MIASU Research Seminar – 27 May – Elizabeth Turk

Medical Imperialism in the Mongolian People’s Republic:

towards an integration of post-colonial and post-socialist frames of analysis

Elizabeth Turk (MIASU, University of Cambridge)

This talk will be in-person only

What can be gained by putting post-socialist thought in conversation with post-colonial thought, as distinct but overlapping analytical frames illuminating the social impact of imperial projects and their enduring legacies? I explore this question with respect to the implementation of biomedical thought and practice in the Mongolian People’s Republic, which was institutionally introduced in 1921 but increasingly coerced beginning in 1929.Existing scholarship on the lay uptake of European medicine (yevropiin anagaakh ukhaan) tends to focus on the cultural campaigns (soyoliin dovtolgoon) from 1959 onwards, suggesting that ideological influences were ultimately responsible for its successful adoption. In this paper, I suggest that a consciousness-driven model of social transformation must factor in the material destruction of the 1930s, the loss of life and incarceration of lama physicians, no less than the ways in which an atmosphere marked by fear, terror and suspicion creates epistemic and ontological obscurity.