The Felt Manufacture among the Kazakh of Mongolia (Fieldwork Cases)

Abstract

By examining the manufacturing of felt, which is the major component of the subsistence culture among the Kazakh of Mongolia, the author argues that the principal factor in preservation of ethnic uniqueness in a diaspora is not only and not so much the different cultural surroundings as the dominant type of economy (subsistence production, in this case) and social relationships. In the course of the labor-intensive and technologically complicated process that the felt manufacturing is, the most important social acts are performed, especially those aimed at the maintenance and strengthening of collective ties (mutual help, joint meal partaking), as well as the integration of the youth in the common productive activity. What takes place is a retranslation of the ethnic experience as a whole, which is directed at the support and reproduction of ethnicity of the Kazakh diaspora in Mongolia.