Living off the land: Nature and nomadism in Mongolia

The demise of the Soviet Union precipitated profound changes in formerly collectivised rural spaces across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. However, it is only recently that attention to the post-Soviet ‘land question’ has begun to move beyond predominant, practical concerns with land restitution and fragmentation and towards engagement with diverse discourses of rurality, nature and modernity. In particular, longitudinal accounts of the narratives and practices of Soviet modernisation and post-Soviet “development” in specific rural places and societies are lacking. This paper is concerned with the complex linkages between environmental policies, practice and concepts of nature in such spaces and over recent history. Through examination of the management and representation of nature amongst pastoralist communities in Mongolia and in the collective and post-collective eras this paper seeks to understand local-level enactments, reworking and assimilation of externally-derived discursive and policy formulations. In doing so it acts as a corrective to state-centred and homogenising visions of Soviet and post-Soviet rurality. It highlights how local herders’ ‘room for manoeuvre’ in expression and enactment of diverse ideas of nature and its management resides primarily in informal spaces, facilitated by recent trends of devolution in natural resource management. Finally, the paper demonstrates how nomadism has been constructed and reconstructed as a component of, rather than inimical to, modernity, albeit with as yet unproven implications for livelihoods and for nature in rural Mongolia.