Polluted money, polluted wealth : emerging regimes of value in the Mongolian gold rush
Abstract
In Mongolia's gold rush economy, money has become such an emphatically localized and contentious object that its cash value cannot be presumed. Drawing on Mongolian notions of "polluted money," I argue that, in this context, cash value is determined not only by a banknote's status as legal tender but also by local understandings of its materiality. Confronted with the intense pollution that attaches to gold miners' money, shopkeepers change the face value of the money and effectively set higher prices in a region with increasing numbers of dependent customers. Rather than challenging or subverting money's national indexicality, this redenomination of state currency reflects people's critical position within a troubled economy of pollution. This case demonstrates that currency, like any other object, is a social medium that is intimately tied to the physical and cosmological world.
Citation
High , M M 2013 , ' Polluted money, polluted wealth : emerging regimes of value in the Mongolian gold rush ' , American Ethnologist , vol. 40 , no. 4 , pp. 676-688 . https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12047
Publication
American Ethnologist
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0094-0496Type
Journal article
Rights
© High, M. (2013). Polluted Money, Polluted Wealth: Emerging Regimes of Value in the Mongolian Gold Mines. American Ethnologist, 40(4), 676-688. 10.1111/amet.12047
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.