Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmob20 Mobilities ISSN: 1745-0101 (Print) 1745-011X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmob20 Axial Development in Mongolia: intended and unintended effects of new roads Alexander C. Diener & Batbuyan Batjav To cite this article: Alexander C. Diener & Batbuyan Batjav (2019): Axial Development in Mongolia: intended and unintended effects of new roads, Mobilities, DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2019.1643163 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2019.1643163 Published online: 15 Aug 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1 View Crossmark data
Transcript
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmob20
Axial Development in Mongolia: intended andunintended effects of new roads
Alexander C. Diener & Batbuyan Batjav
To cite this article: Alexander C. Diener & Batbuyan Batjav (2019): Axial Developmentin Mongolia: intended and unintended effects of new roads, Mobilities, DOI:10.1080/17450101.2019.1643163
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2019.1643163
Axial Development in Mongolia: intended and unintendedeffects of new roadsAlexander C. Dienera and Batbuyan Batjavb
aDepartment of Geography, Lindley Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA; bCenter for NomadicPastoralism Studies, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
ABSTRACTMongolia’s axial development strategy provides an opportunity to considerthe intended and unintended effects of introducing paved roads into regionswhere none exist. This article analyzes data from a 125-person survey, 128semi-structured interviews, and participant observation in sites proximate toand distant from new paved roads in six counties within three Mongolianprovinces. We consider how roads engender connectivity and distantiationsimultaneously in the re-shaping of Mongolia’s socio-economic geographiesand rearranging of mundane spaces of everyday life.
From Herodotus’s claim that the Royal Road enabled ‘nothing in the world (to) travel faster than thesePersian couriers’ (Holland 2014)1 to J.B. Jackson’s observation that ‘… the road altered not only the waypeople traveled, but how they perceived the world’ (1980, 122) to the mobility-turn’s premise thatmobility is an inherent condition of late modernity (Urry 2007), scholars have been concerned with thebroad-ranging effects of transportation infrastructure. Recent scholarly attention directed toward theintroduction of roads into various landscapes reveals a plethora of intended and unintended economic,political, and social transformations. This study approaches new roads’ capacity to promote ‘connec-tivity’ and ‘distantiation’ simultaneously. In doing so, roads alter socio-economic geographies andrearrange the mundane spaces of everyday life. This is especially so in Mongolia’s steppe environment,wherein a government-directed axial development strategy has been deployed for the last twodecades. The intent of this strategy is to reduce intra-state regional disparity, catalyze economicdiversification, integrate Mongolia’s national territory, and provide international transit corridors(Bazargur. et al. 2000; Bazargur et al 2001; Tsuji 2001; Diener 2011).
Linking Russia and China across Mongolia aligns with popular internationalist ideals of Eurasianconnectivity whilst addressing state-specific (il) logics inherited from socialist-era economic geographies(Diener 2015; Kenderdine 2017).2 This study therefore contributes to a growing literature approachingthe local effects of road building in Mongolia (Trivdi 2003; Li et al. 2006; Diener 2011; Jackson 2015a,2015b; Keshkamat et al. 2013; Bazargur. et al. 2000; Bazargur and Batbuyan 2001, 2007; Pedersen andBunkenborg 2012). Rather than assessing regional (i.e. Northeast Asian) geopolitical and/or geo-eco-nomic impacts of road networks, this study focuses on how ruralMongolians experience connectivity anddistantiation catalyzed by axial development.
We begin with a review of relevant theoretical literature and then analyze data deriving from a125-person survey, 128 semi-structured interviews, and participant observation in sites proximateto and distant from new paved roads. Our research sites lie along the main east/west arterial road
(the Millennium Highway) that facilitates migration to and from the capital. Rashaant sum inBulgan aimag, as well as, Bayankhagai sum, Lun sum, and Erdenesant sum in Tuv aimag (province)are located west of Ulaanbaatar; while Tsenhermandal sum and Jargalkhaant sum in Khentii aimagare located east of Ulaanbaatar (see Figure 1). Serval interviews were also conducted with peopleliving at greater distance from the road. These were particularly prominent in the Jargalkhaant sum.Analysis of data from these sites offers insights into recently paved roads’ capacity to foment newconstellations of power, create identities, and shape microgeographies of everyday life (Cresswell2010, 551). We conclude with a summary of findings, as well as, recommendations for futureavenues of research.
Road research: connectivity and distantiation
Concepts such as ‘routes’ (Clifford 1997), ‘flows’ (Appadurai 2000), ‘networks’ (Castells 1996), and‘liquidity’ (Bauman 2000) have characterized post-modern socio-economic and cultural imaginariessince the 1990s. The ‘mobilities’ inherent to these concepts connote roads as tangible links betweennarratives of globalization and the materialities of local life (Dolakoglu and Harvey 2012, 459). Newroads or improved paved roads therefore serve the expansion of both twentieth century nationalindustrial-production ideologies and twenty-first century transnational circulation of commodifiedinformation, goods, and labor. Because of this combination, a form of ‘infrastructure fetishism’ hasmanifested around the world (Dolakoglu 2010, 132; Naveeda 2006; Goodman 2016).
Scholarship across a variety of disciplines (e.g. anthropology, geography, and science andtechnology studies) approaches the socio-political and economic dimensions of mobility infra-structure (e.g. Star 1999; Barry 2013; Klaeger 2009, 2012, 2013; Larkin 2013; Appel, Anand, andGupta 2015). Ethnographic methods have been particularly useful in considering how attention tothe interactions of technology, politics and ecology reveals socio-spatial patterns of economicdisparity, resource distribution and socio-political tension (Haines 2018; Michail 2017; Rodgers andO’Neill 2012; Harvey and Knox 2016; Bruun-Jensen and Morita 2017). While it should be noted thatvaried forms of infrastructure impact human life, roads are archetypal of mobility enhancement and
Figure 1. Sites of interviews and survey.
2 A. C. DIENER AND B. BATJAV
link to a broad range of thematic approaches. These include roads as conduits and technologies ofeconomic or political power (Fairhead 1992; Thomas 2002; Wilson 2004; Harvey 2005; Shrair 2009;Harvey and Knox 2016), roads as levers of modernity facilitating time-space compression (de Pina-Cabral 1987; Hilling 1996; Roseman 1996; Harvey 2005; Virilio 2006; Weinhold and Reis 2008;Klaeger 2012), and roads’ capacity to inculcate hope and progressive aspirations (Löfgren 2004;Reeves 2017; Haines 2018).
This study takes up Klaeger’s call to consider ‘the ways in which people live, work and tradedirectly by the roadside, and in which “roadside contacts” between stationary and passing road-usersunfold’ (Klaeger 2012, 539). Other efforts within this line of inquiry include Pandya’s (2002) andPorath’s (2002) studies of how arterial roads manifest as ‘reliable resource areas’ (Pandya 2002, 811)and offer ‘quick access to alternative financial possibilities’ (Porath 2002, 780) through interactionswith travelers.3 But rather than strictly concentrating upon subjects interacting together, we embraceUrry’s (2007) appeal for equal consideration of infrastructures that restrict movement and circumventrelational dynamics from place to place, person to person, and event to event. Approaching newpaved roads in the Mongolian steppe, we consider their capacity to facilitate movement while alsoattending to possible disconnection or circumvention.
