Conquest and change : Mongol herding in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia

Abstract

I examine changing herding practices in Xilingol, Inner Mongolia, contrasting the perspectives of herders with those of local officials and scientists. I also carried out comparative fieldwork in a similar steppe environment in Mongolia. I present a model for research which involves exploring multiple perspectives, including different scales and domains. The model has broad applicability, but was designed in response to pressing problems involving human-environmental interactions. In 1992-1993, from the point of view of many Chinese scientists and policy makers, traditional Mongol herding in Inner Mongolia was in a state of crisis, with widespread land degradation and frequent, crippling natural disasters. Their response involved sweeping changes to what was perceived as an inefficient and unproductive herding system. Xilingol herders were facing an additional challenge with the end of communal herding. In Mongolia, herders were also adjusting to the .end of the collective era. However, political, social and historical factors had contributed to significantly different development agendas each side of the Chinese/Mongolian border. Like the officials and scientists, Xilingol herders recognised the impact of climatic extremes, environmental change, and the potential to increase their standard of living. However, their interpretations differed in several crucial ways. Notably, herders did not perceive the climate as a series of recurrent natural disasters, but rather as a variable, harsh, but well-understood part of their normal environment. From their point of view, traditional herding techniques allowed them to respond to this variability by exploiting environmental heterogeneity. In contrast, scientists either saw herder methods as 'backward', or assumed that traditional skills were no longer practised. I documented a high level of environmental knowledge among herders, involving identification and careful use of resources at different scales. This allowed them to provide for their stock during the normal seasonal cycle, and to respond to more extreme periods. Where their fundamental technique, movement of stock, was limited, herders were frustrated. They were no longer able to avoid the worst excesses of climatic extremes, nor move away from areas where heavy grazing was leading to environmental change. Inner Mongol herders blamed increasing local populations, associated with Han immigration, for the loss of land and restrictions on nomadism. Competing assessments of Mongol herding partly reflect divergent responses to variability. I explore the influence of scale on interpretations of heterogeneity and, more generally, argue for the importance of a critical awareness of scale.