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Accepted Paper:
Living with yaks in the Anthropocene: an ethnographic research on human-yak-grassland relationships in Tibet
Siran Liang
(Technische Universität Braunschweig)
This four-month ethnographic study conducted in 2021 investigates subsistence-orientated yak-herding practices at a Tibetan community located at 4800m altitude on the Changtang grassland (Nagqu, Tibet) as well as yak herders' experience of environmental, social and economic changes.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation is based on my four-month ethnographic research with yak-herding communities in Tibet 2021. Drawing on the mundane daily life on the grassland, I illustrate that yak pastoralism, a highland lifeway at an arid land where environmental conditions precluded agriculture, involves sophisticated herding and milking skills as well as a set of animal caring practices. Subsistence-oriented yak herding is often labeled as 'backward'. Here I present how the yak-herding practices follow grassland logic and are more sustainable and ethical than the market-oriented bovine industry. I will then discuss the challenges yak herders are facing in the context of climate change and modernization. I argue that thinking with the subsistence-oriented yak-herding practices can help us to reflect on our relationship with non-human beings in the Anthropocene.