‘The past is becoming the future’: Genghis Khan the environmentalist and the discourses of modernity and legacy concerning proper waste disposal in post-socialist Mongolia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the transformation of the proper site of waste disposal across ecosocial landscapes throughout twentieth century Mongolian history to today. As Western ecological discourses became dominant in public space, they were not set up in a vacuum but rather mixed with vernacular ideas of waste from pre-socialist times as well as socialist cultural campaigns. If Mongolian zero-waste and waste recycling associations claim to belong to international movements and adopt a globalized upper-class eco-habitus, their discourses also reinterpret two imperial and idealized parts of Mongolian history: socialist modernity, when proper waste management was a sign of modernity and culture, and the Mongol Empire, when even Genghis Khan would not have left permanent traces along his path. This article is therefore about the present reinventing the past through ecologist discourses that allow Mongolians to define themselves both as modern and as true Mongols.