This paper proposes to explore how being “skillful” (mergen) plays out and is relied upon in Mongolia within two different contexts, archery and divination, both linked to “cairns” (ovoo) in more than one way. In these contexts, skillful people are expected to embody a virtue that any Mongolian man or woman is supposed to exhibit daily in a less spectacular and consequential manner. As prominent bearers of skillfulness, archers and diviners are indeed relied upon to respond with accuracy to a complex set of potentially clashing variables, and thus to ensure each in their own way the proper and fortunate positioning of people within an intensely heterogeneous cosmos. Available online open access: https://journals.openedition.org/emscat/5085

Five letters by Dilowa khutughtu Jamsranjav sent to Mongolian ministers and aristocrats in that period kept in 563rd item in the Mongolian Central National Archive in the fund “Collected aristocrat and lama letters” (М-170, Registration №1) were considered in this paper to hear the opinions of the researchers and enter it into the study field.

Our CFP in Brief This Nordic Summer University study circle Praxis of Social Imaginaries: Cosmologies, Othering and Liminality, sets out to foster a platform for trans-and inter-disciplinary research rooted in the practices of reading, listening, and telling stories. Recognizing that trans-and inter-disciplinary research requires time and in-depth work in order to become truly fruitful, this study circle aims to provide room for these kinds of processes. The reading material at the center of our work is filled with depictions of cultures, peoples, lands and religious, artistic, culinary and sacred practices from times and places different from our own, while the people present in our circle come from different cultures and divergent relationships to research, artistic practice, and institutional structures.