Aspirational laws
Performative governance in Mongolia's fang feng (Saposhnikovia divaricata) trade for the TCM market
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13136604 |
|---|---|
| Authors | H A Waters (0000-0002-6203-0550, Palacký University Olomouc, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-15 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Frontiers in Human Dynamics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2673-2726 • E-ISSN: 2673-2726 |
| Publisher | Frontiers Media (PUBLISHER • CH) |
| DOI | 10.3389/fhumd.2025.1541858 |
| OpenAlex | W4415214549 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 60 |
Since Mongolia's transition from socialism in 1991, wild medicinal plants have been harvested from public lands and exported to diverse Asian medicinal markets. This article examines how the post-socialist, market-democratic state has struggled both to regulate the illegal outflow of wild flora and to build a national development industry around cultivated medicinal plants using the instruments of law, techno-science, and research. These competing trade dynamics are explored through the case of fang feng ( Saposhnikovia divaricata ), a plant popularly used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to treat Covid-19. Wild fang feng, prized for its high metabolic content, is especially lucrative on global markets, fueling a robust gray economy in Mongolia. In response, the Mongolian government—along with its network of industrial, political, and academic consultants—has produced a series of “aspirational laws”: frameworks imbued with the hope that their presence will eventually bring national development dreams into being. Although often unrealizable or unenforceable in practice, these laws serve other functions, as explored in the anthropology of the nation-state and economic performativity: they simplify a complex, fragmented market to a narrative of techno-scientific progress, projecting an image of active governance while creating pathways for elite financial gain. This interplay between aspirational regulation and gray economy continues to shape the moral and material terrain of Mongolia's export-oriented medicinal plant trade
China · Corporate governance · Elite · Fang · Lawlessness · Narrative · Performative utterance · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
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Neither Donkey nor Horse
Do Economists Make Markets?
Modern Mongolia
Border Work
Rule of Experts
Fixing the Economy
The History of Chinese Medicine in the People’s Republic of China and its Globalization
What is informality? (Mapping) “the art of bypassing the state” in Eurasian spaces - and beyond
Generating capitalism for independence in Mongolia
Collaboration for survival in the age of the market
Science in Russia and the Soviet Union
An Alternative to the “Indigenous” in Early Twenty-First-Century China
Toxic Care
The Power of Faulty Paperwork
An Essay on Framing and Overflowing
China's Camel Country
Marx Went Away--But Karl Stayed Behind
Introduction
Fiscal Disobedience
Toward an Ethnography of the National Economy
Inside the Economy of Appearances
Economy of Words
Enclosing the Gold-Mining Commons of Mongolia
The Pharmaceutical Assemblage
Performative Agency
Economization, part 1
Chinese Propriety Medicines
| Highly cited | No |
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