“Inner Mongolia” appears nowhere in the title – or even the index – of China’s Camel Country. A few decades ago, it would have been sold as an ethnography of “Inner Mongolia,” China’s autonomous region spanning China’s northern frontier with the independent state of Mongolia. But Thomas White is tracing how his ethnographic subjects make their way when “Inner Mongolia” and “Mongols” increasingly disappear from public discourse. This is an ethnography (in part) of that disappearance, and how people, who remain Mongols, are revisualizing their identity in response. (For a more recent appraisal of this disappearance, see T.S., “Constructing a de-ethnicised Inner Mongolia,” Made in China, 3 December 2024).

It is also an ethnography of state-led environmentalism through the Alasha camel and the camel culture of the Mongols in Alasha League (a league is a sub-regional administrative division in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region). As a desert region, Alasha was traditionally a centre of two-humped (Bactrian) camel pastoralism. By 2003, however, the number of camels in some places had fallen by more than 85 per cent (p. 2). In 2008, local “folk intellectuals” in the Alasha region seized the climate of “intangible cultural heritage fever,” rising environmental consciousness, and the revaluation of the primitive as healthy and unspoiled and campaigned successfully to have the Alasha camel breed protected (pp. 12, 40). Camel numbers have since rebounded and White’s ethnography, conducted off and on again from 2012 to 2019, explores the diffuse networks contesting what it means for Alasha to be “China’s Camel Country.”

From his current position as lecturer in China and sustainable development at King’s College London, one might assume that White approaches this story simply as a Sinologist. And, indeed, he is thoroughly conversant with the debates in the field of Chinese development studies. However, China’s Camel Country began as a dissertation in Cambridge University’s well-known Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit, and White conducted his fieldwork bilingually, in both Mongolian and Chinese. His bibliography covers books in both Mongolian and Chinese and he gives a thorough reading of the English-language literature on both Mongol ethnicity and pastoralism in China.

After the introduction, the first chapter, “Situating pastoral heritage,” reviews the histories of pastoralism and of Mongol autonomy in Inner Mongolia, and their connection. After reviewing the massive shifts in Chinese policy, he concludes by noting how since 2000, the ethnic and regional framing – Mongols and Inner Mongolia – has given way to framings that are either larger – grassland culture, Silk Roads – or smaller – Alasha culture. Not coincidentally, these framings also highlight ethnic contact, exchange and mingling. Despite the trans-ethnic framing of these brands, “pastoralism remained strongly associated with the Mongols” (p. 52). And in the forefront of negotiating the riptides of Chinese policy are a group anyone with experience in the Mongolian steppe will recognize: “folk scholars,” retired cadres and locally recognized experts in Mongol heritage operating in what he calls the “penumbra of the state” (p. 8).

Chapter two, “The politics of livestock rituals” describes conflicting commitments around the “camel rituals” inscribed as part of UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage. These rituals are complicated by differences between mainstream Buddhist Mongols and the distinctive Muslim (Khoton) Mongol community in Alasha, between “folk scholars” and lamas, and between officials and civilians. Chapter three, “Rural sociality of camel husbandry” covers the policies governing herds and pastures as well as the forms of multi-ethnic sociality that these institutions encourage. Viewed from the grassroots, environmental policies of the Chinese “appear as a jumble of heterogenous mechanisms that often pull in different directions” (p. 86). Mongol residents sometimes feel nostalgia for the days of collective labour, but the unpredictable mobility of semi-wild camels and horses still necessitates occasional otor or long-term migration, reviving old social networks.

The theme of camel mobility is continued in chapter four, “Techno-pastoralism and animal labor.” Here again, forces in the contemporary Chinese environment pull in opposite directions. Rural to urban migration, due to on-going primitive accumulation processes and state campaigns, has moved herders into the towns where, in a fetishized techno-pastoralism, owners can track camels with GPS devices, culling the occasional meat animal as needed. On the other hand, both the new intangible cultural heritage discourse and the nostalgic memories of camels under collective herding highlight the practice of taming camels, as symbolized by the buil or nose-peg. Without that, the semi-wild camels of “techno-pastoralism” are, as White’s informant “Batbagana” (a pseudonym) said, “just meat camels (M. makhnii temee), fit only to be sold for slaughter” (p. 108).

In chapters five and six, “Commodifying camels” and “Dairy frontiers,” conflicts over commodification take centre stage. In Alasha, this includes extracting minerals, “strange stones” and exotic medicinal plants. People also advocate “excavating” value from camels, even in forms – such as “whole roast camel” – that shock Mongol sensibilities. Other forms of “excavation” include technologizing and marketing camel’s milk. In this connection, White focuses on the Inner Mongolia Camel Research Institute, a unique regional-level institute located in the tiny Alasha town of Badain Jaran. In contrast to techno-pastoralism, he suggests, prioritizing dairy is a way of placing the inter-species emotional labour involved in dairying against the possibility of potential unrest in a border region.

China’s Camel Country is a rich exploration of how people in rural Alasha are using China’s development discourse and political economy to negotiate their future. Again and again, White shows how Chinese state and market policies and pressures work at cross-purposes, creating opportunities but also stymieing success in any one direction. His sensitive portrait of Alasha in contemporary transition will draw comparison not just with other areas in China, but also with Inner Mongolia’s past. The word Mongol does not appear in the title, but China’s Camel Country is an invaluable portrait of rural Mongol life in modern China.