Rhythms of nutag

Abstract

Abstract While Henri Lefebvre used his rhythmanalysis for analysing urban spaces and the effects of those rhythms on the inhabitants of those spaces, I attempt to apply it to a more rural and non-European environment, the comparatively small and familiar space of a Mongolian nutag. Case studies based on oral and written Buryat and Barga Mongols’ accounts demonstrate that entering the spiritually thick atmosphere of the nutag (crossing its borders) requires a certain slowing down and tactical deceleration to adjust to local rhythms. To examine the hierarchy of the various contingent forces that influence people and their movement either in their own or in khari nutag [foreign land], I elaborate host–guest relations into a triangulated arrangement of relations between ezed masters, guests and the locals. To borrow an expression from physics to add to our analytical vocabulary of writing on slowness and deceleration, each nutag appears to be a sort of a ‘viscous medium’ with different rhythms and fluids creating more drag on objects (people) moving through it.