Introduction

The urban has come to occupy a particular position in Mongolian culture, which continues to be represented as rooted in traditions of nomadic pastoralism. Although pastoralists and their ruling elites frequently had antagonistic relations with the great urban cultures of China, and conceived of their own lifestyles in contrast to Chinese urban and agricultural life, there was a long history of indigenous centres of power within pastoral Mongolian society itself. As Mongolian elite culture adopted Buddhism and became incorporated into the Manchu (Qing) state, however, these centres of power became increasingly identified with fixed structures – monastic and urban centres. Mongolian notions of the rural and the urban can be seen to be rooted in these histories and reflect the unique nature of relations between pastoral and urban lifestyles.

Mongolian culture has inherited distinctive sets of notions, dispositions and institutions oriented towards the rural, local and domestic on the one hand, and towards centres, elites and political structures on the other. State socialism invested massively in urban and industrial centres and the ways of life associated with them; making the identification between political centres, elites, and the city even stronger.

As a heuristic device, this chapter identifies two integrated complexes of norms, values and skills. One of these reflects the interests of the political elite, and is oriented towards urban and political centres, and the other which is based upon the day-to-day concerns of common pastoralists, and is oriented towards the domestic unit, subsistence tasks and local relations. The first is termed ‘elite-centralist,’ and the second ‘rural-localist.’ These complexes resemble Bourdieu's notion of habitus in some ways. Bourdieu (1977) notes that the cognitive structures of the habitus are shaped by the relations of domination, and in turn they reproduce them, and this is also a central feature of the process that I wish to describe. However, elitecentralist and rural-localist complexes are not mutually exclusive. Most Mongolians are acquainted with both to some extent, although lifestyle, occupation and personal inclination tend to privilege one over the other in terms of the personal orientation of individuals. The relationship between these two conjectural poles of the cultural spectrum can be thought of as ‘symbiotic’ because in many ways they are complementary, reflecting and reinforcing each other.