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Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the recognition of the political potential of anthropology in Mongolia through the authors' experiences of the generative role that anthropological inquiry has had in shaping recent interdisciplinary research in Ulaanbaatar on mobility and social equity.

Paper long abstract:

The wide-ranging potential of ethnography to foreground detailed and varied lived experiences and anthropology's ability to draw out unique conceptual and theoretical reflections is a valued ethical and intellectual process in Mongolia, where anthropologists have been active in public life for some time. In a climate of a growing urban population in the capital Ulaanbaatar, unequal infrastructural access, a fluctuating economy and an ongoing distrust of politicians' motivations, state-led forms of data collection on economy, health, education and many other social spheres are often viewed by some Mongolians to be lacking or incomplete. Promised forms of economic growth that failed to materialise have left many disillusioned with market mechanisms or forms of economic modelling, giving rise to a wider public interest in the types of insights that a discipline like anthropology can offer that move beyond such confines. In the years following significant economic flux after 2013, anthropology has been seen as a vehicle to try and circumvent so-called 'gaps' in publicly available data, to find specific interventions that better reflect and grow out from emic-centric needs and wishes.

This paper will discuss this recognition of the potential of anthropology within Mongolia through the authors' experiences when publicly communicating ethnographic research on economy in Mongolia and through examining the generative role that anthropological inquiry has had in shaping recent interdisciplinary research in Ulaanbaatar on mobility and social equity.