Enclosing the Gold-Mining Commons of Mongolia: the Vanishing Ninja and the Development Project As Resource
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814 Current Anthropology Volume 59, Number 6, December 2018 Enclosing the Gold-Mining Commons of Mongolia The Vanishing Ninja and the Development Project as Resource by G. Munkherdene and David Sneath Online enhancements: supplemental material Since its emergence in the mid-1990s, unauthorized small-scale gold mining—widely known as “ninja mining”—has grown to become a central element of Mongolia’s informal economy, engaging tens of thousands of people in seasonal, unregulated, and occasionally dangerous labor. In this paper we set out to show that the story of ninja mining is il- lustrative of the wider transformation of political economy that Mongolia has experienced, in which a de facto public resource was created in the wake of the collapsed state socialist economy, only to be progressively privatized and enclosed by increasingly powerful mining company interests. We examine the implementation of a development project aimed at providing sustainable livelihoods for those engaged in unauthorized mining. Drawing upon anthro- pological critiques of development, we explore the ways in which the project, while arguably succeeding in its own terms, failed to meet the expectations of the miners involved. Committed as it was to working within the new private property regime for land introduced by “neoliberal” reforms, the project constructed the ninja “problem” in terms of a lack of formalization and training. It was ultimately unable to address the fundamental issues of property relations and access to resources that lie at the heart of the ninja phenomenon. Since its emergence in the mid-1990s, the phenomenon of the perspective, ninja mining is not simply a result of precarity, “ninja” unauthorized artisanal gold mining of Mongolia cap- poverty, and underemployment, but a response to the ap- tured considerable journalistic and scholarly attention. The pearance of a new resource, one that is now rapidly shrinking spectacle of thousands of toiling people honeycombing the in the face of legal and commercial appropriation. This new landscape with hand-dug pits (see figs. S1–S7, available online) resource emerged already entangled in the unique historical led to a number of development initiatives designed to improve and social context of the Mongolian landscape, and this is the working conditions and security of the miners concerned. reflected in the nature of the de facto commons that it created Development assessments of ninja mining have represented it and the resulting conflicts over access. Historically, the pro- as a response to poverty, as a livelihood “safety net,” and have duction of new resources has led to competition and conflict in focused upon what was conceived of as a workforce within a Mongolia, particularly in the case of land, which has been new, informal sector of the economy in need of formalization subject to a succession of different property regimes.1 Para- and regulation. doxically, perhaps, the reaction of development agencies to the In this paper we set out to show that the story of ninja mining ninja phenomenon was generative of new resources, and new is illustrative of the wider transformation of political economy sites for conflict and competition. Ultimately, however, the in- that Mongolia has experienced, in which a de facto public re- ability to address the fundamental issues of property relations source was created in the wake of the collapsed state socialist that lay behind the ninja phenomenon made it impossible to economy, only to be progressively privatized and enclosed by fully address the problems they give rise to. increasingly powerful mining company interests. From this Mongolia’s Scavenger Economy: Surviving the 1990s G. Munkherdene is a Lecturer in the Department of Humanities, In 1990 the Soviet-style party-state establishment that had gov- Mongolian University of Science and Technology (Ulaanbaatar, Mongo- lia [[email protected]]). David Sneath is Reader and Director erned Mongolia since the 1920s relinquished its monopoly of of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit in the Department of So- power and introduced a multiparty parliamentary system. With cial Anthropology of the University of Cambridge (Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF, United Kingdom [[email protected]]). This paper 1. Following Verdery (2003), we take “property regime” to indicate a was submitted 1 III 17, accepted 22 IX 17, and electronically published system of property relations that “organize people with respect to one 13 XII 18. another, and to things, goods and values” (18). q 2018 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2018/5906-0008$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/700961 This content downloaded from 131.111.184.102 on July 31, 2019 03:02:11 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Munkherdene and Sneath Enclosing the Gold-Mining Commons of Mongolia 815 the collapse of the USSR and