitioner groups, clinics, and governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Public Health and local cadres. Photographic and film documentation will focus on healing techniques with a comparative aim set in historical context. Museums will provide crucial resources and insights for this project, especially given their increased mobilization in the fostering of health and wellbeing in the UK and elsewhere. Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will provide an important resource to trace the role of national context in divergent re-appropriations of healing practices, as their collections predate the foundation of the modern Mongolian and Chinese nation-states. A publicly-available database of film and photography will be created from which to compare healing techniques set in historical context from resources from the MAA, and key museums and archives in Mongolia and Tongliao, IMAR.