Difference between revisions of "Mungu idekh (Mongolia)"

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|style="font-size:1.1em;"| ''Mungu idekh'' (‘eating money’) is one of a number of terms used in contemporary Mongolia to criticize ineffective leaders and leadership. In the Mongolian cultural region, leaders’ individual qualities of ‘moral exemplarship’ (Humphrey 1997) are of major importance to political legitimacy. As discussed by High (2017), money and the value of money itself are bound up with the correct management of expansive social relations of production; cash may become polluted and polluting (''buzartai'') if generated through amoral and socially harmful practices or may, alternatively, gain value if generated through exchange with other social groups and networks productive of wealth. High gives the example of a Mongolian gold buyer who travels from a far-flung [[mining]] area to the capital to sell gold for Chinese Yuan to Chinese buyers, saying that this “renews” money and gives the mining area “good money” as it is invested in local businesses and buys expensive gifts (121-3). Political leaders must use money to effectively expand social relations and generate fortune from them, for instance through the management of business (Bonilla 2016; Bonilla and Tuya 2018) and construction (Fox 2016). ‘Eating’ money, on the other hand, means to consume it mundanely and exclusively, in an individual’s household, homeland-based, ethnic, corporate or other exclusive networks (from the perspective of which, of course, the money in question may not be seen to be simply ‘eaten’).

|style="font-size:1.1em;"| ''Mungu idekh'' (‘eating money’) is one of a number of terms used in contemporary Mongolia to criticize ineffective leaders and leadership. In the Mongolian cultural region, leaders’ individual qualities of ‘moral exemplarship’ (Humphrey 1997) are of major importance to political legitimacy. As discussed by High (2017), money and the value of money itself are bound up with the correct management of expansive social relations of production; cash may become polluted and polluting (''buzartai'') if generated through amoral and socially harmful practices or may, alternatively, gain value if generated through exchange with other social groups and networks productive of wealth. High gives the example of a Mongolian gold buyer who travels from a far-flung [[mining]] area to the capital to sell gold for Chinese Yuan to Chinese buyers, saying that this “renews” money and gives the mining area “good money” as it is invested in local businesses and buys expensive gifts (121-3). Political leaders must use money to effectively expand social relations and generate fortune from them, for instance through the management of business (Bonilla 2016; Bonilla and Tuya 2018) and construction (Fox 2016). ‘Eating’ money, on the other hand, means to consume it mundanely and exclusively, in an individual’s household, homeland-based, ethnic, corporate or other exclusive networks (from the perspective of which, of course, the money in question may not be seen to be simply ‘eaten’).

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