From kin to contract: labor, work and the production of authority in rural Mongolia

Abstract

This contribution explores the re-emergence of herding contracts amongst pastoralists in the neoliberalizing contexts of Uguumur, a small rural district in eastern Mongolia. Contrary to past research on hired herding, it is argued that clientage and herding employment are a result of a diverse array of causal factors including disaster and market integration, but, more importantly, are also a result of the way rural forms of social inequality have become both key nodes for the circulation of power and the negotiation and production of authority. As such, this paper aims to demonstrate how these emergent labor dynamics craft useable hegemonies of work and worthiness as frames of legitimacy in the ‘age of the market’.