Nomadic Pastoralism among the Mongol Herders makes an important contribution to the body of scholarship on the study of nomadic pastoralism, specifically that of Mongol herders. The book explores the dynamic social relationships that are fostered between humans, animals, and the environment in pastoral communities on the two sides of the Mongolian-Russian border. The book would appeal to Inner Asian studies scholars broadly and scholars interested in pastoral societies more specifically.
I situate this review in the context of my own theoretical approach to nomadism. I have written in the areas of nomadism in Mongolia and critiqued the ways in which the lure of the extraordinary constructs and perpetuates the myth of nomads. In my own book, I argue that herders in Mongolia serve as props for the voyeuristic gaze of scholars, travelers, and visitors to Mongolia as a way to perpetuate this myth.Footnote 1 Anthropology as a discipline was borne out of the desire to know, write about, and represent the Other—the primitive, nonwhite Other. In particular, ethnography has drawn criticism for its tendency to essentialize research participants as objects of analysis and subjective interpretation. As researchers, we must reckon with the uncomfortable relation inherent in ethnographic studies, wherein what is ordinary and mundane to research participants is seen as extraordinary to the researcher. We must grapple with the ethical concerns of analyzing, documenting, and dissecting the intimate domains of home and the private lives of research participants.
I read Nomadic Pastoralism with the same uneasiness about peeking into the lives of people and into their homes. On one hand, the book is a voyeuristic exploration of exotic locations, cultures, and peoples by a Western scholar who observes, documents, and narrates routine aspects of people for (I assume) a mostly Western audience. Critical engagement with Charlotte Marchina's own social and epistemological positionality would have been helpful to contextualize the relations fostered during the research and de-essentialize the research subjects. In the narrative, Marchina is both a trusted household member and a researcher. How did she reconcile these two seemingly contradictory roles, and, perhaps more critically, how did the hosts feel about being hosts and research subjects at once?
In spite of this reservation, I believe that Nomadic Pastoralism provides a complex portrayal of the everyday among Buryat and Mongolian pastoralists that goes beyond Orientalist voyeurism. The book is based upon Marchina's twenty months of cumulative fieldwork among several different herder families in Buryatia, a Russian republic bordering Mongolia to the north, and Mongolia. By living with the families and taking part in their daily lives, Marchina acquired intimate knowledge of the quotidian realities of pastoral livelihood. Marchina weaves together her ethnographic accounts with an analysis of the political history of the region to provide layered contexts to understand the differences in Mongolian and Buryat households. In addition, her use of GPS tracking devices captured important empirical data used to track movement patterns among humans and animals.
Marchina's primary theoretical framework is to conceptualize a triadic relationship between humans, animals, and the environment, and she explores this dynamic and often harmonious relationship throughout the book. In doing so, she examines the patterns of herders’ seasonal movements and how differences in movement are informed by sociopolitical differences within communities separated by the Mongolian-Russian border. In chapter 1, Marchina discusses the shifts in the triadic relations in response to the evolving political landscapes and socioeconomic conditions in Buryatia and Mongolia. Marchina documents how climate change has brought new challenges for herder communities and how these challenges are exacerbated by the lack of institutional and material infrastructure that collectives once provided in both Buryatia and Mongolia. She also notes the resilience of pastoral communities and discusses how different communities have navigated and responded to the increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions and degradation of their traditional pasture.
Within the dynamic, triadic relations between the humans, animals, and the environment, Marchina introduces the concept of nutag, which is explored in depth in chapter 2. To Marchina, nutag is “[t]he territory in which Mongolian and Buryat pastoralists nomadize” as well as relations pastoralists maintain with “other humans and the master spirits of the land” (p. 63). She adds human-herd animal relations to this broad definition. Marchina's definition attempts to capture layered meanings of attachments that pastoralists maintain to a particular geographic space. To me, in the simplest sense, nutag is where one feels a deep sense of belonging.
In this chapter, Marchina walks the reader through the different ways that animals harness attachment to their nutag facilitated by various forces of attraction (p. 73). According to her, pastoralists in the region believe that the more intelligent an animal is, the greater its sense of attachment to its nutag. A horse, for instance, displays an acute spatial and temporal sense and knows how to find its nutag in spite of distances of time and space.
Marchina also dedicates a considerable section of the chapter to “invisible entities that inhabit [a nutag]” (p. 78). She discusses the importance of ovoo and various religious and shamanic rituals that are expressions of reverence for one's nutag. David Sneath similarly argued that “the ovoo ceremony embodied and enacted the relations between human and superhuman forces associated with the land.”Footnote 2 For Sneath, however, these ceremonies are also political acts.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to understanding how humans and animals coexist and how the spatial organization of the pastures is managed. Marchina discusses how herders manage their multispecies livestock comparatively in Buryatia and Mongolia (also within different ecological zones in Mongolia). It is a study of complex human relations among neighbors, of thievery, and of negotiating common space shared by humans and animals.
These relations are further explored in chapter 4. Marchina covers a range of disparate topics in this chapter beginning with dogs, transitioning to livestock breeds and ending with the locals’ concerns of the “evil eye.” The discussion of the role that dogs play in pastoral livelihoods, both in Buryatia and Mongolia, is quite illuminating. According to Marchina, when “Mongolian and Buryat pastoralists form a community with animals [including dogs], it is not with just any animals, it is only with animals that belong to the territory they live in” (p. 144). Yet, despite this sentiment, Marchina remarks on the poor treatment dogs sometimes receive in Buryat and Mongolian pastoral households, including not getting fed enough. She contrasts one Buryat household's treatment of the family's dog to that of the Russian auxiliaries who treat the dog much more humanely. It appears as though the dog embodies subtle markers of the difference that distinguish pastoralists in the region from Western societies.
Marchina concludes the book by recalling her last visit with the families in Buryatia and Mongolia who provided much of the ethnographic data for her book. She notes transformations in these families’ livelihoods in the eight years since she first visited them. This observation is perhaps a nod to the ever-changing human-environment relations that are at the heart of pastoralism. It is an aptly reflective and contemplative ending for a book that offers an intriguing and informative study of pastoral societies in Inner Asia.
As I finished reading this book, I was left pondering the effects of the knowledge produced by this work on the very people who served as subjects of the study, as Vine Deloria Jr. did nearly fifty years ago.Footnote 3 As Deloria argued, what separates critical engaged work from traditional ethnographic work is its capacity for positive changes in the lives of those who serve as research subjects.
