Pests, keystone species, and hungry ghosts: the Gesar epic and human-pika relations on the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

For over half a century, the Chinese government has carried out large-scale poisoning campaigns on the Tibetan Plateau in an effort to exterminate the plateau pika, which is viewed as a pest that competes with livestock and causes grassland degradation. Since the 1990s, an ecological counternarrative has emerged in which pikas are keystone species rather than pests, and indicators rather than prime causes of grassland degradation. Virtually ignored in this debate are the ways in which Tibetan pastoralists understand and relate to pikas. We investigate Tibetan analytics of what pikas are, and what draws them to specific sites, based on interviews and observations in two pastoral communities, as well as readings of the Epic of King Gesar. Performed by bards since the twelfth century, the epic is grounded in the cultural milieu of Tibetan nomadic society and continues to be an important part of everyday life. As such, it shapes Tibetan analytics, a term we use to refer to forms of reason that cannot be reduced to ‘cultural belief.’ Because large numbers of pikas, as hungry ghosts, are drawn to places where the essence or fertility of the earth has been depleted, causing irritation to territorial deities, Tibetan practices include rituals to feed hungry ghosts, appease territorial deities, and return treasures to restore the fertility of the earth. Bringing Tibetan analytics together with proposals for political ontology, the article examines the ways in which these different ontologies, or practices of worlding, cooperate and conflict in a context of asymmetric power relations and non-liberal recognition of difference. This approach takes seriously both the agency of the nonhuman as well as human difference, while rejecting notions of rigidly bounded ontologies.