{"product_id":"fear-and-fortune-9781501707551","title":"Fear and Fortune","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eMongolia over the last decade has seen a substantial and ongoing gold rush. The widespread mining of gold looks at first glance to be a blessing for a desperately poor and largely pastoralist country where people''s lives were disrupted by the end of the USSR and tens of millions of livestock were killed in devastating droughts in the early 2000s. Volatility and uncertainty as well as political and economic turmoil led many people to join the hopeful search for gold. This activity, born out of uncertain times, poses an intense moral problem; in the land of dust, disturbing the ground and extracting the precious metal is widely believed to have calamitous consequences. 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. Tracing the continuities and discontinuities between human and nonhuman worlds, Mette M. High follows the paths of gold as it is excavated and converted into\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Fear and Fortune is an important and timely ethnographic account of the Mongolian gold rush. Not only does it make a useful contribution to the burning issue of the environmental, social, and cultural consequences of mining economies, but it does so in an accessible and engaging style, rendering people's daily lives with an intimate yet tactful touch.\" -- Grégory Delaplace, coeditor of \u003ci\u003eFrontier Encounters\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Fear and Fortune is a well-crafted, highly accessible, and very attractive read on the Mongolian gold rush and the spirit forces that underpin it. Mette M. High fully succeeds in drawing in and keeping the reader's attention while presenting her findings at a brisk pace. She offers up some highly original discussions of what 'money’ constitutes in a part of the world where the same value is neither consistently nor automatically attributed to the national currency. Mongolians conceptualize, handle, and transact money in ways that fall outside of the usual expectations surrounding it. High enables us to have a uniquely up close and personal view onto gold mining and its international circuitry, based on a sensitive study of Mongolian sociality, miners, religious knowledge and practice, and ways of envisioning and experiencing what counts as `value’ in the Mongolian gold rush today.\" -- Katherine Swancutt, author of \u003ci\u003eFortune and the Cursed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eList of Illustrations ix\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgmentsxi \u003cbr\u003e Note on Transliteration and Translationxv \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIntroduction: Land of Fortune1 \u003cbr\u003e 1 Burden of Patriarchy25 \u003cbr\u003e 2 Power of Gold43 \u003cbr\u003e 3 Angered Spirits59 \u003cbr\u003e 4 PollutedMoney77 \u003cbr\u003e 5 Wealth and Devotion93 \u003cbr\u003e 6 Trading Gold111 \u003cbr\u003e Notes131 \u003cbr\u003e Glossary139 \u003cbr\u003e References141 \u003cbr\u003e Index157\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409323434327,"sku":"9781501707551","price":22.79,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781501707551.jpg?v=1730506418","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/fear-and-fortune-9781501707551","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}