
Fear and Fortune
Spirit Worlds and Emerging Economies in the Mongolian Gold Rush
Mette M. High(Author)
Cornell University Press
Published on 9. May 2017
Book
Hardback
180 pages
978-1-5017-0754-4 (ISBN)
Description
Mongolia over the last decade has seen a substantial and ongoing gold rush. The widespread mining of gold looks at first glance to be a blessing for a desperately poor and largely pastoralist country where people's lives were disrupted by the end of the USSR and tens of millions of livestock were killed in devastating droughts in the early 2000s. Volatility and uncertainty as well as political and economic turmoil led many people to join the hopeful search for gold. This activity, born out of uncertain times, poses an intense moral problem; in the "land of dust," disturbing the ground and extracting the precious metal is widely believed to have calamitous consequences. With gold retaining strong ties to the landscape and its many spirit beings, the fortune of the precious metal is inseparable from the fears that surround mining. Tracing the continuities and discontinuities between human and nonhuman worlds, Mette M. High follows the paths of gold as it is excavated and converted into "polluted money," entering local shops and Buddhist monasteries, joining the illegal gold trade, and returning as "renewed" money for the "big bosses" of the gold mines.
High has done several years of fieldwork in Mongolia, spending time with the "ninjas," as the miners are known locally, as well as the people who disapprove of their illegal activities and warn of the retribution that the land and its inhabitants may suffer as a result. This book is about radical change, or as many Mongolians put it, when life becomes "strange" and "chaotic." High has gained a deep understanding of the processes by which Mongolians square a morally questionable activity with the lure of profit. How do they involve themselves with tainted sources of money, and can it ever be cleansed and made usable? Addressing how our lives and those of others are intimately intertwined, Fear and Fortune offers an expansive and capacious approach to understanding the high stakes involved in human economic life.
High has done several years of fieldwork in Mongolia, spending time with the "ninjas," as the miners are known locally, as well as the people who disapprove of their illegal activities and warn of the retribution that the land and its inhabitants may suffer as a result. This book is about radical change, or as many Mongolians put it, when life becomes "strange" and "chaotic." High has gained a deep understanding of the processes by which Mongolians square a morally questionable activity with the lure of profit. How do they involve themselves with tainted sources of money, and can it ever be cleansed and made usable? Addressing how our lives and those of others are intimately intertwined, Fear and Fortune offers an expansive and capacious approach to understanding the high stakes involved in human economic life.
Reviews / Votes
"Fear and Fortune is an important and timely ethnographic account of the Mongolian gold rush. Not only does it make a useful contribution to the burning issue of the environmental, social, and cultural consequences of mining economies, but it does so in an accessible and engaging style, rendering people's daily lives with an intimate yet tactful touch." -- Gregory Delaplace, coeditor of <I>Frontier Encounters</I> "Fear and Fortune is a well-crafted, highly accessible, and very attractive read on the Mongolian gold rush and the spirit forces that underpin it. Mette M. High fully succeeds in drawing in and keeping the reader's attention while presenting her findings at a brisk pace. She offers up some highly original discussions of what 'money' constitutes in a part of the world where the same value is neither consistently nor automatically attributed to the national currency. Mongolians conceptualize, handle, and transact money in ways that fall outside of the usual expectations surrounding it. High enables us to have a uniquely up close and personal view onto gold mining and its international circuitry, based on a sensitive study of Mongolian sociality, miners, religious knowledge and practice, and ways of envisioning and experiencing what counts as `value' in the Mongolian gold rush today." -- Katherine Swancutt, author of <I>Fortune and the Cursed</I>More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Product notice
Paper over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-0754-4 (9781501707544)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2017
Cornell University Press
€22.49
Available for download
Person
Mette M. High is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Saint Andrews.
Content
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgmentsxi
Note on Transliteration and Translationxv
Introduction: Land of Fortune1
1 Burden of Patriarchy25
2 Power of Gold43
3 Angered Spirits59
4 PollutedMoney77
5 Wealth and Devotion93
6 Trading Gold111
Notes131
Glossary139
References141
Index157
Acknowledgmentsxi
Note on Transliteration and Translationxv
Introduction: Land of Fortune1
1 Burden of Patriarchy25
2 Power of Gold43
3 Angered Spirits59
4 PollutedMoney77
5 Wealth and Devotion93
6 Trading Gold111
Notes131
Glossary139
References141
Index157