Orhon Myadar's book is one of the few scholarly English-language works on Mongolia and its nomadic image written by a native scholar. Born in Bulgan Province in northern Mongolia, Myadar went to university in Ulaanbaatar and today works as a political geographer at the University of Arizona in the United States. This is her first monograph. Consisting of seven chapters, including the introduction and conclusion, Mobility and Displacement explores the popular image of Mongolia as a land of nomads.
Having grown up in rural Mongolia during the socialist period, Myadar has firsthand knowledge and experience of this system. However, the book, including the chapters on socialism and postsocialism, is not based on ethnography. The primary sources used are books and articles by Western and Mongolian scholars, including Myadar's own articles, as well as reports by international organizations (World Bank, Asian Development Bank) and Western media outlets (BBC, Associated Press). The book's central argument is that, despite its image, Mongolia is not a nomadic society, and the very label “nomadic” reduces the country to a single narrative at the expense of the majority of the population who have long settled in cities and urban areas.
In the Western popular imagination, Mongolia is an exotic country, “a ticket to the past” (pp. 16–17), where local ways of life, based on herding practices, have eluded change for millennia. According to Myadar, this image of the exotic Other has been constructed and perpetuated not only by foreigners—writers, scholars, filmmakers, and travelers—but also by Mongolians themselves. Thus, the image of Mongolia as a largely nomadic nation is a master narrative that has been internally produced and promoted by the Mongolian state using various techniques, including symbols (the nomadic ger dwelling, horses), stories, historiography, and state performances staged for foreign dignitaries and guests. This image was deployed by the state following the collapse of state socialism in an environment of social chaos as the nation sought a new identity. Buddhism, the cult of Chinggis Khan, the Mongolian language, and nomadism served as cultural markers of the national revival. At the grassroots level, this nomadic image is reproduced by Mongolian scholars and by the tourist industry, which has dotted the landscape with ethno-camps and organizes cultural displays for foreign tourists.
The assumption that Mongolia is a nomadic society, argues Myadar, is largely based on the idea of environmental determinism, which postulates that the country is nomadic because of its particular environmental constraints and climatic conditions, and that poor soil quality and extremes of temperature have been conducive to pastoral nomadism (pp. 9–13). To defend her arguments, Myadar examines three historical periods—the Qing colonial period (1650–1911), the Soviet era (1921–91), and the contemporary period (post-1991). She argues that “by the end of 200 years of Manchu [Qing] colonization, the Mongolian nomadic identity had already been deeply eroded” (p. 61), long before Mongolia embraced socialist modernization, industrialization, and collectivization (whereby herders became wage earners on collective farms) in the shadow of the Soviet Union.
The book relays a more nuanced version of Mongolia and its identity, which is refreshing and praiseworthy. However, in doing so, it is bound to raise a few eyebrows in Mongolia, not least because it contests the state's master narrative. By arguing that any culture, including Mongolian culture, is a “combination of overlapping, mutable, and separate stories” (p. 38), Myadar offers her reading of the country's story. The key to reading this version of the story hinges upon her approach to the “nomad” as a narrative “figure”: “I define the nomad figure as an individual who moves frequently and irregularly in a smooth space, and whose mobility is primarily dictated by environmental factors such as the need for water and pasture and/or climatic conditions. The nomad figure is a member of a people who have no fixed residence but who move frequently and irregularly unconstrained by boundaries or any fixed sense of place” (p. 21). According to this trope, no Mongolian today can be described as a “true nomad,” for even herders move within established territories constrained by administrative barriers; moreover, they move with clear ideas of their summer and winter settlements. As Myadar notes, this constraint on herders’ movements existed as early as the Qing period, if not before.
The definition that Myadar proffers also explains why she makes a distinction between a “herder” (Mo. malchin) and a “nomad” (Mo. nuudelchin, derived from nuudel, “to move from one place to another”), according to which “a herder is a manager, breeder, or tender of livestock and can be found in many countries, including New Zealand . . . Like many New Zealanders, some Mongolians are herders, but they are not nomads” (p. 22). As far as this definition goes, Myadar's arguments and examples are consistent.
It is a well-documented fact, as discussed in chapter 5, that during the Qing period, the country was administratively divided into banners (Mo. hoshuu) that imposed stringent restrictions on population movement, which, the Qing administration believed, was key to preventing native tribes from consolidating power on the Mongolian steppe (p. 51). Thus, the Qing regulated the land, created administrative boundaries, and curtailed mobility so that herders were allocated pastures within each banner. To ensure that herders complied with the regulations and remained within their territories, the authorities used special patrols that were dispatched in all directions (p. 54). The socialist regime, however, did not abolish the banner system but established state-run farms and collectives tied to banners, an arrangement that was guided more by economic and administrative considerations than by anything else. As in the previous period, this socialist system undermined herders’ mobility by subordinating them to layers of complex administrative hierarchy, as discussed in chapter 6.
In socialist Mongolia, all definitions, including those of “nomad” and “herder,” were state-sanctioned, and individual scholars were not supposed to use their own definitions of terms. While Mongolia is no longer a socialist country, and native scholars are accorded freedom, this socialist-era legacy lingers in the minds of many. As this work is written by a Mongolian scholar, one of Mobility and Displacement's contributions to Mongolian studies is that it offers definitions that do not necessarily fit those held by state representatives. Far from being a trivial matter, this is important in the context of postsocialist Mongolian academia because it promotes intellectual freedom and diversity of opinion and widens the platform for scholarly debate. Another of the book's contributions is to invite the reader to look critically at contemporary Mongolian society by shedding light on its underpublicized dimension: the majority of the country's people are no longer engaged in traditional animal husbandry but are settled in urban areas.
However, the book could have been rendered more informative and inclusive had Myadar elaborated on the reasons for the Mongolian state narrative (why the state chose this particular narrative and what this narrative was constructed to do) and gone beyond this state narrative by giving voice to the herders. While it is true that herders, as Myadar points out, are commonly referred to by the term malchin (herder) and not nuudelchin (nomad), many livestock breeders describe their way of life and culture as based on nuudelchiny soyol irgenshil or aj ahui—“nomadic civilization” or “nomadic way of life.” The worldviews of Mongolian herders, however small a percentage of the population they make up, continue to be permeated with taboos, nature spirits, and ancient beliefs that affect how they tend their animals and live their lives. The question arises as to whether, to be counted as nomads, herders must be able to move unconstrained by geographical-administrative boundaries and be devoid of any fixed sense of place? If this rigid definition is the main criterion, there probably never was a true nomadic society in the recorded history of Eurasia. In this sense, a cultural approach would have made the book's arguments more nuanced and compelling.
Whether or not one agrees with Myadar's definition of “nomadism,” Mobility and Displacement stands on its own merit as a work that offers a fascinating read and food for thought for those interested in Mongolia in particular and nomadism in general. It is a welcome addition to the teaching resources available on Mongolia.
