By Julian Dierkes
Maria-Katharina Lang of the Austrian Academy of Sciences recently presented in the lecture series of the Central Asia Seminar at Humboldt University. With the title of “Parallel Excavations: Digging into Enchanted Landscapes in Mongolia” she discussed the interaction of archaeological excavations, local spirituality and extractive activities.
She discussed spiritual and religious traditions that seem to forbid the breaking of the soil for any purpose. She discussed extractive activities (roads and other infrastructure, mining, etc.) as well as archaeological digs as activities that might be seen by “locals” as offensive to river and mountain spirits.
Throughout the discussion I was struck by a privileging of local rights and perspectives. As is often the case, local attitudes to activities are seen as particularly authentic, meaningful. In my eyes, this perspective is countered by a view of the nation as a community. Given democratic decision-making in Mongolia, established before the arrival of the (capitalist) mining boom, national decision-making to me has significant legitimacy even when I might disagree with them. The (renewed, since socialist times) mining industry has been embraced in many ways through democratic decisions. Yes, in some cases democracy is also the rule or even tyranny of the majority, but I struggle with the notion that somehow the “local” is a more legitimate community than the national. I especially struggle when such arguments are made in the name of some kind of spirituality, often tinged with a romanticization of the hard life of herders more in touch with nature, natural cycles.
The Local as Structural Similarity
When you’re interested in political and legal structure, the local primarily plays a role as an administrative unit of structural equivalence vis-a-vis the region, the state, or the nation. In a unitary state like Mongolia, that is also true. For example, one of the important attempts to balance local expectations of economic gain from the destruction and disturbance of mining activities is the community benefit agreement or local level agreement. CBAs are mandated for mining projects and involve the local community, the soum, in a negotiation with a mining company around benefits that should accrue locally. Those include procurement and employment most obviously, but also numerous types of activities that are thought of as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities by mining companies.
Since Dr. Lang referred to Oyu Tolgoi several times and to CSR activities in the region, it is these activities that fund the public infrastructure that can be seen in Umno Govi soum centers, basketball courts, town halls, etc. Yes, from an investor perspective, these contributions secure buy-in from communities, Social Licence to Operate. The “local” in these agreements or activities is a generic administrative or geographic designation of the area surrounding a mining project. Local residents, esp. herders, may have particular expectations or needs, but these are thought of as being representative of a structural relationship with investors but also with the national government.
In the context of mining there have been some initiatives that have watered down the unitary nature of the Mongolian state somewhat. The earliest of these would have been the Local Development Fund linked to Citizens Halls by Pres. Elbegdorj, but this extends to initiatives to allow for some local taxation more recently.
Local Spirituality
By (some) contrast, much of what I heard in Dr. Lang’s discussion was specific to a particular locality. Spiritual practices that are focused on water and mountain spirits that are specific to that very locality. Spirits may be keen to protect a local mountain not as a local mountain but as that local mountain. That local community sees the community in the next valley over not as a population or location that is in a structurally similar position vis-a-vis investors or the government, but as an entirely different locality. There does not appear to be much solidarity or recognition of common concerns.
Political Implications
One of the puzzles of democratic Mongolia is why some topics or interests that seem culturally very present are not represented prominently politically. My often repeated question of “why is there no herders’ party?” or “why is there no (anti-)mining party?”, but also “why is there no national environment movement?” speaks to this. This may also be a factor in the absence of progressive movements that we discussed in an episode of The Great State Mural in 2025.
When an attempt was made in the late 2000s with the support of the Asia Foundation to build a national environmental movement, this failed because where environmentalism had sprung up, largely around the protection of rivers, these were particular local concerns. Activists were concerned for their river, but not rivers.
In this context it thus seems to me that “local” means much more of a particularistic focus on a specific location than on a class of locations in a structural relationship with other social and political actors.
But… nutags!
One objection that was raised in the discussion was to point to nutag, or homeland associations as political actors. Yes, these are powerful informal political actors often focused on an aimag of origin or a region, sometimes identified with what some (Mongolians) refer to as ethnic groups. The long dominance of politicians with their roots in Uvs would be an example, but nutag also involve themselves in political decisions about regions or to demand more benefits for a particular region.
However, these nutags are most often thought of as representing regions not locations or local communities, they tend to cover a greater geographic area like an aimag, in my experience, at least when it comes to political actors. As such they represented larger particularistic concerns, demanding benefits for a specific region, rather than for regions more generally.
The point was also made that MPs often were too particularistic in their political initiatives, suggesting that local (or regional, I think) interests were standing in the way of national concerns. However, the introduction of party lists in the enlargement of parliament prior to the 2024 election would be a counter to that, as was the enlargement of electoral districts to superdistricts of a size that can hardly be thought of as a particularistic concern, save Bayan Ulgii where some of that particularism includes aspects of cultural autonomy for Kazakh Mongolians.
