Managing Development and Infrastructure: Understanding State Engagements with Rural Communities in Mongolia

The proposed research will to build upon my DPhil research in Mongolia by focusing on understanding how government administrators engage with rural households around infrastructure and development projects such as the World Bank's Sustainable Livelihoods Project and the Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mega-mine. My work plan addresses the GCRF thematic priorities of "understanding the relationship between social institutions, physical infrastructure and the natural environment" and the theme of migration, mobility and development. I will draw upon the large amount of qualitative data that I collected over the course of my DPhil project as well as data from a socio-economic survey of rural households living near the Oyu Tolgoi mine, which I conducted since finishing my DPhil in February 2016. I am particularly interested in exploring ways to actively engage rural households in the development planning process in order to contribute to economic and social welfare on both national and local scales in Mongolia. My expertise as a social scientist working in the fields of economic geography and anthropology as well as my long-term engagement in the region of Inner Asia will enable me to effectively achieve these aims.
I have conducted independent long-term ethnographic research on rural livelihoods and the political economy of mobile pastoralism in Mongolia since 2004 and I speak, read and write Mongolian. My DPhil thesis, The Changing Meaning of Work, Herding and Social Relations in Rural Mongolia, is based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork involving extensive participant observation. It examines the role of mobile pastoralism and rural work as a medium of social reproduction for families in Mongolia. This work is reported in four academic articles, which examine herder household management, decision-making, and the spatial aspects of household social and economic production. Rural work practices are used as a lens to examine wider processes of social change around gender, labour, finance and mobility. As standalone pieces and as a united work, the articles show that herding work practices are an important reference point in political subjectivities, concepts of citizenship and administrative practices that idealize the state. The policies and practices of government institutions, including non-state agencies, play powerful roles in the particular forms through which relations are spatialized. By taking this approach and prioritizing herder critical reflections on their own lives, I show how herder efforts to access resources, such as formal schooling for children, spatially transform the labour, finance, and mobility systems of households.
My work presents three key arguments with reference to these concepts. The first is that patron-client relations continue to play a strong role in family hierarchies and wider social alliances used to gain access to needed resources and services. Secondly, I argue that pastoralist work is an integral part of governance and the moral authority of the state. Finally, attention to the spatial organisation of household economies, including household splitting and new types of mobility, reiterates the significance of place in human agency. These findings specifically identify themes around household decision making and public administration, which provide a basis to address the GCRF challenge areas around sustainable livelihoods and inclusive growth and building effective institutions. The actions I plan to take to address these challenge areas are to resubmit academic articles which I wrote as part of my DPhil, write new academic articles and collaborate with colleagues on interdisciplinary co-authorships, conduct short-term follow-up field work, consolidate and continue to build networks of academic and non-academics working on issues related to understanding social and environmental change and governance, and participate in a work exchange focused on social and environmental safeguard policies.