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City of felt and concrete: Negotiating cultural hybridity in Mongolia's capital of Ulaanbaatar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Alexander C. Diener  and
Joshua Hagen
Alexander C. Diener
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA, Email: diener@ku.edu
Joshua Hagen
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, USA
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Abstract

Capital cities play an integral role in the construction of national identity. This is particularly true when the capital is the country's only major urban center. Over the course of its history, Mongolia's capital of Ulaanbaatar has been periodically reshaped to reflect competing trajectories of national culture. This article examines the evolving symbolism of architecture, urban design, and public space in Ulaanbaatar as a means of exploring Mongolia's complex negotiation between its traditional culture (mobile pastoralism and Shamanism/Buddhism), its socialist legacy, and globalization. Amidst the rampant social change of the last two decades, rather ambiguous national narratives have emerged in Mongolia. Like the capital's cityscape, these narratives reflect aspects of both recent and distant pasts, as well as contemporary economic, political, and social realities. This article reveals how increasingly palpable global economic and cultural practices are fomenting material change in the current phase of Ulaanbaatar's evolution. A combination of secondary source research and observations drawn from several months of fieldwork provide the basis for a discussion of the city's role as a forum for cultural contestation and national reform.

Keywords

architectureperi-urbanismhistorical narrativeMongoliapublic spaceUlaanbaatarurban planningnationalism
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 41 , Issue 4: Special Issue: From Socialist to Post-Socialist Cities Guest Editors: Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen , July 2013 , pp. 622 - 650
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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