Debt as an Urban Chronotrope in Mongolia

Morten Axel Pedersen

doi:10.1080/00141844.2016.1192213

Debt as an Urban Chronotrope in Mongolia

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Based on fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar, this article explores the spatio-temporal properties of debt relations in urban Mongolia. During socialism, relations of debt were mostly restricted to closed circuits of friends, whose exchange of objects and favours often stretched over a long time. With the transition to capitalism in the 1990s, both the number of debt obligations and the size of loans expanded dramatically, without being subject to similar curtailment or other formalization. The result is that ‘no one pays back what they owe’, as people complain. Departing from the seemingly peculiar fact that people nonetheless keep on lending others money – including debtors they hardly know or with a bad reputation – I argue that debt has acquired a gift-like nature in Ulaanbaatar, and show how the temporality of such ‘generalized debt’ is inseparable from the neo-liberal deregulation of residential spaces in this and other postsocialist cities.

Original language	English
Article number	Special Issue: Urban TimesIMES
Journal	Ethnos. Journal of Anthropology
Volume	82
Issue number	3
Pages (from-to)	475-491
ISSN	0014-1844
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2016.1192213
Publication status	Published - 27 May 2017
Event	Urban Times - St. Andrews, United Kingdom Duration: 25 Feb 2010 → …

Workshop

Workshop	Urban Times
Country/Territory	United Kingdom
City	St. Andrews
Period	25/02/2010 → …

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10.1080/00141844.2016.1192213

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title = "Debt as an Urban Chronotrope in Mongolia",

abstract = "Based on fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar, this article explores the spatio-temporal properties of debt relations in urban Mongolia. During socialism, relations of debt were mostly restricted to closed circuits of friends, whose exchange of objects and favours often stretched over a long time. With the transition to capitalism in the 1990s, both the number of debt obligations and the size of loans expanded dramatically, without being subject to similar curtailment or other formalization. The result is that {\textquoteleft}no one pays back what they owe{\textquoteright}, as people complain. Departing from the seemingly peculiar fact that people nonetheless keep on lending others money – including debtors they hardly know or with a bad reputation – I argue that debt has acquired a gift-like nature in Ulaanbaatar, and show how the temporality of such {\textquoteleft}generalized debt{\textquoteright} is inseparable from the neo-liberal deregulation of residential spaces in this and other postsocialist cities.",

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AB - Based on fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar, this article explores the spatio-temporal properties of debt relations in urban Mongolia. During socialism, relations of debt were mostly restricted to closed circuits of friends, whose exchange of objects and favours often stretched over a long time. With the transition to capitalism in the 1990s, both the number of debt obligations and the size of loans expanded dramatically, without being subject to similar curtailment or other formalization. The result is that ‘no one pays back what they owe’, as people complain. Departing from the seemingly peculiar fact that people nonetheless keep on lending others money – including debtors they hardly know or with a bad reputation – I argue that debt has acquired a gift-like nature in Ulaanbaatar, and show how the temporality of such ‘generalized debt’ is inseparable from the neo-liberal deregulation of residential spaces in this and other postsocialist cities.

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Debt as an Urban Chronotrope in Mongolia

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