Moral Economic Transitions with Hedwig Waters
Hedwig Waters is a cultural and economic anthropologist with research interests in topics of debt, wildlife, and moral economic transitions in Mongolia.
She currently works as a Horizon Europe ERA Postdoctoral Fellow at Palacky University in the Czech Republic. Earlier this month, her first book – Moral Economic Transitions in the Mongolian Borderlands: A Proportional Share – was published by University College London Press as part of their series “Economic Exposures in Asia.” Since the 1990s, Mongolia's transition to a market democracy has shifted the economic, political, and cultural landscape of the country. The book examines "Magtaal," a pseudonym for the rural township on the Chinese border in which Waters conducted her fieldwork. Through a careful ethnography, the book links the broader transformation of Mongolia to local borderland lives, especially with respect to debt and wildlife. In this episode of the podcast, Hedwig discusses her ethnographic research, her theoretical intervention within economic anthropology, and the process of shaping such work into her new book.
