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

Mongolia'smining sector, along with its environmental and social costs, have been the subject ofprolonged and heated debate. This debate has often cast the country as either avictim of the 'resource curse' or guilty of 'resource nationalism'.

In The State, Popular Mobilisation and Gold Mining inMongolia, Dulam Bumochir aims to avoid the pitfalls of thisdebate by adopting an alternative theoretical approach. He focuses on theindigenous representations of nature, environment, economy, state and sovereigntythat have triggered nationalist and statist responses to the mining boom. Indoing so, he explores the ways in which these responses have shaped theapparently 'neo-liberal' policies of twenty-first century Mongolia, and theeconomy that has emerged from them, in the face of competing mining companies,protest movements, international donor organizations, economic downturn, andlocal and central government policies. 

Applying rich ethnography to anuanced and complex picture, Bumochir's analysis is essential reading for studentsand researchers studying the environment and mining, especially in Central andNorth East Asia and post-Soviet regions, and also for readers interested in therelationship between neoliberalism, nationalism, environmentalism and state.