SlideShow

1. Ph.D. Research Proposal Presentation

1.1. Outline of the presentation

1. Scope, context, and objectives
2. Methodological and theoretical approaches
3. Technical aspects

1.2. 1. Scope, context, and objectives

Visiting in Yero'o', 2009

1.2.1. General context

• Project focuses on Mongolian nomadic pastoralists: mobile herders of sheep, goats, cattle, camels, and horses

• Pastoralists currently make up approximately ⅓ of Mongolia's population

• Nomadic pastoralism has historically existed as a highly flexible set of practices, enabling the adaptive use of relatively marginal natural resources (especially desert areas)

• Nomadic adaptive strategies remain useful to Mongolian pastoralists, in adapting to socio-economic and ecological change and uncertainty

1.2.2. Research context

• Current policy and development interventions in Mongolia have often restricted rather than enhanced adaptive capacity

• Research on CBNRM, resilience, commons, ACM, etc. has focused on "communities"; often not applicable to mobile resource users

1.2.3. Research approach

• Goal: generate ethnographically grounded understanding of adaptive capacity as a governable dimension of social-ecological resilience and as potential development aim

• Work with approximately ten xot ail herder groups in two sites, over the course of a full calendar year

• Observe, document, and discuss everyday pastoral resource use practices with study participants

• Everyday actions embody conscious or unconscious adaptations to (or actualizations of) social positionings, resource access, etc.

1.2.4. My positioning in the research

• Prior work & study in Mongolia

• Relatives (Ulaanbaatar, Darxan, Erdenet, Yero'o', Bayan-O'lgii)

1.2.5. Research sites

The research sites are Sainshand in Dornogobi (Dornogov') aimag, and Yero'o' sum in Selenge aimag.

1.2.5.1. Satellite map

1.2.5.2. Yero'o' sum

• Part of Selenge aimag - the "breadbasket of Mongolia"
• Former state farm, specializing in fine-wool sheep
• Relatively high population density (2.2 persons / km²)
• Low mobility; some herders nearly sedentary
• Conflict with farms and gold mines
• Mainly cattle, sheep, goats, and horses
• Herders engage in extractive resource use

1.2.5.3. Moving house

1.2.5.4. Yero'o' sheep

1.2.5.5. Gathering berries

1.2.5.6. Shearing sheep

1.2.5.7. Sainshand

• Administrative centre of Dornogobi
• Low population density (0.3 persons / km²)
• Herders move up to 200 km / year
• Mainly sheep, goats, camels
• Low market integration
• Intangible production strategies

1.2.5.8. Sacred mountain

1.2.5.9. Camels

1.2.5.10. Winter camp

1.3. 2. Methodology and theory

Clotted cream, Yero'o', 2009.

1.3.1. Xot ail

• Primary contemporary herding unit
• Xot = "city", "settlement"; Ail = "family"
• Property is generally not shared (i.e., livestock is owned by individual member households), but usually there are shared labour arrangements
• Flexible composition
  • Xot ails often subdivide in summer (otor) and regroup in winter

  • Related households & individuals frequently enter and exit the group

  • Members generally linked by kinship, but this can be defined in various ways
  • 6-7 households in the xangai, or 2-3 households in the Gobi

1.3.2. Xot ails and their significance

• Adaptive value
  • Essential to adaptive strategies (flexible organization and production strategies)

  • Binding relationships of trust and obligation (reciprocity & redistribution)

• Limitations
  • Competition and distrust between xot ails (resource access, market commodities)
  • Social difference exists within and among groups

1.3.3. Xot ails and governance

• Xot ails promote vertical/network linkages (e.g., between pastoralists and non-pastoralists) rather than horizontal linkages (collective action involving similarly-situated producers)
• No formal integration into state governance
  • "Kinship = corruption"
  • Registration by membership or territory/property limits flexibility

1.3.4. Research significance of xot ails

• Cluster sampling: Work intensively with members of ~5 xot ails in each research site
• Explore positionings/difference within the group
  • Decisions tend to be made informally, but nominally senior (male) members make significant decisions affecting the entire group
  • Gendered division of labour, but roles are not rigidly defined
  • Roles / tasks--and reciprocity obligations--nominally correspond to age rank

1.3.5. Process-actor focus

Looking concretely at everyday actions as realizing (and explicating) relations:

1. Among actors (social network)
2. Between actors and material resources (natural resources, commodities)
3. Between actors and cultural resources (knowledge, intangible values)

1.3.6. Everyday actions and standpoints

1. Social relations [class, etc.] exist only as active practices (Smith 1987:135).
2. Multiple actors may be located in the same environment but have different positionings existing through these active practices.
3. Sets of active relations can help to explicate cultural institutions ("pastoralism", "dairy production", "class").

