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Spectral Presences: Perceptions of the Future Mediated Through Imagined Structures

By uczipm0, on 21 April 2015

This post was written by Joseph Bristley, a UCL ESRC-funded anthropology PhD student affiliated to the Emerging Subjects project.  He recently gave a paper on ‘Temporality and Nationalism in a Mongolian Desert Economy’ as part of the Third Oxford Interdisciplinary Desert Conference.  This two-day international conference was held between 16th and 17th April 2015 at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, and was organised by Dr Troy Sternberg, Ariell Ahearn, and Dr Henri Rueff.  The official conference programme can be downloaded here.

My paper was included in the conference’s panel ‘Pastoralism and the State in Inner Asia’, which also included presentations on camels and land use in Inner Mongolia; different rhetorics surrounding pastoralists in Mongolia and elsewhere; mining and risk in Mongolia; and the distribution of deer stones.

I give a brief summary of my paper here and a few reflections on the conference. My paper analysed ideas around the proposed Sainshand Industrial Park (Sainshand Аj Üildveriin Tsogtsolbor) in Dornоgobi province: a vast, unrealised project including industrial facilities such as copper smelters, coal gasification plants, and cement works. This site, it is envisaged, will be connected within a broader infra-structure development project linking Sainshand on the one hand to the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine and Tavan Tolgoi coalfields, and on the other to the city of Choibalsan in eastern Mongolia. Already a locus on the Trans-Mongolian railway between Ulaanbaatar and China, Sainshand’s status as a point on a large trade network will be significantly scaled-up by the construction of the Industrial Park. The Park’s aim is to diversify the Mongolian economy, produce processed minerals for export – currently, unprocessed minerals are exported to China on a large scale – and to create a large number of jobs for Mongolians.

Joseph Bristley presenting his paper on ‘Temporality and Nationalism in a Mongolian Desert Economy’ at the 3rd Oxford Interdisciplinary Desert Conference

Despite a number of reasons hampering the implementation of the Industrial Park it nevertheless has a kind of ‘spectral presence’ in Sainshand, being “already there without being there” (Derrida 1994: 98). In this sense, it resembles the un-built Power Station #5 in an eastern suburb of Ulaanbaatar, studied by Morten Pedersen, which “appeared to loom large in peoples’ minds” despite its “limited degree of physical materialisation” (Nielsen and Pedersen 2015: 253).

In fact, the lack of materiality of an operational Industrial Park, I argued, opened up a discursive and imaginative space for people living there in which the future of the city – and the country as a whole, which would benefit enormously from the completed project – could be imagined. It also cast perceptions of the future itself as particularly significant in framing peoples’ perceptions of their city and country. Thus Batsük, who moved to Sainshand several years ago, told me with some pride that the Sainshand Industrial Park would be the second biggest industrial project in the country after Oyu Tolgoi. Thinking about how work on the Park would unfold in the not-too distant future, he listed the number of ‘factories’ to be built, and the number of workers he expected to be employed at some of these. Batsük said that the population of the area – then at 22,000 for the district of Sainshand City – would surge as thousands of builders and industrial workers would work on the implementation and operation of the new Industrial Park.

The way perceptions of the future are mediated through as-yet un-built structures and unmade objects of the Industrial Park is mirrored in another area of Sainshand’s life: the rebuilding of Khamarin Khiid. This monastic complex, founded by the famous Buddhist poet Danzanravjaa from 1818 onwards, was a centre of Buddhist culture until its destruction by communist forces in 1938. It has been undergoing reconstruction since the fall of communism in 1990, with the aim of rebuilding its former temples, mediation caves, and ‘energy centre’. A number of its original sites – such as the ‘Energy Centre’ – have been restored to date, the former monastic complex providing a template for its own rebuilding by not being there.

Through these two examples, I argued that the Industrial Park and Khamarin Khiid project are conceptually suggestive of each other: both draw on absences in the present to open a particular vista onto the future, and articulate perceptions of the future as a background against which particular projects can unfold; and both do so through positing the construction of particular types of building whose significance runs beyond Sainshand (the Industrial Park is going to be of national importance exporting goods from Mongolia, whilst the monastery draws visitors from throughout the country, and from across its borders).

Both schemes aim to establish sites of transformation with a particularly national resonance. The Khamarin Khiid complex is the location of the world’s ‘energy centre’, a site of spiritual transformation where beneficial energy can be converted and harnessed by visitors from across Mongolia and beyond. The Industrial Park is a site of transformation in a different register, where national resources will be transformed in ways that will benefit Mongolia. Both suggest the ways in which beneficial transformations and the conversion of ‘raw’ materials lie within particular national contexts and temporalities.

My paper’s audience consisted of a number of researchers, and I was asked questions about the proposed funding of the Industrial Park, and the prominence of Buddhism in post-socialist Mongolia.

The Third Oxford Desert Conference was a two-day event, which drew together scholars from around the world to explore a number of desert-themed issues on an interdisciplinary basis. Panels included the topics of ‘Dryland Ecosystems and Water’, ‘International Development Perspectives on Drylands’, and ‘New Technologies in Desert Research’. The conference presented an excellent opportunity for scholars from different backgrounds working on deserts to exchange ideas.

12 Responses to “Spectral Presences: Perceptions of the Future Mediated Through Imagined Structures”

  • 1
    jdierkes wrote on 21 April 2015:

    Discursive salience of as-of-yet-unbuilt structures in Mongolia really a very interesting notion. The list of further examples is long: Ulaanbaatar beyond Power Station #5 mentioned: subway, single university campus, airport with speedy rail link and/or casino
    Nationally: various rail projects

    Joseph’s presentation certainly prodded me to think more about the role of these structures in policy-making.

    The counter-example to this spectral presence would be Oyu Tolgoi, I would argue. Not only is the mine in production already, but its outsized impact on Mongolia is felt already.

    Note also that while we see a (sometimes overwhelming) plethora of strategic plans by the Mongolian government, including many plans that are awaiting implementation, this is not entirely unique to Mongolia, nor to a development context. In our province of British Columbia, for example, political discussions have been framed to some extent by the (fiscal) impact of future liquefied natural gas projects.

  • 2
    Joseph Bristley wrote on 22 April 2015:

    I’m very glad you liked the concept of spectral presences applied to Sainshand, thanks very much Julian for your really insightful comments on infra-structure development in Mongolia. I suppose what might make the ‘spectral presence’ of infra-structure projects in Mongolia different from those in other parts of the world could be a particular orientation towards the future informed by socialist thought – the future as something in which particular projects can be built – or maybe a Buddhist temporality which is also quite future-oriented (re Maidar, reincarnate saints

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