Co-culturation and Space

The Mongolian ger has been in use for more than eight hundred years. It is older than Chinngis Khaan himself. Strong traditions around the structure and layout of a ger have built up over time. For instance, a ger door always opens to the south. Explanations for this include the need for a ger to face the sun to the south, to avoid the strong winds from the north, and even to be able to see Chinese armies coming from the south. Whatever the reason for it, this tradition exists today even if that means it will face a fence instead of the middle of a compound.

A ger's interior from the door (south). 

The traditions inside the ger are similarly strong. While visiting another’s ger, whether for a holiday or a simple friendly meal, where you sit depends upon your age, your social standing, and gender. The eldest hosts always sit at the northern point of the ger, across from the door, with the youngest closest to the door. Men sit on the west side, women sit on the east. So particular are these traditions, that they are often not followed when entering a square apartment. As with many traditions, these rules are sometimes adjusted or modified depending on the level of reverence given to a guest. For instance, when my program visited, a 30 something female, visited my sight, my host family had her sit on in the position of the most revered guest. Her power over determining whether the village would get another volunteer after I left raised her level of importance.

In analyzing co-culturation of immigrants in a new culture, Curtin noted how “everyone is continually engaged in social and political processes of identification and that these processes are highly situated and discursively based” (pg. 283). The place where I was encouraged to sit constantly shifted depending on the ger I visited and my relation to the hosts, and my level of integration with the community. When I first arrived, I was the welcome guest as my program manager was treated. As I grew to become one of the teachers in the school, I gradually moved closer to the door as I was the second youngest among. My host mother, the director of the village school, held quite a bit of power, and thus my family did. So, at times I was brought up the line to sit near my parents. At times I could be identified as a young male, as an interesting guest from America, as a member of my host family, or as a respected teacher for my students. Each of these identities placed me in different parts of the ger; something incredibly simple became a measure of how integrated I and others felt I was.