ABSTRACT
Chapter Seven examines post-Soviet Mongolia. The chapter explores the impact of the collapse of the socialist system on Mongolia and the ways that Mongolians have radically re-imagined their national identity apart from the Soviet Union and the political bindings of the socialist era. In so doing, the chapter examines how various post-socialist social changes, as well as legal and policy debates, have shaped a new nomadic national imaginary. The chapter analyses different policies such as land privatization, decollectivization and sedentarization that have altered and remade the Mongolian cultural map. Ironically, as these policies have further removed Mongolia from a nomadic reality, the romantic and essentialized notion of Mongolia as a land of nomads has only grown stronger.
