Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia

Review "This book encompasses at once a history of the emergence of a Mongolian nation and its ongoing struggles over positioning during the postsocialist transition. Based on fieldwork in the capital of Mongolia--Ulann Baatar--and other sites, Bulag recounts the complex history of the Soviet making of aunitary nationality out of a complex landscape of nearly twenty Mongol ethnic groups. . . .Informed equally strongly by British social anthropology and by postcolonial theory, writing here as an expert historian and analyst and there as a passionate Mongol, Bulag's is a masterful rendering of thecultural politics that demarcate the figure of the Mongolian." --Louisa Schein in American Anthropologist"This is an excellent study of the Mongol struggle to reestablish their identity."--Choice Product Description In this unique and important study of what it means to be a Mongolian in today's world, Dr. Uradyn E. Bulag draws on a vast amount of illuminating research to argue that all Mongols are in fact confronted with a choice between a purist, racialized nationalism (which they inherited from theSoviet discourses of the past) and a more open, adaptive, and inclusive nationalism (which would accept diversity, hybridity, and multiculturalism). The book calls into question the idea of Mongolia as a homogeneous place and people, and urges that unity be sought through a country-wideacknowledgment of diversity. About the Author Uradyn E. Bulag, Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.