This was admirably demonstrated in Pederson and Bunkenborg’s (2012) research on the simultaneityof connectivity and distantiation catalyzed by mining roads in Mongolia. Their work suggests roads are‘sites of passionate engagement holding the promise of transformative potential in ways that create anunlikely and unpredictable convergence of interests’ (Pedersen and Bunkenborg 2012, 557). Too rarely doadvocates for road construction consider that ‘certain social relationships entail a disjunctive (rather thanadditive) mode of “inclusion”’ (Harvey and Knox 2008, 79–80). It is therefore imperative to explore how‘roads may separate as much as they connect’ – how they can provide a means of ensuring minimalcontact between peoples by facilitating circumvention of, as well as rapid transit through, certain areas(Pedersen and Bunkenborg 2012, 557; see also Willerslev and Pedersen 2010). Rather than a ‘paradoxical’or binary process, this dynamic is better viewed as ‘simultaneous.’
Just as mobility must be studied in conjunction with immobility, so too must connectivity be studiedin conjunction with ‘distantiation’ or the ‘stretching out of things from one another’ (Pedersen andBunkenborg 2012, 565). This reveals the Janus face of roads, wherein infrastructure channels movementto and thereby concentrates activity within particular places and along certain routes while circumvent-ing or deemphasizing activities in others. Such channeling and concentration of activity alter themateriality of places and create multiple socialities that require (re)calibration as functional socio-economic geographies (Vannini 2009; Cresswell and Merriman 2011; Vergunst and Árnason 2012).
While axiomatic to suggest that deploying an axial development strategy in Mongolia will resultin both ecological and social change, it is worthwhile considering how altered socio-economicgeographies are negotiated into traditional practices and catalyze new spatial living patterns. Asdiscussed below, our data indicate that this is already occurring and should gain momentum withthe fruition of road networks (see Figures 2 and 3). That axial development is in progress inMongolia presents an opportunity to influence policy and possibly eschew damaging mistakes. Thefollowing sections therefore explore how new patterns of connectivity and distantiation result fromMongolia’s axial development strategy.
Mongolia as context for axial development
Though nominally independent throughout the Soviet era, in 1990 Mongolia confronted for thefirst time in centuries the prospect of having no ‘great power’ to direct or protect its interests. Afteran initial period in which a policy of gradual economic reform was enacted, 1996 saw its leadersembrace international funding agencies’ prescriptions for rapid democratization and marketreform. Various works have outlined the complexity of this process in Mongolia that producedconditions akin to other post-socialist states (see Enkhbayer 2002; Batbayer 2002; Kotkin andEllerman 1999; Bille 2008; Bayartsaikhan 2002; Sabloff 2002; Rossabi 2005; Bulag 1998, 2010;
MOBILITIES 3
Kaplonski 2004; Bruun and Narangoa 2006; Diener 2009; Jackson 2015b; Sneath 2006, 2010; Reeves2011; Diener and Hagen 2013; Myadar 2019). Throughout the 1990s, Mongolia faced problems withcorruption, high unemployment, poverty, and declining state services. Much of this changedduring the 2000s as the state became among the largest per capita recipients of foreign aid inthe world and experienced a major upturn in GDP based on natural resource extraction. Coupledwith a series of relatively fair and peaceful transfers of power, a generally free press, and growingforeign direct investment, prospects for Mongolia’s political and economic development seemedquite good; at least until the 2008 global economic crisis and a subsequent downturn in GDP in2015–2016 regenerated uncertainty (see Table 1).
Among the foremost problems facing Mongolia is overt disparity in development across itsaimags (provinces) and a lack of overland transport infrastructure (Jacob 2012). Ulaanbaatar is aprimate city and the epicenter of development within the state. Moreover, no road or railwaycurrently spans Mongolia east to west. Though a rail-line has linked Russia to China (north-south)across Mongolia for decades, only a single paved road connects Mongolia’s capital of Ulaanbaatarnorth to Russia and south to China.
During the early 1990s, the state had little to offer global markets. In 1988 manufacturingcomprised a third of the economy and Mongolian agriculture was self-sufficient (even limitedlyexporting various foodstuffs). Dissipation of Soviet-style subsidies, lack of replacement parts, andinadequate intra-state and inter-state transportation infrastructure hamstrung industrial mainte-nance, causing manufacturing to constrict to 7% of the economy in 2011. The agricultural sectoralso suffered in the 1990s due to privatization efforts (de-collectivization) and the inability toefficiently transport commodities within and outside the state. While the country hosts 30 millionanimals (roughly 10 animals for every Mongolian citizen), 70% of milk consumed in urban Mongoliais reconstituted from imported milk powder (UNFAO Mongolia 2009).
Counterbalancing these economic challenges, Mongolia’s geological resources have lured large-scaleinternational investment since 1999. Sixty percent of Foreign Direct Investment goes toward the miningindustry, which is more than 30 times the percentage channeled to manufacturing and 20 times thepercentage allotted to construction (Oxford Business Group 2013). The mining boom resulted in a GDPgrowth rate of 6%per year between 1999 and 2008.While the 2008 global economic crisis caused a sharpdecline in demand for minerals and by consequence a downturn in prices, Mongolia’s economy never-theless recovered to reach unprecedented levels between 2010 and 2013 only to decline precipitously inrecent years (with an estimated up-tick for 2017, see Table 1).
Vast reserves of geological resources, including copper, gold, coal, oil, and uranium compelledMongolia’s euphemistic relabeling as ‘Mine-golia’ (Bulag 2009) and some projections of imminent‘Dutch Disease’ (the economic condition in which a state’s economy becomes overtly dependent onthe export of natural resources – Jacob 2013). Mining currently contributes a third of Mongolia’s GDPand accounts for 89.2% of the state’s total exports, but only employs roughly 5% of the workforce.Conversely, the agricultural sector – livestock, milk products, wool, meat – employs roughly 30% of theworkforce4 and contributes 15% of the GDP.
Most mining endeavors are undertaken by joint efforts between the Mongolian state and avariety of domestic and international companies. Success of these ventures is contingent on theirrespective sponsors’ abilities to transport resources to often-distant processing facilities andmarkets. The lack of developed transportation infrastructure within Mongolia presents a majorchallenge to these efforts, as well as governmental policies to diversify the economy. The $1.5
Source: Data derived from the Mongolian National Statistics Office Annual Year Books 2005–2018.
4 A. C. DIENER AND B. BATJAV
billion attained through Mongolia’s first bond-offering campaign, is being allocated largely ($850million) to infrastructure improvement, with $145 million earmarked for bolstering cashmere, dairy,and wool production (Jacob 2013).
The need for expansion and improvement of transportation infrastructure has been so acute as tocompel foreign companies to construct paved roads that link dispersed production units of the sameconglomerate, join production units to local communities for supply, and connect production units toneighboring states possessing processing facilities or ports (Jackson 2015b; Pedersen and Bunkenborg2012). The combination ofmining roads, governmental efforts to enhance agricultural production in ruralregions (see Priess et al. 2011; Endicott 2012), and a plan to establish both east/west and north/southtransit corridors across the state (the Millennium Highway or Asian Highway 32 plus arterial north/southroads to border crossing points) constitute a transportation revolution in Mongolia (Tsuji 2001).
