Dear list members,
I am happy to announce the publication of the book Fear and Fortune: Spirit worlds and emerging economies in the Mongolian gold rush, published by Cornell University Press.
Brief description:
What is the lure of gold? And at what price are we willing to pursue it? Fear and Fortune explores how a present-day gold rush in Mongolia has brought into question people's common understandings of wealth and value. Tracing the continuities and discontinuities between human and nonhuman worlds, this book follows the paths of gold as it is excavated and converted into 'polluted money', entering local shops and Buddhist monasteries, joining the illegal gold trade and returning as 'renewed' money for the 'big bosses' of the gold mines. Although national and international commentators rejoice in Mongolia's immense mineral wealth, the participants in the gold rush manoeuvre dangerously within a financially profitable yet morally charged economy of mineral extraction. With gold retaining strong ties to the landscape and its many spirit beings, the fortune of the precious metal is inseparable from the fears that surround mining. Fear and Fortune demonstrates how in the 'land of dust' money now circulates as a key vector of adversity and as an effectively devalued currency associated with angered spirits and impending calamities. Rather than being exclusively authored and authorized by a state and its central bank, this book shows how national currencies can slip into alternative value regimes and become part of an altered cosmoeconomic reality. Addressing how our lives and those of others are intimately intertwined, it offers an expansive and capacious approach to understanding the high stakes involved in human economic life.
For more information, and to order the book at a 30% discount, please visit http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100783240 and enter promotion code 09CAU6 during checkout.
All the best,
Mette High
Lecturer in Social Anthropology | Department of Social Anthropology | University of St Andrews | 71 North Street | KY16 9AL | UK
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