“Custom” and Contestation: Land Reform in Post-Socialist Mongolia

SummaryCurrent state and development-led land reform agendas encompass formal recognition of customary rights to an historically unprecedented degree. Through analysis of historical transformations in customary tenure amongst Mongolia’s herders, this paper maps the dynamic interplay between state influences, customary rights and practice. It questions unrealistic dichotomies between “state” and “custom” in derivation of rights, though examining process of “institutional bricolage” at four case study sites. Results indicate the limitations of both state and particular manifestations of community-led land reform in promoting desirable or predictable trajectories of change, and the centrality of local reworkings of particular interventions in shaping actual practices.