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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.