Dasan Zoxicoxui Forum

"Dasan Zoxicoxui" (дасан зохицохуй) means "adaptation", in the compound sense of "habituation" (dasax) and "harmonization" or "coordination" (zoxicox/zoxicuulax).

The "Dasan Zoxicoxui Forum" is a Mongolian-language virtual forum intended to provide a space for discussion among herders, policymakers, merchants, producers, development project managers, scholars, and others who are involved in production or governance in the Mongolian pastoral sector.

One of the central difficulties in governing the Mongolian pastoral sector today concerns the lack of regular communication channels between herders and other groups. Herders are consulted by local officials during Citizens' Assemblies (irgediin niitiin xural, annual town hall meetings), occasional visits by the microdistrict chairman (bagiin darga), and Herders' Advisory Meetings (malchdyn zo'vlogoon). But these instances of communication are periodic and, insofar as they relate to state-level policy, indirect. In this sense, herders tend to be excluded from the ongoing governance discourses that are located primarily in Ulaanbaatar. Herders also have difficulty participating in discussions in the "public sphere", due to their lack of access to print media and Internet. Although access to news is increasing with the penetration of direct-to-home satellite in the countryside, herders--and rural interests more generally--are under-represented in newscasts and in online news sites and forums.

This forum aims to create an accessible platform for discussion of policy and practical issues concerning extensive livestock production in Mongolia. Based on the open source StatusNet microblogging application, the forum is accessible at very low cost through a text-only mobile interface--targeted mainly at nomadic herders--as well as through a web interface intended for desktop users. The minimalist, Mongolian-language interface is designed to be easy to use, even for non-technical users.

Technical maintenance and coordination of the forum is provided by the Culture & Development Research Centre in Ulaanbaatar.

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