The New Mongolian State Herder: Examining Invocations and Improvisations of the State in Rural Mongolia

Abstract

This article aims to advance understandings of contemporary state-making in rural Mongolia, contingent on historical processes rather than a taken-for-granted natural category. Writing on postsocialist Mongolia often emphasizes the “retreat of the state” in rural areas; this article offers a counterpoint to this discourse by illustrating the ways in which herder livelihoods and the idealization of herder labor are actively drawn into contemporary state-making practices. Based on ethnographic research in Bayanhongor province, this article examines the interactions between an active local government administration system and pastoralist households at the subdistrict level in rural Mongolia. The analysis focuses on the implementation of two government initiatives tailored for herder households: a State Herder diploma, medal, and stamp, as well as a government–herder communication notebook. Governmentality studies, performativity theory, and the concept of improvisation provide a conceptual framework to argue that the neoliberal retreat of the state in rural Mongolia does not adequately capture the types of state-making in the 2010s. Rather, it proposes that scholars should shift attention to how the rural governance works on the ground and focus on the ways in which the state is invoked and made visible in everyday practice with attention to historical legacies. Key Words: governmentality, improvisation, Mongolia, pastoralism, the state.