Paper short abstract:

The paper explores dynamics between state, development agencies and herders in relation to access to common pool resource.

Paper long abstract:

This paper intends explore three relations tied to the land. Mainly how mobility and access to common pool resource is affected by; boundaries, changes in the ecology and finally private and public economic relations tied to the land tenure. State as well as development agencies try to draw up specific pasture and administrative boundaries related to seasonal mobility as well as fixed timeframe for local moves. The pan-optic approach to the landscape does not always correspond with local community imagination about space, boundaries and relations to it. As ethnographic field work and theoretical literature demonstrates the land in mobile Mongolian pastoralist society is constituted by fluid social relations and adaptive strategies that remain part of the landscape.