In 2002, Mongolia’s then Prime Minister and now former President Enkhbayer (2002) suggestedthat 90% of the Mongolian population would migrate to settlements along the planned east-westMillennium highway’s route. In doing so, he heralded the axial development strategy currentlydeployed. Research conducted for this project since the early-mid 1990s affirms the MillenniumHighway’s tangible developmental effect (see Figure 3).
Road related population change
Mongolia’s highly dispersed population is beginning tomigrate towards and settle in proximity to severalarterial paved-roads (some completed and some estimated for completion 2020–2023 – see Figure 2).Akin to the growing ‘Ger Suburbs’ (peri-urban settlements) surrounding the capital city of Ulaanbaatar,one can expect considerable economic, socio-cultural, political, and environmental impacts from newsettlers along the roads (Dore and Nagpal 2006; Jargalsaikhan 2011; Sugimoto et al. 2007; Sneath 2006).Expected impacts include land-cover, air-quality, water quality, and alteration of socio-economic patternsand systems (see Timmons 1992; Timmons and Hite 2000; Neupert 1999). The potential for globalization-related social ills, heretofore only marginally present in the Mongolian countryside will also likely expand(e.g. wealth disparity, international labor competition, new disease vectors, etc.).
In contrast, a more positive effect of the roads may result in depletion of population in regionsdistant from roads, which could reduce overgrazing and afford those adhering to pastoralist economicpursuits more plentiful pastureland. Such an occurrence would follow precedents of other pastoralist-economic settings, where families divide, leaving some members to tend herds, while other developbusiness enterprises along the highway (Ahearn 2018; Liu 1999, 2000; Misak et al. 2002; Masquelier2002; Rickard, Mclachlan, and Kerley 1994).
Revisiting a stretch of road between the capital city of Ulaanbaatar and the town of Arvaikheerover the course of a decade following its paving in the mid-1990s reveals a progressive expansion ofvarious infrastructural elements. From 1996 until 2016 the settlements of Elsen Taarkhai, Rashannt,Erdenesant, Lun, and Atar (see Figure 3) saw expanding numbers of gers (traditional Mongolian livingstructures), dedication of some gers to service/commercial uses, the gradual replacement of gerswithsingle story and later two-story permanent structures (homes and service/commercial buildings),along with various support and commercial infrastructure such as vehicle repair stations, petrolstations, and connection to electrical powerlines. Starting in 2010, parallel roads in the settlement ofAtar suggested its marked expansion; but by 2016 a number of abandoned structures in several ofthe settlements (including Atar) connoted a stall in development.
These data affirm the road’s gravitational attraction and document development correlationsbetween infrastructure and population. The below analysis of survey and interview data offers insightsinto the manner in which people living proximate to and distant from paved roads experience bothintended and unintended effects that include new forms of connectivity and distantiation.
MOBILITIES 5
Perceptions of road development in rural Mongolia
Data in this section derive from interviews and surveys conducted in six counties (sums) withinthree provinces (aimags). Most of the research sites are proximate to paved portions of the eastand west paved road extending from the capital Ulaanbaatar known as the Millennium Highway.Sampling from each site is as follows: Bayankhagai sum (s = 16), Lun sum (s = 29), and Erdenesantsum in Tuv province (s = 29), Tsenhermandal sum of (s = 18) and Jargalkhaant sum of Khentiiprovince (s = 17), and Rashaant sum in Bulgan province (s = 16). Each site is accessible within aone-day drive to/from the capital. Being on the east/west paved arterial road, each site is alsoroughly equidistant to Mongolia’s borders with Russia and China. Serval interviews were alsoconducted with people living at distance from the road in pastoralist camps.
A cross section of the population (i.e. gender, age, education, occupation)5 was sought for the125 surveys and 128 interview respondents. General perceptual themes pertaining to the advent ofpaved roads can be broadly categorized positively and negatively.
Negative perceptions of paved roads:● Speed of Vehicles
Figure 2. Population distribution in Mongolia 2019.Source: Center for Nomadic and Pastoral Research, Ulaanbaatar Mongolia 2019
6 A. C. DIENER AND B. BATJAV
● Domestic Animal Strikes: No claim of Responsibility● Animal Theft● Wild Animal Strikes/Poaching● Noise● Foreigners● Overgrazing Near Roads● Deteriorated Paved Road Worse than Dirt Road● Pollution/Litter● Road Cutting Off Access to Water Sources/Water Source Damage
Positives perceptions of paved roads:● Access to Feed/Water● Access to Services/Education● Access to Markets● Road Related Business Opportunities● Tourists● Preserves Vegetation● Petrol Savings● Less Dust
Certain perceptual factors are not mutually exclusive and are relative to respondents’ circumstances(e.g. time in location, pasture availability relative to road and water location, diversification of familyincome, etc.).
The two most prominent road-related issues emerging from both interview and survey responseswere Domesticated Animal Strikes and Access to Markets (mentioned by 46.4% and 73.6%, respectively,in surveys). Both are byproducts of new mobile-technology within the Mongolian countryside. Both alsomanifest space/time compression attendant to infrastructural connectivity, as well as, fomenting dis-tantiation by materially and socially altering patterns of movement within the locales of respondentresidence.
Figure 3. Settlement development along the road.Source: Center for Nomadic and Pastoral Research, Ulaanbaatar Mongolia 2019
MOBILITIES 7
Access to markets, for example, is captured in the statements ‘the market is closer’ or ‘the road makesthe market closer’ (common to multiple interviews in all research sites). While the distances between thelocation of interviews and Ulaanbaatar’s market and border-markets with China (e.g. Gashun Sukhait,Bulgan – Takashiken Bichigt Zuun-Khatavch Zamin Uud – Erlian Sheveekhuren – Sekhee, Ereen – Erenhot)and Russia (e.g Altanbulag – Kyakhta, Tsagaannuur – Tashanta, Naushki – Sükhbaatar, Ereentsav-Solovyovsk, Mondy – Khankh) have not physically altered, the speed at which people may travel has.This not only reduces the time required to make the journey but also transport-costs (e.g. petrolconsumption).
I have been living here since I was born. Before the paved road emerged, the patchwork of dirt roads damagedpasture and there was too much dust. But now we have easy access to the city and gasoline costs are less thanbefore. We traveled along the road all summer. Our children can visit us and help us with our work and thenreturn to UB. It is easier now (Author interview 5.1, Tsenhermandal sum of Khentii province).
Such time-space compression has varied add-on effects. For instance, several respondents spoke tothe issues of food safety or food security. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents ranked access tobetter products and goods among the three most prevalent effects of paved roads. The greaterspeed with which animal and vegetable products can be moved to and from city-marketspromotes freshness and reduces losses from rot.
There are economic opportunities emerging, such as opening restaurants and shops along the road in ourregion. We try to settle down close to the paved road during spring to autumn. After the road was paved, wehad greater access to fresh food and food safety improved (Author interview 5.6 Tsenhermandal sum ofKhentii province).
Ease of connectivity between sum (county) centers and Ulaanbaatar (UB) provides not only accessto expanded food varieties but also varied services.
A number of respondents spoke to the prospects of accessing medical care and their childrenreceiving education at greater distance due to the speed at which one may travel along paved roads.
One of our children is a student in Ulaanbaatar and one of them is studying in the center of the provincebetween September and June. So, the paved road makes it comfortable to visit and transfer them, and ourfamily lives separately during this time (Author Interview 3.19 Erdenesant sum of Tuv province).
