Pastoralist Dilemmas: Where to Go and When to Move, or with Whom to Talk?

Peter Finke

doi:10.1007/s10745-021-00268-3

Abstract

Pastoralists in Western Mongolia face a range of challenges during their annual grazing cycle due to the simultaneous but conflicting needs for secure allocation rules and a high degree of flexibility. In this paper, I analyze the seasonal arrangements and corresponding strategies that households adopt to deal with unpredictable environmental conditions and the demands of supplying livestock with sufficient forage throughout the year. In contrast to game theory simulations, I argue that dilemmas are: a) often not a question of cooperating or not, but form continua of more or less; and b) socially embedded as people operate in a multitude of relationships that influence their decision-making. Therefore, sharing information in a manner that prioritizes the requirements of individual households while not jeopardizing social reputation is crucially important. Rhetorical skills play an important role in this regard, but there are also situations when herders blatantly ignore state law or local institutional arrangements and risk confrontation to ensure the survival of livestock leading to a situation where free-riding may at times become the dominant strategy.

Highlights

Dilemmas are a constant feature of human life
I present a series of scenarios for pastoral households in Western Mongolia during the course of an annual grazing cycle that I term, in reference to game theory simulations, pastoral dilemmas, they admittedly describe very different situations
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Summary

Introduction

Dilemmas are a constant feature of human life. Generally, they are situations presenting two options neither of which is unambiguously desirable, either because they entail forfeiting a personal advantage or because they inevitably bring unwanted harm on ourselves or others. The prisoner’s dilemma is the best known, referring to situations between either strangers or people who for other reasons are unable or unwilling to exchange information (Axelrod 1984) It describes situations where people must decide to either cooperate or deceive for every encounter, without the choice of responding along the scale of two alternatives. As natural vegetation to feed livestock is a scarce and unreliable resource in the arid regions where pastoralists typically live, access to land and territory has to be organized in complex ways to ensure sufficient grazing as well as flexibility (Casimir, 1992; Dyson-Hudson & Dyson-Hudson, 1980; Khazanov, 1984) This implies that it has to be shared in often complicated processes of institutional ambiguity, with trespassing being a ubiquitous possibility. I bring these arguments together and draw some broader implications beyond the empirical case

Methods and Data

Findings

Conclusion