Ce travail s’intéresse au parcours d’une femme chinoise exceptionnelle, Yuding, née en 1928 en Chine. Il interroge la manière dont elle a pu assimiler des modèles de vie, de parenté, et d’alliance, totalement paradoxaux, en traversant des époques incroyablement contrastées – début de la République, guerre avec le Japon, guerre civile, période révolutionnaire, société socialiste, et aujourd’hui le temps de la mondialisation. Yuding, âgée aujourd’hui de 87 ans, a gardé sa foi dans l’aventure de la Chine maoïste, malgré au fond d’elle les blessures de cette période violente. Née dans une grande famille rompue à l’orthopraxie confucéenne (ritualité, morale, culte des ancêtres), elle subit ensuite l’influence d’un autre « formatage » : celui du maoïsme et de sa doctrine révolutionnaire. Très vite l’idéologie traditionnelle de « piété filiale » transmise par ses parents fait place à une autre forme de dévouement total au Parti communiste. Militante passionnée dès la Libération, elle mène une vie active au sein de la Fédération des Femmes. Interprète en langue française, elle est amenée à voyager tant en Europe qu’en Afrique, à une époque où bien peu de gens sortaient du territoire chinois. Pourtant, en tant qu’intellectuelle, elle est envoyée en 1968, dans un camp de travail « l’École du Sept mai » ce qui n’entame en rien son adhésion inconditionnelle à l’idéologie du Parti. Bientôt il n’y aura plus de personnes de sa génération, pionnières dans la construction de la République populaire de Chine, pour témoigner de cette époque. Sa biographie témoigne de ce vécu exceptionnel. / This work deals with the life of an exceptional Chinese woman, Yuding, who was born in 1928 in China. It questions the way she has taken up totally paradoxical ways of life, kinship, and union, while living through incredibly uneven times - the beginning of the Republican era, the Second Sino-Japanese war, the civil war, the revolutionary era, the socialist society, and the current globalization. Yuding, presently 87, has kept faith in the venture proposed by the Maoist China, despite underlying wounds left by this violent period. Born in a leading family broken in to Confucian orthopraxy (rituality, morality, worship of the ancestors), Yuding then undergoes the influence of another “formatting” this of Maoism and its revolutionary doctrine. Very quickly, the traditional ideology of “filial devotion” passed on by her parents makes way for complete devotion to the Communist Party. Passionate activist from the Liberation, she leads an active life within the Women's Federation. French interpreter, she is brought round to traveling as much in Europe as in Africa, at a period during which very few persons were going out China. Yet, being an intellectual, she is sent to a labour camp “School of the Seventh of May” in 1968, but she doesn't lose her unquestioning adherence to the Party ideology. There soon won't be anybody from her generation, who was pioneer in the building of the People's Republic of China, to give accounts of this era. Her biography is a testimony of this exceptional experience.

This dissertation explores entanglements of body, national identity and nature in contemporary Mongolia. The project is situated within the rising popularity of natural remedies and alternative medicine during a time described as disorganized (zambaraagui) and disorderly. Data was collected from 33 months of fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar and elsewhere, focused on non-biomedical practices and therapeutic landscapes, especially medicinal springs (arshaan) and their sanatoria. This work contributes to studies of post-socialist Mongolia in a few ways. The methodological decision to engage in interview and participant observation of fortunetellers (üzmerch), practitioners of Buddhist and traditional medicine (otoch, ardiin emch), astrologists (zurhaich), energy healers (bio energich), shamans (böö, zairan, udgan), enlightened lamas (huvilgaan) and massage therapists (bariach) was driven by the fluid approach with which patients approach fulfilling the needs of their health and wellbeing. Such fluidity was also echoed in healing practice; as opposed to bounded by strict conceptual distinctions, healers re-purposed personally and culturally-familiar techniques, ranging from biomedical to those of Buddhist medicine (sowa rigpa) to occult practices. Many of the same techniques were practiced by a range of practitioners. The term orthopraxy, commonality of practice across conceptual difference, is used to address this phenomena. Such pairing together of different kinds of therapies – biomedical or otherwise – calls into question a “traditional” vs. modern or neo-spiritual framework within which such practices are often cast. I employ Robbin’s anthropology of discontinuity (2003), suggesting that Soviet influences represented “hard” cultural forms that provided a partial rupture in cultural knowledge between pre-revolutionary society and 1990. Nature (baigal) and natural surroundings (baigal orchin) were concepts often raised when discussing health and wellbeing. “Spiritual” earth and mountain masters (gazariin/uuliin ezed) of estranged homelands (nutag) that cause illness in families relocated to Ulaanbaatar; the water, flora, and mutton from one’s homeland as especially medicinally-suited to the body; shamans empowered to heal by appropriating into their practices the worship of nationally-significant mountains: territorialized national identity represented a prominent trend in healing practices. The revering of a nation through natural landmarks I call national nature, and suggest it be seen both with respect to romantic and utilitarian conceptions of a therapeutic nature that underpinned Soviet medicine, and Soviet indigenization campaigns and the ethnonationalism that was encouraged to flourish in borderland republics. Affective rooting to natural landmarks to maintain or restore wellbeing was also a way to enact Mongol-ness, rendering healing the body at once a practice of national subject-making.

Levd religion är ett växande forskningsområde inom religionsforskningen. Det svenska skolsystemet ska bygga på forskning och därför bör det enbart vara en tidsfråga innan lärare kommer bli ombedda att inkludera och undervisa elever i levd religion. Syftet med studien är, genom att utföra en bildanalys, att undersöka användandet av bilder i moderna religionsläroböcker för högstadiet, samt utifrån resultatet diskutera ifall man via lärobokens bilder som befintligt redskap kan inkludera levd religion i undervisningen samt visa på skillnader i ortodoxi och ortopraxi. Bildanalysen tog sin bas i systemteori och didaktisk potential för att undersöka två olika traditioner, en baserad ur ortodoxi och en ur ortopraxi. Resultatet visade att bildanvändningen i de undersökta läroböckerna ger exempel på religiositet baserad ur både ortodoxi och ortopraxi och att dimensioner av levd religion kunde ses i tre fjärdedelar av de analyserade bilderna. Studien hjälper aktiva och blivande lärare med att förklara levd religion och ger exempel på hur man kan introducera det i undervisningen genom bilder och därigenom höja elevernas förståelse och kunskap kring religion och religiositet. / Lived religion is a growing field of research within the study of religion. The Swedish educational system is based on scientific research and therefore it should only be a matter of time before Swedish teachers are going to be asked to include and teach pupils about lived religion. The aim of the study is, by the means of conducting an image analysis, to investigate the usage of images in modern religion textbooks aimed at secondary school, and from this result discuss if it is possible by using the images of the textbook as an existing tool to include lived religion in the education of today, as well as illustrate differences between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. The image analysis was based on systems theory and didactic potential to analyse two different traditions, one based in orthodoxy and one in orthopraxy. The result showed that the use of images in the investigated textbooks gave examples of both orthodox and orthopractic religiosity and that dimensions of lived religion could be seen in three fourths of the images analysed. The study helps practicing and studying teachers by explaining lived religion and giving examples on to how introduce it in their teaching by using images and thereby increase the pupils’ religious understanding of religion and religiosity.