Recognizing uniqueness: on (not) comparing the World Nomad Games

Pelkmans, Mathijs ORCID: 0000-0001-5188-3470 (2022) Recognizing uniqueness: on (not) comparing the World Nomad Games. In: Pelkmans, Mathijs and Walker, Harry, (eds.) How People Compare. Curzon, 47 - 67. ISBN 9781032229973

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Abstract

This chapter explores how one’s sense of uniqueness can be squared with the need to have this uniqueness recognized by others. The conundrum lay at the heart of the World Nomad Games, a six-day event held biannually in Kyrgyzstan between 2014 and 2018, and which featured a range of nomadic sports embedded in an extensive cultural program. Organized with the aim of putting Kyrgyzstan on the world map, by 2018, it attracted large numbers of athletes, spectators, and commentators from dozens of countries, many of whom agreed that the World Nomad Games were indeed unique. Notwithstanding these successes, questions remained. How was the integrity of local culture affected by the need to attract global attention? And what exactly was it that observers saw, and commentators reported, when they called the Nomad Games ‘unique’? While the idea of uniqueness implies that an object or phenomenon is incomparable, claims to uniqueness can only be made through active (even if often implicit) comparison. Instead of treating this as some sort of epistemic contradiction, this chapter argues that claims to uniqueness challenge the terms of comparison, and thereby potentially reconfigure the playing field. The World Nomad Games provides a good example of such attempts at reconfiguration, and the tensions that emerge in the process.

Item Type:	Book Section
Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003283669
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author
Divisions:	Anthropology
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
Date Deposited:	14 Mar 2024 11:15
Last Modified:	19 Mar 2024 12:27
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122373

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