The crafting of consent: stealing the bride and Mongolia's changing sexual civility Social Anthropology Departmental Seminar with Gregory Delaplace, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

Gregory Delaplace's paper tells the story of a tragic matrimonial event, witnessed in Mongolia's northwesternmost province of Uvs in 2024.

A man suddenly leaves his wife and disappears after making loans in the name of all members of her close kin. The outrage and despair felt by the woman and her kinspeople not only says something of how marriage may go bad, here and elsewhere, it also speaks of the changing ways consent is supposed to be obtained in Mongolia today.

The affair indeed brings about stories about how the infamous husband did not “request” (guih) his future wife to her parents, but “stole” (hulgailah) her one morning from the whereabouts of her home and took her back to his parents' compound.

While this institution had been presented to Gregory as traditional performance, intended to impose on the bride's parents the mutual matrimonial project of a young couple, it was beginning to appear at that moment in a different light. What if “stealing the wife” (ehner hulgailah) had always been a way to bend the future bride's consent into accepting a wedding she was unsure about?

Presenting the origin stories of a few married couples from an older generation, yet related to the unfortunate wife, Gregory will share some thoughts about the crafting of consent through instituted performance, and ponder on a possible shift in Mongolia today of what Irène Théry has recently called “sexual civility”.