The State, Popular Mobilisation and Gold Mining in Mongolia: Shaping 'Neo-Liberal' Policies

by Dulam Bumochir

Overview

Mongolia’s mining sector, along with its environmental and social costs, have been the subject of prolonged and heated debate. This debate has often cast the country as either a victim of the ‘resource curse’ or guilty of ‘resource nationalism’. In The State, Popular Mobilisation and Gold Mining in Mongolia, Dulam Bumochir aims to avoid the pitfalls of this debate by adopting an alternative theoretical approach. He focuses on the indigenous representations of nature, environment, economy, state, and sovereignty that have triggered nationalist and statist responses to the mining boom. In doing so, he explores the ways in which these responses have shaped the apparently ‘neo-liberal’ policies of twenty-first-century Mongolia, and the economy that has emerged from them, in the face of competing mining companies, protest movements, international donor organizations, economic downturn, and local and central government policies. Applying rich ethnography to a nuanced and complex picture, Bumochir’s analysis is essential reading for students and researchers studying the environment and mining, especially in Central and North-East Asia and post-Soviet regions, and also for readers interested in the relationship between neoliberalism, nationalism, environmentalism and state.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787351844
Publisher:	U C L Press, Limited
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Series:	Economic Exposures in Asia
Edition description:	New edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dulam Bumochir completed his PhD in Philology at Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 2000, and in Social Anthropology at Cambridge University in 2006. He has been conducting research on wide range of topics exploring folk and shamanic practices, rituals and chants, and tracing historical construction of Mongolian concept ‘shamanism’ and ‘shamanic religion’. Recently he has expanded his research interest to a new field in Qinghai, North West of China, focusing on ethnic politics, power of respect in the social production of identity, politics and state.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Reification of the National Economy 2. Beyond ‘Resource Nationalism’ 3. Navigating Nationalist and Statist Initiatives 4. Advocacy and Activism in Popular Mobilisations 5. The De-deification of the State 6. An Original Environmentalist Society Conclusion References Index

Editorial Reviews

"This work is an important contribution to different topics in the broader social movement literature, such as the recent debate on discursive opportunity structures and anti-mining movements."

Mobilization

"A fascinating insight."

Nomadic Peoples