Paper short abstract

Mobile pastoralism has been widely acknowledged as constituting a set of practices enabling adaptation to uncertainty and instability. In this paper I discuss evidence of how Mongolian pastoralists may subvert development agendas in order to maintain existing adaptive practices.

Paper long abstract

Mobile pastoralism has been widely investigated by anthropologists in ecological terms, as a set of practices enabling adaptation to environmental uncertainty and instability. Flexible resource use, social organization, and economic production strategies continue to enable pastoralists' resilience to ecological variation, but also provide a basis for adapting to contemporary social or economic change and uncertainty. Yet development interventions targeting pastoralists may encourage investment in risk-mitigation strategies that reduce these forms of flexibility, introducing reliance on external markets, investments, or coordinating institutions. Drawing on ethnographic research in three regions of Mongolia, I discuss evidence that Mongolian pastoralists often subvert development agendas in order to maintain existing adaptive practices. I suggest that development projects themselves can be viewed as a form of uncertainty, insofar as they offer short-term funding for initiatives whose goals may remain opaque to herders.