Another respondent noted:
Markets became closer with the paved road. Paved roads allow us to live apart from social services such ashospitals, schools and markets (Author Interview 5.18, Tsenhermandal sum of Khentii province).
The benefits of space-time compression are, however, attended by complexities of distantiation.Reflective of the previous quotes, in the case of education availability, a number of respondents
spoke of their families living in separate locations to enable children’s school attendance in sum centersor Ulaanbaatar, while other members of the household remain in the countryside with animals.
Because our school in the sum has only 9 grades, we (our family) need to live separately. There is a school of 12grades for pupils from Tsenhermandal sum in Umnudelger sum, but our children go to Ulaanbaatar orBaganuur district to study. We have 600 animals now. Life is fine, it is enough for us. Our oldest child is in10th grade and lives with relatives in Ulaanbaatar. My wife lives in the sum center with my youngest (child) onsomeone`s yard (Author Interview 5.14, Tsenhermandal sum of Khentii province).
In addition to this practical aspect of family dispersion for education, Barcus and Werner (2017)suggest that urban dwellers periodically (often seasonally) visit the countryside for maintenance offamily connection and affirmation of ‘pastoralist’ traditions (see also Dore and Nagpal 2006). Pavedroads will likely propagate such patterns of visitation in the future. In the absence of paved roads,such division of families might well exist but would likely be less prevalent.
63.2 percent of survey respondents strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that their families aremore dispersed now than in the past. It should be noted that several respondents mentioned the
8 A. C. DIENER AND B. BATJAV
significance of cell phones in maintaining social networks, but are keen to note that their choices ofsettlement locales remain largely linked by traditional concerns of pasture and water access.
Our relatives moved to Ulaanbaatar after the road was paved. We are living more scattered since we the roadwas paved … (But) we pastoralist move and follow good grazing pasture more than cellphone signals. Ingeneral, these days, cellphones can be used almost everywhere (Author Interview 4.1, Rashaant sum of Bulganprovince).
This quote notwithstanding, 83.2% of survey respondents strongly agreed or somewhat agreedthat modern technology (e.g. cell phone and internet) influences personal patterns of movementand by extension places of settlement. Only 14.4% disagreed to any degree.
As occurred in other cases of paved road introduction to rural regions (Shrair 2009; Hilling 1996;Fairhead 1992), ease of access to bigger markets has led many to avoid smaller, more proximatemarkets in which they had traditionally sold their products. A number of respondents noted that pricesof animal goods had been falling, even to the point of requiring surplus disposal in Ulaanbaatar.
After the road was paved, we lost our traditional moving and herding area to herders migrating from distantprovinces. They also bring their best meat to UB so that the prices increase in the sum center and decrease inthe capital. Businessmen who deal with animal products (in UB) purchase livestock then just throw away meatsafter butchering (Author Interview 3.9 Erdenesant sum of Tuv province).
This is likely the result of a more consistent and higher volume of products transported directly tothe Ulaanbaatar’s markets and stands as an example of economic distantiation manifesting inconjunction with market connectivity (Richardson, Bae, and Choe 2011).
Similarly, while many respondents in the varied research sites regard tourists’ use of the pavedroads as having positive economic effect, several also note a growing tendency for tourists tobypass roadside shops and merchants as they venture to a target destination further down theroad. These are usually the larger and noteworthy sites of interest.
We now have greater access to distant destinations like the center of the sum, other provinces, andUlaanbaatar city. So, having a paved road is an advantage. About tourism, though, it is less here because ofthe road. Many people just go directly to KhuhNuur Lake (Author Interview 5.11, Tsenhermandal sum ofKhentii province).
This said, the road has created a variety of economic opportunities that respondents in eachresearch site seize upon. In doing so, the road altered traditional patterns of movement, modes ofeconomic activity, and attitudes toward both strangers and neighbors.
One venture that existed prior to the paving of the road but became more prominent with theroad’s improvement is ‘transport services.’ These include taxiing people between Ulaanbaatar and/orsum centers and their homes, as well as, consignment/freight businesses taking products to and fromUlaanbaatar and border markets. Such intermediary transport services were part of socialist-servicesystem prior to 1990 but becamemore expensivewhen privatized throughMongolia’s shift to amarketeconomy. With the introduction of paved roads, travel to Ulaanbaatar is easier, cheaper, and faster, andentrepreneurial, consignment-merchants have expanded their niche in the economy.
Road repair has also become an overt necessity with paving and provides a new sector ofemployment in the countryside. Deteriorating dirt roads were customarily avoided, giving rise tonew parallel paths along the general route between specific sites. This resulted in wide swaths ofsteppe damage that paved roads were intended to mediate (Keshkamat et al. 2013; Li et al. 2006).However, respondents made clear that a damaged paved road was far more deleterious on theirvehicles than dirt roads. Crews of workers are now regularly dispatched to maintain paved roads(though not as successfully as most would hope, see Figure 4).6 The paved roads, therefore, aredirect sources of new employment along their respective routes.
Other such road related businesses extend from entrepreneurs selling milk and animal products atroadside stands, offering camel rides or bird of prey encounters. Moreover, Mongolia’s economic policyis increasingly emphasizing agriculture (Priess et al. 2011; Endicott 2012). In conjunction with the
MOBILITIES 9
government’s efforts to reduce imported food dependency and to diversify the economy’s emphasison mineral resource extraction, a growing cadre of farmers tends to procure lands proximate to roadsand water sources for ease of transport and irrigation. Agricultural ventures couple with the migrationof pastoralists to road-proximate regions to create complex new land-use dynamics.
I have been living in Erdenesant sum of Tuv province since I was born. I personally like to live far away fromthe paved road. (But), both sides of road are now farmland. If our herds go in there, we get fined (Authorinterview 3.26 Erdenesant sum of Tuv province).
Various models of economic geography7 predict the redistribution of population toward Mongolia’srecently paved roads and the various ‘growth pole’ urban centers along their respective routes(Turganbayev and Diener 2019). As illustrated in Figures 2 and 3, these models have proven out asmany sum centers and cross-road settlements have steady development since the mid-1990s. At leastsome of this development has included agricultural ventures that problematically couplewithmovementof herders to pastures proximate to paved roads.
In some ways, farming has more effect on our lives than the paved road. Farming has gone everywhere; soilhas been tilled and cultivated. So, grazing pasture is getting destroyed. Also, herders from western provinceslike Uvs and Zavhan are moving here and overgrazing the pastures (Author Interview 1.5, Bayankhagai sum,Tuv province).
The combination of land-use pressures (agriculturalization, overgrazing, and water access) with theapparently pervasive problem of domesticated animal strikes from vehicles moving at high speedshas resulted in a secondary population redistribution involving some longtime residents with largerherds moving away from paved roads.
Because of the paved road, herders now move here from distant provinces. Herders come for the summer andleave after their animals finish eating. We (permanently) settled people suffer from overgrazed pastures, so thepaved road is, for us, both a help and disadvantage to us (Author interview 2.4, Lun sum, Tuv province).
This represents an unintended distantiation-effect of paved road construction and an exampleworth exploring in greater detail. It evokes the issue of both social and geographic distantiation.
Figure 4. Road construction in rural Mongolia.Source: Author.
