Tea Practices in Mongolia. Female Power and Gendered Meanings from Birth to Death

Author: 

Bamana, Gabriel

Credentials: 

Ph.D, Social Anthropology, University of Wales, Trinity St David (UK), D/Anthropology, University of Minnesota

Commendatory Preface: Professor Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania

From Birth to Death is a scholarly monograph based on years of field work in Mongolia as well as original research in Asia, Europe and North America. It is an original and detailed ethnography of tea practices, female power and gendered meaning in Mongolia. It is also a welcome addition to the field by an African scholar of distinction who is one of the few Black African researchers in Central Asia.

This work makes two major contributions to the field of Mongolian studies and anthropology. This is a first detailed ethnography of tea practices in Mongolia, a country that does not produce tea and yet is a major tea consumer. The book tells the story of what people do with tea in Mongolia. The second contribution of this work is the description of female power and gendered meanings as the experience connected to tea practices. Female power is the experience of impacting on other people’s acts from a gendered position of power. Through tea practices, which are ascribed to women, women construct gendered meanings that are a contribution to the cultural system in Mongolia. For a society that is predominantly described as patriarchal, this work brings to shore the experience of a female world of meanings different from the rest and yet that stands in complementarity with it.

Market: 
Mongolian Studies, Social Anthropology—Asia, Ethnography, Feminism, Gender roles and meaning, Cultural Systems, Patriarchy and Gender, Womens Studies, tea ceremonies--Asia, Food Studies, Female power structures, Family structure and identity, Buddhism, Religion
Release Date: 
February 10th, 2016
ISBN: 
Cloth: 978-1-68053-013-1
Price: 
$79.95
Trim Size: 
6x9
Pages: 
208
Illustrations: 
Yes
Publisher: 

ACADEMICA PRESS
1727 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 507
Washington, DC 20036