the COMECON Soviet trading new policies as the transformation of society into an adjunct to bloc, the Mongolian state leadership rushed to make the tran- the market in which the Soviet-style regime was reincarnated as sition from a centrally planned to a market economy. Under the aneoliberal“night watchman” state, and parts of the Com- supervision of the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Devel- munist nomenklatura successfully reinvented themselves as opment Bank (ADB), in 1991 Mongolia’s neophyte free market- an oligarchic plutocracy by acquiring ownership of the few re- ers launched a “shock therapy” program to rapidly establish a maining sources of large-scale wealth. Mongolia’s socialist-era globally integrated free market economy, similar to that in- industrial sector was largely abandoned alongside Mongolia’s troduced by Boris Yeltsin’s administration in Russia, and with socialist welfare system, which was starved of resources. similarly disastrous economic results (Goldman 2003; Griffin The effect was to make a large part of the national population 1995; Nolan 1995).2 The strategy reflected neoliberal theory as dependent upon a kind of “scavenger economy” in which the Harvey (2005:2) characterized it, in which the economy should be key to realizing value was the location, appropriation, and sale of emancipated from the political structure and allowed to assume resources left over from the collapse of the state-planned econ- its latent “natural” form, composed of private property and the omy. Scrap metal, for example, extracted from closed-down market.3 Although in 1991 the Mongolian president Punsalma- factories, railway lines, and Soviet military bases became a major agiin Ochirbat (1996:235–236) predicted that the country would sector of the economy (Byambabaatar 2016). In the capital city rapidly develop another Asian Tiger economy, Mongolia experi- of Ulaanbaatar, begging street children and dusty figures col- enced something more akin to development in reverse; most lecting discarded plastic bottles became common sights. In the state-owned enterprises collapsed, and unemployment and un- peri-urban districts of Ulaanbaatar and across the country it be- deremployment soared. As in Russia, incomes, public services, came common to see piles of scavenged materials in the house- and living standards plummeted (Griffin 1995:viii; World Bank holdenclosures(hashaas)oftheyurt(ger)orcabindwellingsthat 1994:19). The number of people living below the poverty line most households lived in. Even the bricks and concrete slab increased from almost none in 1989 to more than 33% in 1998 sections of blocks of flats made derelict by the collapse of infra- (United Nations Systems in Mongolia 1999:5; World Bank structure and services were extracted and could be seen piled up, 1994:41). As Griffin (1995:12–13) notes, the severity of the ready for sale or reuse (fig. 1). economic collapse reflected both the loss of Soviet economic aid and the way in which a new regime of private ownership was The Rise of the Ninja rapidly and destructively introduced.4 The country was promoted as a resource pool for global One of the most dramatic developments of the 1990s was the markets. Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene (2011:65) describes the appearance of “ninja” miners. These were generally small groups of people who went to areas with gold deposits and began to fi 2. From the outset, Mongolian government policy was heavily in- mine and extract gold without any of cial authorization. The “ ” fluenced by external development agencies, particularly the IMF and origin of the term ninja is not entirely clear. The most com- ADB (Griffin 1995:10; Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene 2011:63; Rossabi 2005: mon explanation is that when wearing the large plastic bowls 43–48). used for gold panning on their backs, they resembled the TV 3. Harvey (2005:2) describes neoliberalism in this sense as “a theory Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The association of the ninja of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can with stealth, however, resonates with another aspect of this best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and practice—its unauthorized or illegal nature. The term has a skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private faintly derogatory tone, however, and most of those involved do property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to not much like being called ninja. The development literature create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such generally uses the term “artisanal and small-scale gold mining” practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and in- tegrity of money. It must also set up those military, defense, police, and (ASGM) and bichil uurhai (micro mining) in Mongolian. The legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights practice mushroomed, and by the late 1990s, many tens of and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. thousands of people were engaged in ninja mining.