• Analyses cultural change not only in Mongolia but also in the wider Mongol lands in China and Russia.

• Brings focus and a wealth of new material not previously published to a previously sparse and fragmented field of study.

• Combines the work of several internationally recognized scholars with that of a group of young but innovative new scholars.

This volume examines the process of cultural change in Mongol societies since the early 20th century by considering:

• the interaction of the basic structural features of pastoral nomadism in Mongolia with larger economies, both communist and capitalist;

• the effect of deliberate cultural reconstruction (ranging from changes to the education system to purges and outright cultural destruction) on the conduct of the pastoral economy; and

• the efforts of Mongols themselves to develop aspects of their own cultural identity under conditions of territorial partition, episodes of intense political repression, and (in the Russian and Chinese regions) very substantial immigration by non-Mongol groups.

In particular, this volume examines those modernization processes entailed in urbanization, secularization, industrialization, democratization and national identity formation. A central question is to what extent these take a different shape in a pastoral society as compared to an ‘ordinary’ sedentary agricultural society.

Contents
Introduction (Li Narangoa and Ole Bruun)
The Significance of Towns and Markets in Mongolian History (Alicia Campi)
Municipalization and Ethnopolitics in Inner Mongolia (Uradyn Bulag)
Migration and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia (Ann Fenger Benwell)
Education and Mobility in Inner Mongolia (Li Narangoa)
The Rural and the Urban in Pastoral Mongolia (David Sneath)
Where is the Centre? Nomadic and Sedentary Topographies in the Shishged Darxad Political Economy (Morten Pedersen)
Nomadic Herders and the City Attraction (Ole Bruun)
Namkhainyambuu and the Herding Economy of Mongolia (Mary and Morris Rossabi)
Shamanism in Transition: From the Shadow to the Light (Laetitia Merli)
A Preliminary Survey of Buddhism in Present-day Mongolia (Agata Bareja-Starzynska and Hanna Havnevik)
Index