The Changing World of Mongolia's Nomads
by Cynthia M. Beall, Melvyn C. Goldstein

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Book Reviews of The Changing World of Mongolia's Nomads

Book Review: Wonderful Insight into Mongolian Culture
Summary: 5 Stars

Goldstein and Beall first layout a the problem of survival in the difficult environmental conditions on the steppes and the tenacity, illustrating the point with the tale of a herder found frozen to death as he crawled toward his home, less than a kilometer from safety. It is the livestock, contend the authors, that are the wealth and the security of these nomads. Herds are portable wealth on four legs of which no portion is wasted and each animal fulfills a specific function in the provision of basic needs: food, clothing, transportation. "Climate drives the annual cycle of the nomads life" and determines the survival of both herds and herder.

Goldstein and Beall stayed in the herding community of Moost in the Altai Mountains. Particularly detailed descriptions of traditional Mongolian hospitality--the exchange of snuff, the serving of milk-tea and "hospitality" foods--give a warm picture of an extremely outgoing and friendly people. The authors also give detailed descriptions of daily activities: slaughtering a sheep, making cheese, drying milk curds. Most such work is part of a continual preparation for surviving the extreme winters. Even ritual actions demonstrate the difficulty of life on these steppes. Goldstein and Beall attended several hair-cutting ceremonies for Mongolian children. This ritual first haircut does not take place until a child has reached the age of four or five, demonstrating that it is likely to survive childhood.

One of the questions the authors had for the Mongols was how their lives had changed under the Communist collectives and how they viewed the new free-market economy. Surprisingly, the answer was generally a noncommittal shrug. When the collective system was first forced upon the Mongols by the Communist government in 1927, herders slaughtered their animals rather than turn them over to government ownership. A less direct approach was taken by the government which, through excessive taxation, forced the independent herders to turn to the collectives for survival in the same way that tribes had traditionally banded together to survive adversity. The collectives, called negdels, took care of the business end of marketing the herds and providing social services. Now men in positions of local authority fear that herders will not be able to fend for themselves in a free-market economy, while the herders not understanding those concepts go on as they always have, bartering in their small local markets for whatever they need and living off their herds. Since there was no concept of land ownership before the collectives, the collective leaders divided negdels along a traditional boundaries of range areas--adapting the communist collective to the nomadic lifestyle rather than the other way around.

Goldstein and Beall also describe in detail the mobile housing of the Mongols, the traditional wooden-framed, felt-covered ger or yurt. Extremely portable and highly versatile, the ger is suited to the cold, high-wind climate of the steppes. Also significant to the nomadic lifestyle is the horse. The authors quote a thirteenth-century Chinese historian who said, "The Mongols are born in the saddle and grow up on horseback; they learn to fight by themselves as they spend all their life hunting the year-round" --an observation that is still true today. Along with horses the Mongols herd yaks, goats, sheep, and sometimes camels. The work of herding is no different under free-market economics than it was under the negdels or in the old tribal systems and women and men work side-by-side. The difference now is primarily in the private ownership of the animals. Where, under communism, the collective marketed the animals and made decisions about what animals to breed, the herder must now make these choices. Mongols understood the negdel system because "the collective economy incorporated important components of the traditional system of Mongol nomadic pastoralism."

According to Goldstein and Beall, some of the major benefits under Communism includesd education in rural areas and a decent health care system, benefits that Mongols fear will disappear under a freemarket economy. While the health care might not compare to hospital standards in the United States is was remarkable that the women of Moost enjoyed not only free prenatal care, maternity leave, and hospital childbirth under socialism, but also received a government stipend for each child at birth and again at sixmonths of age. Government pensions for women at age 50-55 (or as early as age 36 if they had four or more children) and for men at age 55-60 provide a surety for old age that helped to raise the standard of living for the herders.

Not only is this book a must in any scholarly study of Mongolian Culture, it is a fascinating and well-written text. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Central Asian culture.

Summary of The Changing World of Mongolia's Nomads

Economics Books

• Subjects > Business & Investing > Economics
• History > Asia > China
• Mongolia
• Social Sciences