10 A. C. DIENER AND B. BATJAV
From the geographic perspective, interview respondents consistently spoke of moving awayfrom the road to avoid noise, lights, dust, smells, theft, animal strikes, and overgrazing. Such asecondary form of population redistribution (the primary being the predicted attraction of herdersto road-proximate pastures and urban centers along the road’s route) links directly to the advent ofpaved roads but does not appear to have been predicted by planners. From a social perspective,the distinction between old and new herders in certain areas establishes a form of stratificationheretofore only limitedly present. This is compounded by the negative perception of high-speedtravelers who apparently fail to accept responsibility for animal strikes and compensate herders forlosses. Taking this one step further, a number of respondents lamented the presence of ‘foreigners,’while also positively acknowledging the effect of ‘tourists.’
According to expert interviews, respondents might consider Mongolian citizens and non-citizens‘tourists,’ but the term ‘foreigners’ should be regarded as a specific reference to non-Mongolianpeople traveling within the state (Author interview with Gerilnium D. Senior Expert for TransportPolicy Planning). Given the cultural valuation of hospitality within nomadic and specificallyMongolian society, this negative reference to ‘foreigners’ is a rather dramatic shift. 83.3 percentof survey respondents reported meeting more ‘foreign’ people because of paved roads and 89%strongly agree or somewhat agree that ‘people near paved roads need to be warier of strangersthan in the past’.
As a ‘foreigner’ periodically traveling in Mongolia since 2001, one of the authors has witnessedchanging attitudes toward foreign tourists. In the early 2000s, one would be readily welcomed intogers, often provided meals, and afforded ‘warm welcomes’ by almost any measure. Recent yearshave seen this change. Obviously, this is not a blanket assertion applicable to every Mongoliancitizen in every locale within the state, but participant observation combines with interview andsurvey data to suggest a growing sense of ‘stranger danger.’
People living near the road would always invite foreigners into their gers, but those living along the road haveseen things stolen or been cheated by foreigners. They are less likely to be as open as they were in the past.This is just part of living close to the road (Author interview, Uroos long-distance driver 2015).
Theft of animals contributes to this ‘stranger danger’ mentality but is a crime more likely to beperpetrated by indigenous thieves. In surveys, 24.80% of respondents cited ‘crime’ as one of thethree most prevalent effects of the road (Author Survey 2016). While in interviews, ‘animal theft’was repeatedly raised as a prime negative associated with the paved road.
When we release the herds to graze, it is better to be far from the paved road. We prefer to be far from theroad in general. It is dangerous during the night – there are thefts and robberies, therefore people who liveclose to road should be more careful (Author Interview 2.27 Lun sum, Tuv province).
Also, commonly cited by interview respondents was an increase in litter and pollution. Both ofwhich are (accurately or not) associated with non-locals (Mongolian or international tourists)traversing along the paved road.
Generally, the paved road is fine; it is easy to come and go. Tourists are common here too. They are investingmoney in Mongolia. But the tourists nearby the river and the road litter a lot; the countryside is gettingpolluted (Author interview 2.5, Lun sum, Tuv province).
Despite a long history under a socialist – authoritarian state, Mongolian’s tend to function in a ratherlibertarian manner in the countryside. The pastoralist tradition is based largely on self-reliance withexpectations of communal assistance in instances of need. This communal assistance was traditionallyclan based but also had a geographic component in sums, evenwithinmixed tribal or ethnic populations.
We are neighbors here. We understand each other’s problems. If my Kazakh neighbor loses his horse, hecomes to me and says ‘can you help me find my horse’. We are herdsmen, we both know the troubles withwolves and the long days of foaling season. You see, the smoke from the same trees rises from our gers. I wentto school with this man (pointing to a local ethnic Kazakh). He speaks Mongolian to me and I understand whenhe speaks Kazakh. We live in this valley together, like family (quoted in Diener 2009, 100).
MOBILITIES 11
Historically, rule of law existed through oversight by Buddhist Lamas or under Qing authority, butin the early twentieth century was replaced by socialist ideals and a secularized form of normativecontrol. Even within the socialist system, however, the great distances between population centers,limited communications, and sparse transportation infrastructure rendered many communitieslargely self-adjudicating.
Reflecting an increased perception of ‘the state’ accompanying paved roads (Harvey and Knox2016), a number of interview respondents called for governmental restriction on intra-statemigration and a formalized approach to assigning fiscal responsibility for animal strikes.
I was born in Lun sum of Tuv province … A lot of herders are migrating to our province from distant provinces.They bring many animals with them. The government should regulate the migration issues within our country(Author interview 2.16, Lun sum, Tuv province).
There is a disadvantage (to living by the road). People passing by litter along the road – this should be stopped(Author interview 1.4, Bayankhagai sum, Tuv province – parenthetical added).
Such issues reflect erosion of personal accountability traditionally regarded as inherent withinMongolian society. Put another way, the road produces a measure of social distantiation oranonymity for travelers passing more rapidly from point A to point B. The normative values oftraditional Mongolian society are thereby challenged through enhanced mobilities and reflect yetanother unintended effect of introducing paved roads in the countryside.
From an ecological perspective, survey data suggests that 38.4% of respondents strongly agreeand 26.4% somewhat agree that paving roads positively affects pasture vegetation cover. In otherwords, paving roads is associated with preserving the steppe. Several interview respondents notedhow ‘paved roads emerged and stopped the patchwork of dirt roads (so that) pasture vegetation isincreasing’ (Author Interview 37, Erdenesant sum of Tuv province).
Towards Pedersen and Bunkenborg’s (2012) suggestion of simultaneity of connectivity anddistantiation, it should also be noted that, while acknowledging benefits of the paved road, severalinterview respondents also recognized that the paved roads either promote or result from mining.So, for all the environmental good paved roads can do in limiting steppe damage, they may alsofacilitate ecological destruction in conjunction with economic vitality.
There was a wolfram mine (Bayantsogt`s mining) in our region owned by some Chinese men. Many of us madegood wages there. They stopped using it two years ago but there is still water pollution, illness amongst theanimals (internal organ damages), and pasture pollution (Author interview 5.14 Tsenhermandal sum of Khentiiprovince).
Jackson’s (2015a, 2015b) work on dust in Mongolia suggests that in addition to dust-productionand dust-mitigation, roads also serve to ‘bound the steppe.’
Road dust separates local residents from their sense of place and livelihoods that depend on pasture while alsobringing them into intimate contact with mining. … dust transforms how people relate to the landscape,signaling changes in local economies and culture. Mining roads and dust continue to cut across the landscape,providing new transportation networks for mining, while delimiting healthy pasture. At the same time, newlypaved roads demonstrate opportunities for the state and mining companies to improve relations with localresidents by reducing road dust. Dust complicates broader disconnections and connections between people,place, and mining (Jackson 2015a, 103–104).
