Whose Land is it Anyway?

Abstract

This paper looks at the roles and interests that motivate different kinds of ‘trusting partnerships’ in Mongolia. Such partnerships are not only in marketing slogans that herald new private investment agreements, they also underlie the relationship between the Mongolian government and other governments (in the form of ‘strategic partnerships’) and even between the Mongolian State and its people. The concept serves as a framework for partners to achieve mutual ambitions, but is ambiguous and its content evolves through negotiation and cumulative articulation. We offer certain observations about the form of relationship between the Mongolian State and its people, drawing from fieldwork in 2012 on how loans are used and perceived, and suggest that this relationship is a fruitful lens through which we can observe vernacular attitudes to the economy and the State, and to the different kinds of relationships the Mongolian State maintains with outsiders. We conclude with an observation on the inter-related and at times conflicting ‘trusting partnerships’ to which the Mongolia government is party.