Entries in Mongolia (2)

Tuesday

Oct202020

"Buying into capitalism" published in Central Asian Survey | 2020

Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 5:27AM

Buying into capitalism: Mongolians' changing perceptions of capitalism in the transition years by Paula L. W. Sabloff (12 Oct 2020).

Paula L. W. Sabloff (2020) Buying into capitalism: Mongolians’ changing perceptions of capitalism in the transition years, Central Asian Survey, 39:4, 556-577, DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2020.1823819.

It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to comment on a draft of Buying into capitalism: Mongolians' changing perceptions of capitalism in the transition years by External Professor Emeritus Paula L. W. Sabloff from the Santa Fe Institute (12 Oct 2020: Central Asian Survey).

"A political anthropologist, she uses complex-systems tools to analyze three different databases: Mongolians’ changing ideas on democracy and capitalism, the emergence of early states all over the world, and 19-20th century Cozumel."

The Santa Fe Institute "is the world's leading research center for complex systems science."

Whilst serving with the United Nations in Mongolia as its Director of Communications (1997-1999), I was interviewed as a source for the book Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (2005) by Morris Rossabi (University of California Press). It is a much-cited work on the period and is a good example of the flowering of scholarship and journalism on contemporary Mongolia post-1990.

“The transformation of Mongolia from a largely rural nomadic society of herdsmen to a community dominated by the increasingly ultra-globalized city of Ulan Bator, where almost a third of the population lives, is nothing short of astounding.” The New Mongolia: From Gold Rush to Climate Change, Association for Asian Studies, Volume 18:3 (Winter 2013): Central Asia

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2021

David South |

Mongolia's Musical Entrepreneurs Led Way Out of Crisis | 2018

Wednesday, February 14, 2018 at 10:44AM

Publisher: UNDP Mongolia Communications Office/Press Institute of Mongolia

Managing Editor: David South

Editorial Advisors: Ts. Enkhbat, Mustafa Eric, David South

Author and Researcher: Peter Marsh, Indiana University

Copy Editor: N. Oyuntungalag

Production Editor: B. Bayarma

Published: 1999

ISBN 99929-5-018-8

It was the late 1990s. Mongolia was still recovering from "one of the biggest peacetime economic collapses ever" (Mongolia's Economic Reforms: Background, Content and Prospects, Richard Pomfret, University of Adelaide, 1994). But it was the country's young musicians who were showing the way out of the crisis, setting an example for entrepreneurship in the new, free-market economy that emerged in the country after 1990.

As UNDP Communications Officer N. Oyuntungalag wrote in the Blue Sky Bulletin (BSkyB) newsletter, "A thriving pop and rock scene has emerged over the last four years. .. The energy of these musicians and singers has not gone unnoticed by the burgeoning advertising market. Pop bands are promoting many things, from face creams to beer. ... [but] there has been little serious writing on the business of popular music."

As the book's author, American ethnomusicologist Peter Marsh, said in an interview with UNDP's Blue Sky Bulletin newsletter, "we thought our book would provide important ideas about the direction and nature of the nation's development.

"My impression about Mongolian pop-rock is that it is a lively, diverse and at times innovative Mongolian art form that closely reflects many of the hopes, fears and aspirations of its primary audience, Mongolian youth."

The book still stands as an unusual and innovative contribution to thinking around the role played by youth in development and business and in crisis recovery.