“Urbanisation of the Steppe”. Sedentarization, Mobility, and Collective Business-Making Among the Torghuts in Post-transitional Mongolia

Tomasz  Rakowski

“Urbanisation of the Steppe”. Sedentarization, Mobility, and Collective Business-Making Among the Torghuts in Post-transitional Mongolia

Publication date: 2021

Ethnographies, 2021, Vol 49 Issue 1-2, pp. 1 - 20

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.21.002.14124

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“Urbanisation of the Steppe”. Sedentarization, Mobility, and Collective Business-Making Among the Torghuts in Post-transitional Mongolia

Abstract

Drawing from Danuta Markowska’s notion of “urbanisation of the steppe” (1969) I present in this article some processes of transformation of pastoral life that occurred in postsocialist and post-transitional Mongolia. I focus especially on how some new forms of sedentarization, mobility and self-organization appeared among the new generation of the Torghuts from Bulgan district (soum) in western Mongolia, sons and daughters of the herders. Nowadays, they are developing their new businesses in Bulgan, and also in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city, where they have established a Torghut business-hub called the Torguud Town. In this article I will reconstruct some essential processes in which they rearrange their space of living and their patterns of mobility, and show that these reactions, the new patterns of sedentarization and mobility, are related to spatial dimensions of pastoral self-organization. Moreover, these reactions are still rooted in mobility, constant swapping and a “technology of solidarity”, and thus embody very specific pastoral practices and ideas.

Keywords

cooperation, mobility, sedentarization, Mongolia, self-organization, business, the Torghuts

References

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Information

Information: Ethnographies, 2021, Vol 49 Issue 1-2, pp. 1 - 20

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.21.002.14124

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

“Urbanisation of the Steppe”. Sedentarization, Mobility, and Collective Business-Making Among the Torghuts in Post-transitional Mongolia

English:

“Urbanisation of the Steppe”. Sedentarization, Mobility, and Collective Business-Making Among the Torghuts in Post-transitional Mongolia

Authors

Tomasz Rakowski

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1668-2793

University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Published at: 2021

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Percentage share of authors:

Tomasz Rakowski (Author) - 100%

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