North East Asian Studies – serie

This book provides an account of Mongolian information society from the perspective of critical media studies. The converged media sphere in modern Mongolia mirrors and shapes political communication, economic outlook, institutional norms, and Mongolian identity. When placing Mongolia on the global information society map, the arguments in the book juxtapose information society tenets and structural constraints like the small market, communist past, and mining-dependent economy. Today, people in Mongolia take advantage of the mobility, speed, and spatiality of the internet, as the Mongolians of old once saddled their horses and galloped across the grassy steps of Eurasia.

This book explores the historical and contemporary processes that have made and remade Mongolia as it is today: the construction of ethnic and national cultures, the transformations of political economy and a ‘nomadic’ pastoralism, and the revitalization of a religious and cosmological heritage that has led to new forms of post-socialist politics. Widely published as an expert in the field, David Sneath offers a fresh perspective into a region often seen as mysterious to the West.

Nomadic Pastoralism among the Mongol Herders: Multispecies and Spatial Ethnography in Mongolia and Transbaikalia is based on anthropological research carried out by the author between 2008 and 2016 and addresses the spatial features of nomadic pastoralism among the Mongol herders of Mongolia and Southern Siberia from a cross-comparative perspective. In addition to classical methods of survey, Charlotte Marchina innovatively used GPS recordings to analyze the ways in which pastoralists envision and concretely occupy the landscape, which they share with their animals and invisible entities. The data, represented in abundant and original cartography, provides a better understanding of the mutual adaptations of both herders and animals in the common use of unfenced pastures, not only between different herders but between different species. The author also highlights the herders' adaptive strategies at a time of rapid sociopolitical and environmental changes in this area of the world.

Politics and Literature in Mongolia (1921-1948) investigates the relationship between literature and politics during Mongolia's early revolutionary period. Between the 1921 socialist revolution and the first Writers' Congress held in April 1948, the literary community constituted a key resource in the formation and implementation of policy. At the same time, debates within the party, discontent among the population, and questions of religion and tradition led to personal and ideological conflict among the intelligentsia and, in many cases, to trials and executions. Using primary texts, many of them translated into English for the first time, Simon Wickhamsmith shows the role played by the literary arts — poetry, fiction and drama — in the complex development of the 'new society', helping to bring Mongolia's nomadic herding population into the utopia of equality, industrial progress and social well-being promised by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party.

Travel Writing in Mongolia and Northern China, 1860-2020 invites readers to explore Mongolia as an important cultural space for Western travelers and their audiences over three historical eras. Travelers have framed their experiences and observations through imaginative geographies and Orientalizing discourses, fixing Mongolia as a peripheral, timeless, primitive, and parochial place. Readers can examine the travelers’ literary and rhetorical strategies as they make themselves more credible and authoritative and as they identify themselves with Mongolians and Mongolian culture or, conversely, distance themselves. In this book, readers can also approach travel writing from the perspective of women travelers, Mongolian socialist intellectuals, twenty-first-century travelers, and a Han Chinese writer, Jiang Rong, who promotes cultural harmony yet anticipates the disappearance of Mongolian culture in China.

Politics and Literature in Mongolia (1921-1948) investigates the relationship between literature and politics during Mongolia's early revolutionary period.

This book explores the historical and contemporary processes that have made and remade Mongolia as it is today.

Travel Writing in Mongolia and Northern China, 1860-2020 invites readers to explore Mongolia as an important cultural space for Western travelers and their audiences over three historical eras.