Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia

Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia
Author: Rebecca M. Empson
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787351467

Almost 10 years ago the mineral-rich country of Mongolia experienced very rapid economic growth, fuelled by China’s need for coal and copper. New subjects, buildings, and businesses flourished, and future dreams were imagined and hoped for. This period of growth is, however, now over. Mongolia is instead facing high levels of public and private debt, conflicts over land and sovereignty, and a changed political climate that threatens its fragile democratic institutions. Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia details this complex story through the intimate lives of five women. Building on long-term friendships, which span over 20 years, Rebecca documents their personal journeys in an ever-shifting landscape. She reveals how these women use experiences of living a ‘life in the gap’ to survive the hard reality between desired outcomes and their actual daily lives. In doing so, she offers a completely different picture from that presented by economists and statisticians of what it is like to live in this fluctuating extractive economy.

Modern Mongolia

Modern Mongolia
Author: Morris Rossabi
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2005-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520938625

Land-locked between its giant neighbors, Russia and China, Mongolia was the first Asian country to adopt communism and the first to abandon it. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Mongolia turned to international financial agencies—including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank—for help in compensating for the economic changes caused by disruptions in the communist world. Modern Mongolia is the best-informed and most thorough account to date of the political economy of Mongolia during the past decade. In it, Morris Rossabi explores the effects of the withdrawal of Soviet assistance, the role of international financial agencies in supporting a pure market economy, and the ways that new policies have led to greater political freedom but also to unemployment, poverty, increasingly inequitable distribution of income, and deterioration in the education, health, and well-being of Mongolian society. Rossabi demonstrates that the agencies providing grants and loans insisted on Mongolia's adherence to a set of policies that did not generally take into account the country's unique heritage and society. Though the sale of state assets, minimalist government, liberalization of trade and prices, a balanced budget, and austerity were supposed to yield marked economic growth, Mongolia—the world's fifth-largest per capita recipient of foreign aid—did not recover as expected. As he details this painful transition from a collective to a capitalist economy, Rossabi also analyzes the cultural effects of the sudden opening of Mongolia to democracy. He looks at the broader implications of Mongolia's international situation and considers its future, particularly in relation to China.

A Thousand Steps to Parliament

A Thousand Steps to Parliament
Author: Manduhai Buyandelger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226818748

A Thousand Steps to Parliament traces how the complicated, contradictory paths to political representation that women in Mongolia must walk mirror those the world over. Mongolia has often been deemed an "island of democracy," commended for its rapid adoption of free democratic elections in the wake of totalitarian socialism. The democratizing era, however, brought alongside it a phenomenon that Manduhai Buyandelger terms "electionization"--a restructuring of elections from time-grounded events into a continuous, neoliberal force that governs everyday life beyond the electoral period. In A Thousand Steps to Parliament, she shows how campaigns in Mongolia have come to substitute for the functions of governing, from social welfare to the private sector. Such long-term, high-investment campaigns depend on an accumulation of wealth and power beyond the reach of most women candidates. Given their limited financial means and outsider status, successful women candidates instead use strategies of self-polishing to cultivate charisma and a reputation for being oyunlag, or intellectful. This carefully and intentionally crafted identity can be called the "electable self" treating their bodies and minds as pliable and renewable, women candidates draw from the same practices of neoliberalism that have unsustainably commercialized elections. A Thousand Steps to Parliament traces how the complicated, contradictory paths to representation that women in Mongolia must walk mirror those the world over, revealing an urgent need to grapple with the encroaching effects of neoliberalism in democracies globally.

Culture and Customs of Mongolia

Culture and Customs of Mongolia
Author: Timothy May
Publisher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2009
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

The Gobi Desert, cold mountainous regions, and harsh climate of Mongolia leave it with one of the lowest population densities in the world. Nonetheless, Mongolians are proud of their long heritage, and carry even today their customs of the past. In this all-inclusive study of contemporary Mongolian life, readers will learn about nomadic lifestyles still practiced today. Other topics covered include Buddhism and other religions, literature, arts, cuisine, dress, family life, festivals and leisure activities, social customs, and lifestyle. May also includes an overview of Chinggis Khan, the father of the Mongol Empire, and his legacy in Mongolian culture today. Ideal for high school and undergraduate students, this volume is an essential addition to library shelves.

