Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia: Life in the Gap

It is the cover image that first brings the reader into the fold of “the gap” that is the conceptual anchor of Rebecca Empson's Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia: Life in the Gap. A goddess figure looms large, peering above the title with her focused gaze, rising amid a tangle of strings from which hang marionettes of human figures, balloons, lungs, wind chimes, and other thematically related objects depicted against a moving sky of scattered clouds, a swirl of dandelion seeds, a coming tornado. This is Air (Agaar), one of five paintings by the artist Nomin Bold, which the author has beautifully reproduced in color. The series depicts five Mongolian women as “guardians of the five elements” (vi), of earth, air, fire, water, and wood, which compose the world. These images punctuate and give rhythm to the book, suspended between the portraits of five female...