Fifty years of transformation : the decline of nomadic pastoralism in China — A case study from Inner Mongolia (original) (raw)
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AHP 37 Herds on the Move: Transformations in Tibetan Nomadic Pastoral Systems
Daniel Miller. 2015. Herds on the Move: Transformations in Tibetan Nomadic Pastoral Systems in Gerald Roche, Keith Dede, Fernanda Pirie, and Benedict Copps (eds) Asian Highlands Perspectives 37 Centering the Local, A Festschrift for Dr. Charles Kevin Stuart on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 207-220. Eight thousand years ago, an event took place that changed the world. In the mountain valleys where modern Iraq, Turkey, and Iran intersect, some enterprising farmers determined that it was easier to make a living by specializing in raising livestock than growing crops. They left their farms and moved into the grasslands, herding their animals over a vast area, traveling to different seasonal pastures throughout the year with their belongings and homes rolled up and carried on the backs of animals. This was the first stage of what later became known as nomadic pastoralism, and the people that followed the herds were called nomadic pastoralists, or simply, nomads. Sheep and goats were first domesticated about 10,500 years ago, but it took another couple thousand years before some hardy farmers, who raised both crops and livestock, ventured into the steppes and developed a culture that specialized in raising livestock. Since they first left the fertile, agricultural valleys with their livestock and moved into the steppes, they have been out there on the edge of civilization – out where the vast rolling grasslands meet the purple haze of the horizon – living a life that many aspire to, but which few are able to follow.
Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, 2018
The last six decades of Chinese state policies has led to the transformation of the Evenki reindeer herders’ domestic economy, a more systematic use of fixed homes and the reduction of the grazing areas. Paradoxically, the herders’ mobility has become more flexible and extensive, while herding skills remain a fundamental component of their way of life. The present paper explores the contemporary nomadic practices of the Evenki by examining their annual moves between village and camp. The constant movement of the herders between these two complementary spaces reflects their strategies for adapting to ecological and political challenges.
Between Cash Cows and Golden Calves: Adaptations of Mongolian Pastoralism in the'Age of the Market'
Nomadic Peoples, 2008
Pastoralism in Mongolia has increasingly been portrayed by two powerful and mutually reinforcing discourses. First, the neo-liberal discourse enthusiastically embraced and reproduced by most of the Mongolian political elite constructs pastoralism as backward and unproductive, in need of modernization, and sedentarization. Second, an increasingly powerful essentialist discourse argues for the preservation of 'traditional' Mongolian pastoralism. By presenting a stereotypical image of 'the nomadic culture' on the brink of extinction, outsiders (e.g. NGOs, the tourist industry) become stakeholders in the debate on Mongolian identity and the country's development path. They also help (unwillingly perhaps) reinforce the image of the pastoralist as obsolete and 'timeless'. The article shows that the realities of Mongolian pastoralists lie beyond these two constructs. The pastoralists have taken steps toward adapting to the new socio-economic realities: they use veterinary services, try to use the market system and social services. Yet their adaptive capacity is severely limited by unfavourable social and economic circumstance endorsed by the State.
Multiresource Pastoralism, Dynamic Foodways, and Ancient Statecraft in Mongolia
Land, 2023
Pastoral nomadic regional confederations, states, and empires have assumed a prominent place in the histories of the Eurasian steppe zone; however, anthropological theory devoted to understanding these political systems is still debated and relatively inchoate. A major question concerns the techniques of political integration that might have brought together dispersed mobile herders under the aegis of these complex, large-scale steppe polities. The first such polity in East Asia, the Xiongnu state (c. 250 BC–150 AD) of Mongolia, has been characterized as a polity built by mobile herders, but in fact the steppe populations of this period followed quite diverse lifeways. Most notably, the establishment of more permanent settlements for craft and agricultural production has complicated the typical narrative of the pastoral nomadic eastern steppe. This study considers ways to conceptualize these interesting variations in lifeway during the Xiongnu period and raises the question of how they might have promoted a novel Xiongnu political order. We analyze transformations within the Egiin Gol valley of northern Mongolia to better understand the organizational, productive, and settlement dynamics and present the first regional landscape perspective on the local transformations incurred by the creation of a Xiongnu agricultural hub. To understand these radical changes with respect to the long-term pastoral nomadic and hunting-gathering traditions of the valley’s inhabitants, Salzman’s flexibility-based model of multiresource pastoralism is of great use. Egiin Gol valley transformations indeed attest to a scale of political economy far beyond the bounds of this local area and suggest an innovative role for indigenous farming in Eurasian steppe polity building.
Pastoral Mobility and Pastureland Possession in Mongolia
The Mongolian Ecosystem Network, 2012
The question of complex socio-political organization among pastoral nomadic groups has long posed a theoretical challenge for anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists alike. The problems arise from a disciplinary tendency to view pastoralists within a narrow economic and ecological framework but, in addition to this, the basic conception of 'complexity' has itself proven problematic. The definitions of complexity built originally upon systems theory and political economy place emphasis on organizational criteria derived primarily from sedentary societies with class stratification, intensive subsistence economies, and centralized administration. In this paper we argue that these classic definitions of complexity have not provided a good fit for analyzing the kinds of political organizations constructed by pastoral nomads of the Eurasian steppe zone. For that reason, we explore new ways of conceptualizing complex organization based on processes of integration, scale, and mobility. This approach offers a better explanation for material patterns documented across two neighboring valleys in northern Mongolia and provides substantial insight to the sub-regional polities preceding the rise of the Xiongnu state during the late first millennium BCE.
Pastoral practices in High Asia
Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research, 2012
Hunting and wild animals have long been part of pastoralist life across the Tibetan Plateau, and especially in the northern Changtang region. Most recent research on Changtang hunting has focussed upon economic aspects in relation to conservation issues, wildlife ecology and status, human-wildlife confl icts and modern development. In contrast, the present study emphasizes social and cultural features of subsistence hunting practice and establishes some historical depth with which to contextualize data from recent decades. This chapter offers a rare diachronic perspective on hunting in a case study area located in the northwest of the Tibet Autonomous Region (China) and utilizes ethnohistorical evidence from throughout the twentieth century and contemporary ethnographic data from repeat fi eldwork visits to the area. The results demonstrate that hunting in Changtang areas is best conceived of as a dynamic arena of practice. A subsistence hunting pattern for the region is described in relation to local ecological factors which seasonally determine hunting activity. This pattern is then viewed in relation to two historical periods of regional-level social and economic transition: a pre-modern wealth division between local pastoralist groups and the modern Communist period of collectivization into pastoralist communes. In conclusion, a range of local attitudes towards wildlife are examined in an attempt to open alternatives to the predominant economic, conservation and development-centred discussions of hunting and wild animals in Changtang pastoral communities.
Arizona Anthropologist, 2007
Despite the long historical and archaeological record of interaction between Mongol herders and Chinese agriculturalists, pastoralists in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia have resisted pressure to adopt subsistence economies dependant on the cultivation of plant foods. While some evidence suggests that many of these steppe regions are more ecologically suited to herding than farming, their northern frontiers have proven to be agriculturally viable. Therefore, the persistent resistance to sedentary agricultural modes of production should be traced to long‐standing cultural values at odds with sedentism and agricultural toils. By considering several lines of evidence, including environmental limitations and the constraints of pastoralist land‐use, Mongol resistance to the adoption of cultivation is seen as having been driven by the development of ideological systems incompatible with the adoption of agriculture.