The Anti-Social Contract

Injurious Talk and Dangerous Exchanges in Northern Mongolia
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78533-246-3
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 473 g

Set in a remote district of villagers and nomadic pastoralists in the northernmost part of Mongolia, this book introduces a local world where social relationships are cast in witchcraft-like idioms of mistrust and suspicion. While the apparent social breakdown that followed the collapse of state socialism in Mongolia often implied a chaotic lack of social cohesion, this ethnography reveals an everyday universe where uncertain relations are as much internally cultivated in indigenous Mongolian perceptions of social relatedness, as they are externally confronted in postsocialist surroundings of unemployment and diminished social security.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Højer, Lars

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Sozialethnologie: Familie, Gender, Soziale Gruppen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Familiensoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgements

Notes on Transliteration

Introduction: Creating Difference from Within

Chapter 1. Centralisation and Dispersal: A District in the Market Era

Chapter 2. Dangerous Communications: Injurious Talk and the Perils of Standing Out

Chapter 3. Safe Communications: Formality and Hierarchy

Chapter 4. Morality and Danger: Religious Practices and Buddhist Directions

Chapter 5. Concealed Agencies: Divination, Loss and Magical Objects

Conclusion

References

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Højer, Lars
Lars Højer is an associate professor at the Centre for Comparative Culture Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Mongolia and Inner Asia. His previous anthropological research has mainly focused on social, economic, religious, and political aspects of transition processes in urban and rural post-socialist Mongolia.