Collaboration for survival in the age of the market: diverse economic practices in postsocialist Mongolia

Abstract

Since 1990, Mongolia has experienced postsocialist transformation and the government-imposed ‘free market economy’. With the collapse of socialism and the former economic order, ordinary people in Mongolia have survived by engaging in diverse economic practices. The aim of this article is to give careful analysis of how people employed everyday economic practices around three key commodities–cashmere, scrap metal, and marmot pelts–to sustain their livelihoods in this postsocialist environment. Based on ethnographic field research, this article argues that social networks and kinship relations persisted through the socio-economic changes and radical reforms of the postsocialist period, creating the foundations for the diverse economic practices found in contemporary Mongolia. These practices served to distribute wealth equally and to sustain livelihoods after the government’s ‘failed’ privatization in the 1990s.