This theme is advanced by respondents’ association of roads with changing traditions.One interviewee stated ‘The paved road has adverse effects, such as free grazing becoming
impossible and animals get hit by cars. I’m seeing our countryside change. Roads are changingtraditional herding’ (Author interview 2.13, Lun sum, Tuv province). Yet another contends ‘Weherders prefer to live near drinking water, winter manure, water for animals, and pasture andgrazing lands rather than a road. But in last few years, this lifestyle is changing. People pasture theirherds near roads and move with the help of the car’ (Author interview 2.12, Lun sum, Tuvprovince). Survey data indicate that 96% of respondents strongly agree that it is important to
12 A. C. DIENER AND B. BATJAV
preserve nomadic/pastoralist traditions in Mongolia. That said, 38.4% strongly agree and 19.2%somewhat agree that they would choose to live near a paved road; with 24.5% strongly averse and10.4% somewhat averse to living near a paved road. The desirability of proximity to paved roads isaffirmed through survey data suggesting 69.6% strongly and 24% somewhat ‘want a paved road topass nearby their place of settlement’ with only a combined 6.4% strongly and somewhatdisagreeing.
The advent of paved roads is a profoundly poignant issue in Mongolia today. With 32.8%strongly agreeing and 36.8% somewhat agreeing that their household incomes have improvedwith the paving of the roads, it is fair to consider negotiations of traditional culture and new mobiletechnologies as just beginning.
Conclusion
Acting upon its desire for national, regional and global ‘connectivity,’ Mongolia is pursuing an axialdevelopment strategy based on a ‘certain belief that infrastructures will offer a technical solution toproblems of economic and social integration’ (Harvey and Knox 2008, 80). Such efforts are not,however, wholly predictable. Both the Mongolian government and the state’s citizenry are keenlyaware that the introduction of paved roads will catalyze novel capacities for intra-state and interna-tional connectivity. What is less understood is their capacity to foment ‘distantiation’ or ‘circumvention’through that same facilitation of movement within and across the state.
That connectivity and distantiation are simultaneous is an important consideration for policymaking as an ‘infrastructural violence’ may be inherent to axial development (Rodgers and O’Neill2012). Segments of the population are marginalized by the absence of infrastructure that leavesthem out of connective networks, while new roads concurrently enhance the presence of the state,intrusion of the external (regional and global), and prospects of exploitation and expropriation.
This article suggests that processes of urbanization and/or peri-urbanization long associated withMongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar are likely to also emerge at other sites of agglomeration catalyzedby axial development. Our data suggest that this is already occurring along certain segments of theMillennium Highway. Through both intended and unintended effects, paved roads are fomenting newconstellations of power, creating identities, and reshaping microgeographies of everyday life.Researching this process foregrounds the complex interaction between transportation infrastructure,modernization, traditional culture, development, and conservation. The Mongolian countryside offersopportunities to study how globalization, regionalization, and the state are emerging through people,materials, money, and ideational resources. Policy making informed by a deeper understanding of thesimultaneity of connectivity and distantiation should help mediate infrastructural violence and ‘pave theway’ for truly progressive mobilities.
Notes
1. Herodotus’ account of the Royal Road is the origin of the U.S. Postal Service creed ‘Neither snow nor rain norheat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.’
2. Axial development strategies (the building of roads to catalyze development) currently deployed withinMongolia are reflective of broader transportation infrastructures advancing across Eurasia (e.g. OBOR, SilkWind, New Silk Roads, Eurasian Union, CASA 1000, etc.).
3. For other research in this line of inquiry see Fairhead (1992), Trankell (1993), Colombijn (2002), Wilson (2004),Naveeda (2006).
4. This figure is down from 39.9% of the workforce in 2005 (National Statistics Office of Mongolia – Yearbook2017 – http://www.en.nso.mn).
5. 45.6% female 54.4% Male; age range 18–78, average age 45.9 and median age 44; education 47% high school,16% university or technikum, 36% primary school; occupation 70.4% herders, other professions include drivers,miners, factory workers, construction workers, tailors, food service works, and tourist camp entrepreneurs.
6. Dirt roads were regarded as ‘self-correcting.’ Little or no maintenance was necessary as an overtly potholed ormuddied road was simply circumvented. The new path for vehicles would eventually be smoothed into a newroad devoid of vegetation, thus creating a widening swath of denuded steppe.
7. Spatial science offers a variety of models (e.g. Gravity Model, Central Place Theory, etc.) that predict theconcertation of services as catalyzing settlement in and around specific locales. For work relating specifically toroads or axial development see Pottier (1963) and Turgenbayev and Diener (2019).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Mongolian Foundation for Science and Technology [01];University of Kansas GeneralResearch Fund [01]; American Center for Mongolia Studies [01].
References
Ahearn, A. 2018. “Winters without Women: Social Change, Split Households, and Gendered Labour in Rural Mongolia.”Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 25 (3): 399–414. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2018.1443910.
Appadurai, A. 2000. Modernity at Large. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Appel, H., N. Anand, and A. Gupta. 2015. The Infrastructure Toolbox Cultural Anthropology Online. http://www.culanth.
org/fieldsights/725-the-infrastructure-toolboxBarcus, H., and C. Werner. 2017. “Migration Decision Making and Immobility among Rural Ethnic Minorities: The Case
of the Mongolian-Kazakh Diaspora.” Globalizations 14 (2): 32–50. doi:10.1080/14747731.2016.1161038.Barry, A. 2013. Material Politics: Disputes along the Pipeline. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Batbayer, T. 2002. “Geopolitics and Mongolia’s Search for Post Soviet Identity.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 43
(4): 323–335. doi:10.2747/1538-7216.43.4.323.Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.Bayartsaikhan, N. 2002. “Mongolia and Globalization.” Mongol Messenger 23 (January): 30.Bazargur, D., and B. Batbuyan. 2007. Mongol Ulsyn Zasag Zahirgaa, Nutag Devsgeriin Shinechleliin Niigem Ediin Zasgiin
Gazarzuin Tandah Sudalgaa. (socio Economic Geographical Assessment of Restructuring Administrative TerritorialDivisions of Mongolia), 1–40. Ulaanbaatar: Edmon Press.
Bazargur., D., F. Scholz, J. Janzen, M. S. Fred Folker, Shiirev-Adiya, and B. Batbuyan. 2000. Mongol Ulsyn Niigem EdiinZasgiig Tenkhlegeer Khogjuulekh Uzel Barimtlal. (Socio economic development of Mongolia based on concept ofaxial development). Ulaanbaatar: Urlakh Erdem Press. 1–80.
Bazargur, D., and S.-A. B. Batbuyan. 2001. “Mongol Ulsyn Niigen Ediin Zasgiig Tenhlegeer Hogjuuleh Uzel Barimtlal(concept of Axial Development in Mongolia).” In Mongol Ulsyn Buchilsen Hogjil Hot Baiguulaltyn Asuudal (problem ofRegional Development and Urbanization), 164–184. Ulaanbaatar.
Bille, F. 2008. “Faced with Extinction: Myths and Urban Legends in Contemporary Mongolia.” Cambridge Anthropology28 (1): 1–26.
Bruun, O., and L. Narangoa. 2006. Mongols from Country to City Floating Boundaries, Patriotism and City Life in theMongol Lands. Copenhagen: NAIS Studies in Asia Topics.
Bruun-Jensen, C., and A. Morita. 2017. “Introduction: Infrastructures as Ontological Experiments.” Ethnos 82 (4): 615–626.doi:10.1080/00141844.2015.1107607.
