Peaceful countryside: ecologies of longing and the temporality of flux in contemporary Mongolia

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

What does it mean to recall an idealised homeland? This chapter focuses on the evocation of a bucolic 'peaceful countryside' in contemporary Mongolia precisely at a time when economic and environmental transformations place a distance between such imagery and everyday experience. Drawing on fieldwork in Mungunmorit sum, Tuv province, the chapter takes as its principal ethnographic focus an encounter between researchers, schoolchildren and their landscape, and the writer G. Mend-Ooyo. Through this encounter, we explore how apparent nostalgia offers a potent way of speaking about a desired present in the face of major environmental challenges.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEcological nostalgias
Subtitle of host publicationmemory, affect and creativity in times of ecological upheavals
EditorsOlivia Angé, David Berliner
Place of PublicationOxford
PublisherBerghahn
Chapter7
Pages145-165
Number of pages21
ISBN (Electronic)9781789208948
ISBN (Print)9781789208931, 9781800739086
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2020

Publication series

NameStudies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology
Volume26

Keywords

  • Children
  • Herding
  • Identity
  • Literature
  • Landscape
  • Mongolia
  • Nostalgia

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