This panel explores the ways in which a specific economic tradition, pastoralism, has shaped specific cultural institutions and the manner in which those institutions, in turn, confirmed and extended the domination of that economic base. Most particularly the panel examines the ways in which both traditional pastoralism and its cultural elaborations face unprecedented challenges in the new ‘global economy.’

Tserendash Namkhainyambuu: A Contemporary Mongolian Herder
Mary Rossabi, Fieldston School

The Modern Mongolian Herder Economy: The End of Nomadism?
Morris Rossabi, City University of New York

These papers—intended as a pair—focus on the life and writing of Tserendash Namkhainyambuu, and their implications within the context of late 20th century Mongolia. Namkhainyambuu was raised as a herder, designated Labor Hero at age 29, elected in 1992 to the Khural, and became an acclaimed writer-philosopher on the life of the herder in the period of Socialism and during the subsequent shift to a privatized economy. These papers are based on Tserendash Namkhain-yambuu’s writings and on a study of Mongolia in transition. Mary Rossabi’s contribution concerns the life and writings of Namkhainyambuu while Morris Rossabi will address a broader study of Mongolia in transition. Together the papers will assess the changes in the herding society since the collapse of communism and will analyze whether the end of Mongolian pastoral nomadism is in sight, or whether it can be saved and restored.

Christopher Atwood, Indiana University

From 1900 to 1925, the Mongolian plateau entered the world trade in wool, skins, and live animals. World War I created a strong export market for wool, cashmere, and camel’s hair, as well as for marmot and other low-quality skins. The main buyer was the United States. Goods could reach the international market either to the south to Tianjin and Dairen (from Khölön Buir), or to the north through Soviet Russia to Vladivostok.

The same years also saw vigorous nationalist movements of the Mongols of Mongolia and Khölön Buir, efforts by Mongolian authorities to increase their revenues in and intense geopolitical competition between China and Russia. The growing wool and skin trade was an obvious source of revenue. Meanwhile in the 1920s both in Mongolia and in Khölön Buir pro-Russian Mongol nationalists sought to redirect the direction of trade from the Chinese ports to Russia and to exclude Anglo-American firms.

The paper describes the major features of the international animal-products trade in the early twentieth century and shows how the Mutual-Aid Cooperatives fit into the Mongolian regimes’ geopolitical and state-building agendas. The discussion compares Soviet and Mongolian nationalist strategies in independent Mongolia and in Khölön Buir (under Chinese sovereignty from 1920), and explains how autarchic Soviet and Japanese nationalist movements forced Mongolia and Khölön Buir out of this international trade in the 1930s.

Robin Mearns, World Bank

One manifestation of the co-evolution of pastoral livelihoods and cultural institutions in Mongolia is a national land policy framework that has been unusually supportive of extensive livestock production systems. The origins of this policy framework can be traced back to codes of governance introduced by Chinggis Khan. Several scholars have noted the dual regulation of pastoral land use by formal and informal institutions over long periods and in spite of major changes in political regime.

This co-evolved land policy framework, however, is coming under increasing threat. Unprecedented challenges stem from the demands placed on the pastoral livestock sector itself, serving as it has as a "safety net" for the economy. A dramatic increase during the 1990s in the human and livestock populations, and in the degree of inequality among herders, has given rise to significant conflict over pasture, and in some areas threatens rural governance more broadly. Mongolia’s land policy is challenged by globalizing tendencies in the professional practice of international development. These often tend to narrow rather than broaden the range of policy options that may be appropriate in particular historical and geographical contexts. Most relevant, in the Mongolian context, is the tendency for external observers and policy advisers to assume that patterns of land use based on human and livestock mobility are somehow anachronistic. They therefore tend to recommend policies imported from other historical and geographical contexts.