1. INTRODUCTION

One of the important threads in my ethnographic interests in Mongolia since 2004 has been the contribution Khalkha Mongol women are making to revitalising their spiritual traditions after the cessation of Soviet socialism here. In terms of methodology and practice (i.e., how I’ve gone about this from a non-nativist perspective) my 2017 post Vignette 06: What’s in a name? is indicative of my approach.

Recently I have been asked to write about the qualitative research framework that I settled on (and the logic underpinning it) for my study of Mongol women’s endeavours in Mongolia towards this goal i.e., revitalising their spiritual traditions. In reply to this request, here is a revised PowerPoint slide presentation I prepared for a conference (now in 3 parts, see below). It outlines the requested information including that relating to both contexts and ontology.

Photographs I have taken during fieldwork in Mongolia (such as the one above), digitised scans of other images as well as composite yet simple diagramatic representations with maps and tables I have created have been incorporated into the PPoint slides. Where there is numerical/statistical data, however rubbery, I have used arrows to help focus your thoughts on a particular point even if you do not read Mongolian or Russian Cyrillic.

2. TECHNICAL NOTES (slideshows)

This article is optimised for concept-interested people, desktop computers and tablets. You can view each slide show (see below) by scrolling down using either your nimble digits (swiping this way and that) or dragging the the scroll bar down (right side of PPoint window) using your mouse. Also try clicking the ‘pop out’ box (top right corner of each PPoint slide show window). Doing so will whisk you away to Google Docs (an increasing presence in our scholarly universe) where each ‘slide show’ may be easier to scroll through, print or download. In recent weeks I’ve been ‘tooling around’ (Australian-speak for ‘playing with’) a heap of new plugins. Still not sure what I think about ’embedding PPoint presentations’ in my WordPress website here this way. Terrific on-screen image quality/utility to file size/time required, but depending on the speed of your Internet connection, the slide shows can ‘feel’ a little slow to open and load. Further homework/investigation on my part is required. In terms of using ICTs, there has never been a shortage of new things to learn since I started publishing CPinMongolia.com in the public domain back in 2014.

Each PowerPoint slide presents an aspect of this Mongolian women-in-Mongolia research project. There are around 30 slides in total. Due to FTP upload limitations (best to keep each file under 5MB) I have divided one quite long instructional slide show (13MB) into 3 smaller parts. Not every aspect of my framework i covered in detail but its a good start for those of you new to my approach. In terms of appearance, some slides may seem visually and conceptually dense (to some readers), possibly fragmented and ‘messy’. Some Mongolian friends have suggested (in good humour) that such an appearance is not dissimilar to post-socialist life in Mongolia itself. And others, such as auto-ethnographers and their construction of ethnographic texts, for sure, argue that life is messy, emotional and uncertain too (a nod to advocates of ‘messy’ ethnography) especially when one is wading around in experimental waters so as to materialise in narrative form well-researched yet innovative ethnographic texts (a nod to G.E. Marcus).

SLIDESHOW 1

SLIDESHOW 2

SLIDESHOW 3

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Women in Buddhism Conference (2019)

Today is the start of the international 16th Sakyadhita Conference on Women in Buddhism in Australia. I have uploaded this ethnographic research-related article and its PowerPoint presentations to my blog  in celebration of  this community-of-practice event.

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FURTHER READING

Soundscape 07: Coming Home: on Country explores the sense of “belonging” and the ancestral/maternal connection to the land, which, for some women, is fundamental to how they locate their Buddhist identity within the Mongolian landscape.

Music Video 01: Praise to the Five Dakinis Mongolian with English subtitles introduces the Five Dakinis, essential enlightened female energies in the Vajrayana tradition.

Vignette 01: Urantsetseg is a specific, human-centric story profiling another wonderful Mongolian woman who generously contributed to my study.

Artscape 15: Хор Мандал focuses on the “re-place-ing” of tradition through contemporary jewelry and the collaboration between a mother and daughter (Munkhtsetseg and Udiyana), showcasing female agency in the cultural economy.

Intermedia 04: The Wish to Make One’s Way Towards a Distant Enlightenment is a musical narrative and exploration of the spiritual journey.

Vignette 06: What’s in a Name? bridges individual identity of people in a woman’s body and personal names within a broader Mongolian cultural and Buddhist heritage.

Vignette 07: Gantumur is a profile of a well-known Mongolian woman, offering a contemporary perspective on the roles women occupy in the cultural landscape.

Artscape 10: The look of compassion: seated Quanyin focuses on the iconographic and spiritual significance of the divine through the representation of Quanyin.

Vignette 02: Gantsatstral focuses on the individual agency and personal narrative of a Mongolian woman-artist during a period of sustained cultural revitalisation.

Artscape 07: During the socialist times provides a foundational diachronic analysis of the material culture and institutional art history of the era, situated within my broader ethnographic research into cultural continuities in Mongolia.

End of transcript.

Refer to the INDEX for other articles that may be of interest.

© 2013-2024. CP in Mongolia. “Landscape 08: Women and Re-place-ing Mongolian Buddhism” is licensed under the  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Open access should not be understood as the absence of attribution. Documents embedded or linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions.   Posted: 24 June 2019. Last updated: 24 August 2026.