The Anti-Social Contract : : Injurious Talk and Dangerous Exchanges in Northern Mongolia / / Lars Højer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Højer, Lars,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.)

Set in a remote district of villagers and nomadic pastoralists in the northernmost part of Mongolia, this book introduces a local world where social relationships are cast in witchcraft-like idioms of mistrust and suspicion. While the apparent social breakdown that followed the collapse of state socialism in Mongolia often implied a chaotic lack of social cohesion, this ethnography reveals an everyday universe where uncertain relations are as much internally cultivated in indigenous Mongolian perceptions of social relatedness, as they are externally confronted in postsocialist surroundings of unemployment and diminished social security.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Transliteration -- Introduction. Creating Difference from Within -- Chapter 1. Centralisation and Dispersal: A District in the Market Era -- Chapter 2. Dangerous Communications: Injurious Talk and the Perils of Standing Out -- Chapter 3. Safe Communications: Formality and Hierarchy -- Chapter 4. Morality and Danger: Religious Practices and Buddhist Directions -- Chapter 5. Concealed Agencies: Divination, Loss and Magical Objects -- Conclusion -- References -- Index