1.3.6.1. Social-ecological environment

The problem is to trace linkages between elements of the social-ecological environment (shown here: actors, resources, and institutions).

1.3.6.2. Resource use

Investigating pastoral resource use activities (processes). Actors and actions risk being generalized and undifferentiated.

1.3.6.3. Herder―Resources

Investigating relationships between actor A and other actors and resources. Each of these relationships is maintained through a series of (potentially overlapping) everyday practices, which become the focus of study.

1.3.6.4. Example: An actor's relationship to milk

1.3.7. Adaptive dimensions of pastoral activities

• Mobility (seasonal, "crisis" movements)
• Extensive use of natural resources
• Flexible social groupings for labour (xot ail, otor, etc.)
• Adaptive management of multi-species herds
• Diverse and redundant production processes (with some degree of intra-group specialization)
• Shifts between pastoral and non-pastoral activities (mobility/sedentism)
• Generalized use of tools, etc.

1.3.8. Contemporary contexts of adaptation

• Changing commodity prices
• Uncertain temperature and precipitation levels ➡ Climate change
• Evolving domestic needs (domestic cycle)
• Competition over resources

1.3.9. Some current structural problems limiting adaptive capacity

• Central government policy favours "intensification" (large-scale, specialized, mechanized, capital-intensive production)
• Little investment in rural service provision, infrastructure, or governance (growing urban/rural class difference, unmanageably high transaction costs for remote herders)
• "Tragedy of the commons": overgrazing, competition among herders over grazing areas
• Depressed / volatile commodity prices, encouraging unsustainable herd sizes
• Competition between herders and large-scale resource users (mines, farms)

1.3.10. Everyday practices and structural problems

Pastoralists' everyday production activities are specifically related to the above context. For example:

• Keeping specific types of livestock as a function of commodity prices (e.g., cashmere)
• Sedentarization or movement closer to urban centres
• Using other groups' grazing areas in the off season
• Tighter intergration with urban kin networks (commodity/income exchange, kin as merchants, social capital in access to government services)
• Participation in development projects, workshops, etc. (typically involving new forms of social organization or production strategies)
• Actions to highlight intangible value of pastoral processes and commodities: "pure products of nature", actions denoting a sacred natural landscape, etc.

1.3.11. Qualitative dimensions

My interest lies in exploring the qualitative, social-cultural dimensions of these processes. For example:

• What implicit or explicit decisions are involved? How are they made? (habit, economic choice, cultural value of the product or process, risk aversion, sustainability concerns...)
• How do various actors see these processes differently (as a result of the different relations they "activate" in their own lives)?
• These processes extend at their limits to less visible areas (e.g., commodity chains, exchange with more distant kin, larger institutional structures). How do small-scale, everyday actions contribute/respond to partial knowledge of these people, resources, or institutions?

1.4. 3. Technical aspects

Annotating video recording with Gnome Subtitles

1.4.1. Audiovisual recordings and commentary

• Use audiovisual field recordings to focus on specific activities (pastoral practices)
• Interactive (conversational rather than observational)
• Iterative (review and discuss)
• Comparative (explore differences)
• Natural group settings

1.4.2. Iterative process outline

1.4.3. Examples

RecentVideos > MefD20090609T091502 (Video of Doyo setting up her still to make milk liquor / shimiin arxi)

1.4.4. Dissemination strategies (secondary outcomes)

• Formal presentation of results to Mongolian colleagues and invitation of comments / responses
  • Dornogobi Museum
  • Yero'o' Local Studies Office
  • Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry (Livestock policy department)
  • Department of Anthropology, National University of Mongolia
• Virtual forum on governance issues in the pastoral sector
• Ethnographic archive

1.4.5. Timeline

1.5. Acknowledgements

This research is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship) and the Government of Manitoba (Manitoba Graduate Fellowship).

1.6. The End

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