Kinship vs the relatedness of vitality in the Buryat-Mongol culture

The academic discussion and analysis of kinship is usually confined to several established models, applied nearly universally to various human societies. Those ideas are further framed within discourse of technology and scientific progress, with a number of scholars arguing that kinship cannot serve at best as a concept of shared ‘natural’ background. For this reason, there is a pressing need to explore local ideas of ‘relatedness’ and to apply them as independent analytical categories in conceiving human societies. This paper outlines the ‘relatedness of vitality’ in the Buryat-Mongol culture, which reveals a few important implications for consideration of ideas on human being and social bonds. The works of professor Sławoj Szynkiewicz on kinship and Mongol society in general were one of the major inspirations for this analysis.