Dr Joseph Bristley
- Research Associate MIASU
Contact
About
I am a Research Associate at MIASU, working on the ESRC-funded project 'Resource frontiers: managing water on a trans-border Asian river'. Responsible for carrying out project research in Mongolia, where I have worked since 2013.
Aside from my current research on the relation between international law and water resource management, I am also interested in Mongolian pastoral economies. Based on previous Ph.D. research (UCL, 2017) I have published on social aspects of money, number and ideologies of abundance, new debt relations, and (jointly) mountain sacrifices.
Research
Research interests
- Relation between international law and water resource management
- Mongolian pastoral economies
- Social aspects of money
- Number and ideologies of abundance
- New debt relations
- Mountain sacrifices
Publications
- 2025. Forests and rivers: a history of environmental governance in the Selenge basin. In Inner Asia. Volume 27. Issue 1. pp 11-36. Written with Sayana Namsaraeva. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105018-02701002
- 2025. Silence and history: epistemic framings of the distant past in rural Mongolia. In History and Anthropology. pp.1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2025.2469520
- 2025. On ‘wise cunning’ and ‘clever methods’: framings of environmental protection in rural Mongolia. In Ethnos. pp.1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2025.2452516
- 2024. Risk and its Others: Toward an anthropology of ‘protection’ in rural Mongolia. In American Anthropologist. pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.28041
- 2021. Times of debt: heterochrony and bank loans in rural Mongolia. In Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.). Volume 27. Issue 3. pp. 638-652. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13554
- 2021. ‘Tears of rejoicing spirits’: Happiness and the Mediation of Human-Spirit Relations in a Mongolian Mountain Sacrifice. In Inner Asia. Volume 23. Issue 1. pp. 131-149. Written with Erdene-Ochir Tumen-Ochir. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105018-12340165
- 2020. Scale and Number: framing an ideology of pastoral plenty in rural Mongolia. In Social Analysis. Volume 64. Issue 1. 2020. pp 63-79. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2020.640104
- 2015. Transformation and Multiplicity: The Power of Zoos to Absorb Spirits in Mongolia. In Inner Asia. Volume 17. Issue 1. pp 31 – 51. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105018-12340032