Bulag, U. 1998. Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Bulag, U. 2009. “Mongolia in 2008: FromMongolia to Mine-golia.” Asian Survey 49 (1): 129–134. doi:10.1525/as.2009.49.1.129.Bulag, U. 2010. “Mongolia in 2009: From Landlocked to Land-Linked Cosmopolitan.” Asian Survey 50 (1): 97–103.
doi:10.1525/as.2010.50.1.97.Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.Clifford, J. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Colombijn, F., ed. 2002. On the Road: The Social Impact of New Roads in Southeast Asia. Leiden: KITLV.Cresswell, T. 2010. “Mobilities I: Catching Up.” Progress in Human Geography 35 (4): 550–558. doi:10.1177/0309132510383348.Cresswell, T., and P. Merriman, eds. 2011. Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects. Farnham: Ashgate.de Pina-Cabral, J. 1987. “Paved Roads and Enchanted Mooresses: The Perception of the past among the Peasant
Population of the Alto Minho.” Man 22 (4): 715–735. doi:10.2307/2803360.Diener, A. 2009. One Homeland or Two: The Nationalization and Transnationalization of Mongolia’s Kazakhs.
Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press.
Diener, A. 2011. “Will New Mobilities Beget New (im)mobilities?: prospects for Change Resulting from Mongolia’sTrans-State Highway.” In Engineering Earth: The Impact of Mega Projects, edited by S. Brunn, 627–642. New York:Kluwer/Springer Press.
Diener, A. 2015. “Parsing Mobilities in Central Eurasia: Border Management and New Silk Roads.” Eurasian Geographyand Economics 56 (4): 376–404. doi:10.1080/15387216.2015.1078736.
Diener, A., and J. Hagen. 2013. “City of Concrete and Felt: Negotiating Cultural Hybridity in Mongolia’s Capital ofUlaanbaatar.” Nationalities Papers 4 (4): 622–650. doi:10.1080/00905992.2012.743513.
Dolakoglu, D. 2010. “The Road: An Ethnography of the Albanian-Greek Cross Border Motorway.” American Ethnologist37 (1): 132–149. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01246.x.
Dolakoglu, D., and P. Harvey. 2012. “Roads and Anthropology: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Time and (im)mobility.” Mobilities 7 (4): 459–465. doi:10.1080/17450101.2012.718426.
Dore, G., and T. Nagpal. 2006. “Urban Transition in Mongolia: Pursuing Sustainability in a Unique Environment.”Environment 48 (6): 10–25.
Endicott, E. 2012. A History of Land Use in Mongolia: Thirteenth Century to Present. Palgrave: Macmillan.Enkhbayer, N. 2002. “Mongolia in the Age of Globalization.” Mongol Messenger 20 (February): 5.Fairhead, J. 1992. “Paths of Authority: Roads, the State and the Market in Eastern Zaire. European.” Journal of
Development Research 4 (2): 17–35. doi:10.1080/09578819208426569.Goodman, M. 2016. “Eurasian’s Infrastructure Rush: What, Why, So What?” Global Economics Monthly CSIS 5 (1). https://www.
csis.org/analysis/global-economics-monthly-eurasias-infrastructure-rush-what-why-so-whatHaines, S. 2018. “Imagining the Highway: Anticipating Infrastructural and Environmental Change in Belize.” Ethnos 83
(2): 392–413. doi:10.1080/00141844.2017.1282974.Harvey, P. 2005. “The Materiality of State Effects: An Ethnography of a Road in the Peruvian Andes.” In State Formation:
Anthropological Explorations, edited by C. Krohn-Hansen and K. Nustad, 123–141. London: Pluto Press.Harvey, P., and H. Knox. 2008. “’otherwise Engaged’ – Culture, Deviance and the Quest for Connectivity through Road
Construction’.” Journal of Cultural Economy 1 (1): 79–92. doi:10.1080/17530350801913726.Harvey, P., and H. Knox. 2016. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Hilling, D. 1996. Transport and Developing Countries. London: Routledge.Holland, T. (Trans.) 2014. Herodotus the Histories. New York: Viking Press.Jackson, J. B. 1980. The Necessity of Ruins. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Jackson, S. 2015a. ‘Dusty Roads and Disconnections: Perceptions of Dust from Unpaved Mining Roads in Mongolia’s South
Gobi Province’ Geoforum, 94–105. Vol. 66. doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.09.010Jackson, S. 2015b. “Imagining the Mineral Nation: Contested Nation-Building in Mongolia.” Nationalities Papers 43 (3):
437–456. doi:10.1080/00905992.2014.969692.Jacob, P. October 05, 2012. “Mongolia Pays Price for Infrastructure Inefficiencies.” Eurasianet. http://www.eurasianet.
org/node/66014Jacob, P. August 09, 2013. “Ulaanbaatar Wrestles with Dutch Disease Dilemma.” Eurasianet. http://www.eurasianet.org/
node/67372Jargalsaikhan, D. March 25, 2011. “The State and Housing.” UB Post. http://ubpost.mongolnews.mn/index.php?
option1⁄4com_content&task1⁄4view&id1⁄45974&Itemid1⁄441Kaplonski, C. 2004. Truth, History, and Politics in Mongolia: Memories of Heroes. London: Curzon.Kenderdine, T. July 07, 2017. “Mongolia Gets on Board with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Eurasianet. https://
eurasianet.org/s/mongolia-gets-on-board-with-chinas-belt-and-road-initiativeKeshkamat, S. S., N. E. Tsendbazar, M. H. Zuidgeest, S. Shiirev-Adiya, A. van der Veen, and M. F. van Maarseveen. 2013.
“Understanding Transportation-caused Rangeland Damage in Mongolia.” Journal of Environmental Management114: 433–444. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.10.043.
Klaeger, G. 2009. “Religion on the Road: The Spiritual Experience of Road Travel in Ghana.” In The Speed of Change.Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890–2000, edited by J.-B. In:, G. S. Luning, and K. van Walraven, 212–231. Brill:Leiden.
Klaeger, G. 2012. “Rush and Relax: The Rhythms and Speeds of Touting Perishable Products on a Ghanaian Roadside.”Mobilities 7 (4): 537–554. doi:10.1080/17450101.2012.718936.
Klaeger, G. 2013. “Dwelling on the Road: Routines, Rituals, and Roadblocks in Southern Ghana.” Africa 83 (3): 446–469.doi:10.1017/S0001972013000260.
Kotkin, S., and B. A. Ellerman, eds. 1999.Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan. London: M.E. Sharpe.Larkin, B. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 327–343. doi:10.1146/
annurev-anthro-092412-155522.Li, S. G., M. Tsujimura, A. Sugimoto, G. Davaa, and M. Sugita. 2006. “National Recovery of Steppe Vegetation on Vehicle
Tracks in Central Mongolia.” Journal of Biosciences 31: 85–93.Liu, L. 1999. “Labor Location, Conservation, and Land Quality: The Case of West Jilin China.” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 89 (4): 633–658. doi:10.1111/0004-5608.00165.Liu, L. 2000. “Labor Location and Agricultural Land Use in Jilin, China.” Professional Geographer l52 (1): 74–84.
Löfgren, O. 2004. “Concrete Transnationalism? Bridge Building in the New Economy.” Focaal 43: 57–76. doi:10.3167/092012904782311489.
Masquelier, A. 2002. “Road Mythographies: Space, Mobility, and the Historical Imagination in Postcolonial Niger.”American Ethnologist 29 (4): 829–856. doi:10.1525/ae.2002.29.4.829.
