Esuna Dugarova

Various Buryat-Mongolian tribes who originated in the Mongol lands gravitated to the area around Lake Baikal which was annexed by the Russian empire in the 17th century. The Russian control of the Buryat-Mongolian territory was reaffirmed by the Qing court in the Treaty of Kyakhta (1727) which established the Russo-Qing border. This geopolitical event led to dramatic changes for the Buryat-Mongols and their ethnocultural tradition, while giving rise to the BuryatMongolian transnational community which despite national borders has been rooted in the shared cultural code. The Soviet regime fueled the erosion of the Buryat-Mongolian ethnonational identity by eliminating the traditional Mongolian writing system, interfering in the local economy and social structure, and prohibiting Buddhist learning and religious practices. The collapse of the Soviet Union marked a new era for the Buryat-Mongols that opened opportunities to revive its ethnocultural tradition, while also bringing new challenges posed by globalizing Western modernity that has penetrated the post-Soviet space both in physical and digital realms. Against this backdrop, my research examines the reconstruction of Buryat-Mongolian ethnonational identity through a gender lens amid geopolitical and socioeconomic shifts. I argue that amid these shifts women’s agency has emerged as a de facto underlying force that has helped sustain collective Buryat-Mongolian identity. This is seen in the creation of matrilineal genealogy as a way to ensure clan’s sustainability despite persistently patriarchal structures; feminization of lay Buddhism to support the post-communist revival of the Buddhist tradition; reconfigurations in intrahousehold work and care arrangements under the market-based economic conditions; and women’sleadership and social organization in preserving Buryat-Mongolian language and cultural heritage. The scope of women’s agency, however, has been conditioned by paternalistic malegoverned institutions, growing authoritarianism, and rising neoliberal ideology in the broader context of globalizing Western modernity. Nonetheless, women have fulfilled their deeply ingrained commitment to ensure the vitality of their households, clans and Buryat-Mongolian transnational community. This has entailed a delicate and dynamic interplay between accommodating patriarchy, resisting Eurocentrism, and transcending the status quo of unequal power relations. In the existing scholarship, the experiences of Buryat-Mongols have been largely relegated to the margins of imperialist hegemonic discourse with little consideration of their agency, whereas gender analysis has been nearly absent. To address this gap, my study provides gender perspectives on Buryat-Mongolian ethnonational identity by illuminating new trends, gender strategies and community-based practices to sustain the Buryat-Mongolian transnational community in the 21 st century. Based on archival records, over 200 interviews, and fieldworks in Buryatia, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and India between 2019 and 2024, this research seeks to challenge the conventional conceptions, Eurocentric perspectives and patriarchal narratives by moving away from the marginalization of women towards recognizing their agency, power and resilience in a post-colonial context. By doing so, it serves to shape a more holistic ethnocultural landscape of the Eurasian space, while creating a more granular understanding of gendered experiences across time and space