Into Wild Mongolia

Into Wild Mongolia
Author: George B. Schaller
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0300252722

Explore the wonders of wild Mongolia through the eyes of a distinguished field biologist Mongolia became a satellite of the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s, and for nearly seven decades effectively closed its doors to the outside world. Biologist George Schaller initially visited the country in 1989, and was one of the first Western scientists allowed to study and assess the conservation status of Mongolia’s many unique, native wildlife species. Schaller made a number of trips from 1989 to 2018 in collaboration with Mongolian and American scientists, witnessing Mongolia’s recovery and transition to a market economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This informative and fascinating new book provides a firsthand account of Schaller’s time in this little-known and remote country, where he studied and helped develop conservation initiatives for the snow leopard, Gobi bear, wild camel, and Mongolian gazelle, among other species. Featuring magnificent photographs from his travels, the book offers a critical, at times inspiring contribution for those who treasure wildlife, as well as a fresh perspective on the natural beauty of the region, which encompasses steppes, mountains, and the Gobi Desert.

Modern Mongolia

Modern Mongolia
Author: Paula L. W. Sabloff
Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780924171901

"Dr. D. Bumaa, 20th-century historian at the National Museum of Mongolian History, then presents the exciting history of Mongolia's century-long struggle to establish independence, first from Manchu Chinese feudal overlords and then from Soviety Communists.".

The Physical Geography of Mongolia

The Physical Geography of Mongolia
Author: Batchuluun Yembuu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030614344

This book gives the most detailed and comprehensive physico-geographical overview of the very unique country of Mongolia. The country offers diverse geographical features and natural landscapes combined with a long history. This book offers integrated and systematical research on the geophysical characteristics of Mongolia with an academic orientation. It provides the readers with general knowledge of the physical geography of Mongolia as well as new results of the latest research. The volume consists of 11 chapters, each written by field experts, with contributions from scientific researchers from Mongolia.The topics covered: geological and geomorphological characteristics and processes, landscapes and landforms, climate and climate change, hydrology, glaciers and permafrost, soils, environmental changes, biodiversity and many other aspects of physical geography in Mongolia.The book appeals to researchers and students of geography and related fields and can serve as a guide for field trips to Mongolia or basic literature for research projects.

Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia

Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia
Author: RebekaRebekah Plueckhahn
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2020-03-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787351521

What can the generative processes of dynamic ownership reveal about how the urban is experienced, understood and made in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia? Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia provides an ethnography of actions, strategies and techniques that form part of how residents precede and underwrite the owning of real estate property – including apartments and land – in a rapidly changing city. In doing so, it charts the types of visions of the future and perceptions of the urban form that are emerging within Ulaanbaatar following a period of investment, urban growth and subsequent economic fluctuation in Mongolia’s extractive economy since the late 2000s. Following the way that people discuss the ethics of urban change, emerging urban political subjectivities and the seeking of ‘quality’, Plueckhahn explores how conceptualisations of growth, multiplication, and the portioning of wholes influence residents’ interactions with Ulaanbaatar’s urban landscape. Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia combines a study of changing postsocialist forms of ownership with a study of the lived experience of recent investment-fuelled urban growth within the Asia region. Examining ownership in Mongolia’s capital reveals how residents attempt to understand and make visible the hidden intricacies of this changing landscape.

Twentieth Century Mongolia

Twentieth Century Mongolia
Author: (Bat-Erdene Batbayar) Baabar
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2021-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004214054

This is the first history of Mongolia available in English which benefits from access to historic data that only became available following the collapse of the socialist regime in 1990. Accordingly, it highlights the role of international politics, especially the former Soviet Union, Russia, China and Japan, in the shaping of modern Mongolia’s history. The volume actually comprises three ‘books’. Book One, entitled 'The Steppe Warriors', offers a history of Mongolia up to the 1911 revolution; Book Two, entitled ‘Incarnations and Revolutionaries’ addresses political developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1920s); Book Three, entitled ‘A Puppet Republic’ provides an in-depth analysis of the 1920s and 30s, concluding with the 1939 Haslhyn Gol Incident, The Second World War, the Post-war Map of Asia and the Fate of Mongolia’s Independence.