Michail, E. 2017. “The Road: An Ethnography of (im)mobility, Space, and Cross-border Infrastructures in the Balkans.”Social History 42 (4): 573–574. doi:10.1080/03071022.2017.1359986.
Misak, R. F., J. M. Al-Awadhi, S. A. Omar, and S. A. Shahid. 2002. “Soil Degradation in Kabd Area Southwestern KuwaitCity.” Land Degradation and Development 13: 403–415. doi:10.1002/ldr.522.
Myadar, O. 2019. “The City, Memory, and Ideology in Ulaanbaatar: Inscribing Memory and Ideology in Post-socialistMongolia.” In The City as Power: Urban Space, Place and National Identity, edited by A. Diener and J. Hagen, 57–70.Lahman: Rowman and Littlefield.
Naveeda, K. 2006. “Flaws in the Flow: Roads and Their Modernity in Pakistan.” Soc. Text 24 (89): 87–113. doi:10.1215/01642472-2006-012.
Neupert, R. F. 1999. “Population, Nomadic Pastoralism and the Environment in the Mongolian Plateau.” Population andEnvironment 20 (5): 244–413. doi:10.1023/A:1023309002127.
Oxford Business Group. 2013. The Report Mongolia 2013. London: Oxford Business Group. http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/product/report-mongolia-2013
Pandya, V. 2002. “Contacts, Images and Imagination. The Impact of a Road in the Jarwa Reserve Forest, Andaman Islands.”In On the Road: The Social Impact of New Roads in Southeast Asia, edited by F. Colombijn, 799–820. Leiden: KITLV.
Pedersen, M. A., and M. Bunkenborg. 2012. “Roads that Separate: Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Inner Asian Desert.”Mobilities 7 (4): 555–569. doi:10.1080/17450101.2012.718938.
Porath, N. 2002. “A River, A Road, and Indigenous People and an Entangled Landscape in Riau, Indonesia.” tot de Taal-,Land- en Volkenkunde 158 (4): 769–79.
Pottier, P. 1963. “Axes De Communication Et Developpment Economique.” Revue Economique 14: 128–148.Priess, J., C. Schweitzer, F. Wimmer, O. Batkhishig, and M. Mimler. 2011. “The Consequences of Land-Use Change and
Water Demands in Central Mongolia.” Land Use Policy 28 (1): 4–10. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2010.03.002.Reeves, J. 2011. “Resources, Sovereignty, and Governance: Can Mongolia Avoid the ‘resource Curse’?” Asian Journal of
Political Science 19 (2): 170–185. doi:10.1080/02185377.2011.600165.Reeves, M. 2017. “Infrastructural Hope: Anticipating ‘independent Roads’ and Territorial Integrity in Southern
Kyrgyzstan.” Ethnos 82 (4): 711–737. doi:10.1080/00141844.2015.1119176.Richardson, H. W., C.-H. C. Bae, and S. C. Choe, eds. 2011. Reshaping Regional Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Publishing.Rickard, C. A., A. Mclachlan, and G. I. H. Kerley. 1994. “The Effects of Vehicular and Pedestrian Traffic on Dune
Vegetation in South Africa.” Ocean and Coastal Management 23: 225–247. doi:10.1016/0964-5691(94)90021-3.Rodgers, D., and B. O’Neill. 2012. “Infrastructural Violence: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Ethnography 13 (4): 401–
412. doi:10.1177/1466138111435738.Roseman, S. R. 1996. “‘How We Built the Road’: The Politics of Memory in Rural Galicia.” American Ethnologist 23 (4):
836–860. doi:10.1525/ae.1996.23.4.02a00090.Rossabi, M. 2005. Modern Mongolia: Khans, Commissars, to Capitalists. Berkeley: University of California Press.Sabloff, P. L. W. 2002. “Why Mongolia?: the Political Culture of an Emerging Democracy.” Central Asian Survey 21 (1):
19–36. doi:10.1080/02634930220127928.Shrair, A. 2009. “Roads to Poverty: Exploring the Impacts of Economic Integration on Socioeconomic Conditions and Land
Use in Northern Guatemala.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 28: 456–469. doi:10.1177/0739456X08329472.Sneath, D. 2006. States of Mind: Power, Place and the Subject in Inner Asia. Bellingham: Western Washington University
Press.Sneath, D. 2010. “Political Mobilization and the Construction of Collective Identity in Mongolia.” Central Asia Survey 29
(3): 251–267. doi:10.1080/02634937.2010.518009.Star, S. L. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (3): 377–391. doi:10.1177/
00027649921955326.Sugimoto, H., U. Kawagishi, K. Kitano, I. Gonchigbat, and N. Hirota. 2007. “Living Environment of Nomads Residing on
the Outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Dispositional Characteristics from the Perspective of a Comparison ofNomads and People Living in Ger Fixed Residences in the City.” Journal of Asian and Architecture and BuildingEngineering 6 (2): 28–290.
Thomas, P. 2002. “The River, the Road, and the Rural–Urban Divide: A Postcolonial Moral Geography from SoutheastMadagascar.” American Ethnologist 29 (2): 366–391. doi:10.1525/ae.2002.29.2.366.
Timmons, J. R. 1992. “Squatters and Urban Growth in Amazonia.” Geographical Review 82 (4): 441–467. doi:10.2307/215201.
Timmons, J. R., and A. Hite. 2000. From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change.Oxford, Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Trankell, I.-B. 1993. On the Road in Laos: An Anthropological Study of Road Construction and Rural Communities.Uppsala: Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University.
Trivdi, B. P. 2003. “Mongolia Highway Will Threaten Gazelles, Critics Say.” National Geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0320_030320_tvgazelles_2.html
Tsuji, H. 2001. Key Transportation Corridors in Northeast Asia: Overcoming Physical and Regulatory Impediments- ERINAREPORT. Niigata: Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia. erina.or.jp
Turganbayev, Y., and A. Diener. 2019. “Kazakhstan’s Evolving Regional Economic Policy: Assessing Strategies of Post-Socialist Development.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 59 (5–6): 657–684. doi:10.1080/15387216.2019.1586559.
UNFAO Mongolia. 2009. “United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.” http://www.un-mongolia.mn/new/?page_id=440
Urry, J. 2007. Mobilities. Oxford: Polity.Vannini, P., ed. 2009. The Cultures of Alternative Mobilities: Routes Less Travelled. Farnham: Ashgate.Vergunst, J., and A. Árnason. 2012. “Introduction: Routing Landscape: Ethnographic Studies of Movement and
Journeying.” Landscape Research 37 (2): 147–154. doi:10.1080/01426397.2012.669955.Virilio, P. 2006. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, Translated by Mark Polizzotti. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).Weinhold, D., and E. Reis. 2008. “Transportation Costs and the Spatial Distribution of Land Use in the Brazilian
Amazon.” Global Environmental Change 18 (1): 54–68. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2007.06.004.Willerslev, R., and M. A. Pedersen. 2010. “Proportional Holism: Joking the Cosmos into the Right Shape in Northern
Asia.” In Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology, edited by T. Otto and N. Bubant,262–278. Malden: MA Blackwell.
Wilson, F. 2004. “Towards a Political Economy of Roads: Experiences from Peru.” Development and Change 35 (3): 525–546.doi:10.1111/dech.2004.35.issue-3.
