Paper short abstract:

Lively acts and contests of heterogeneous actors surrounding Qing Tannu Uriankhai and a Mongolian national park reveal multiscalar, co-constitutive coexistence of different modes of relationality, economy and territoriality, figures of place(s) and people(s), and forms of commodi/ties/fication.

Paper long abstract:

Enlivened by eth(n)ographic fieldwork among Dukha reindeer pastoralists in northernmost Mongolia, and with special attention towards historical and contemporary reindeer herd(er)s and their homeland, this presentation exposes forms and fashion(ing)s of value, capitalization and territorialization. Expounding territorial activities and contests among diverse private, institutional and spiritual actors (local, regional, state, and foreign) in the Qing imperial territory of Tannu Uriankhai and in the Mongolian Tengis-Shishged National Park, the coexistence of different entangled modes of relationality, economy and territoriality unearths figures of place(s) and people(s), and forms of commodi/ties/fication. These figures and forms (and the actual bodies, practices and processes they trace) emerge, perdure and transform through interstitial differentiation.

The ontogenetic mould of (supra-)local and radically intersectional mastery in, surrounding and concerning ambiguously peopled, valued and processed lands that head waters of the Great Yenisey River is one of contested co(-)modification. This co(-)modification, its motivative and phenomenal actuators, and their consequentiality are mutually constitutive. This mutual constitution is fuzzy, messy and hazy, cross-cutting, cross-pollinating and transpo(u)nding variegated matryoshka dolls of partial fractality along a meshwork of Gordian-like-strands-(un)becoming(-of)-knots that tie, tug at, tear and mend not quite anfractuous symbionts at multiple non-planar scales in a crucible of liveliness. De/sur/facing figures and actualities of more-than-merely-human people, places, ontologies, capabilities, affordances, aspirations, (dis)inclinations, relations and character(s), as well as catalogues of resources, and of identity and related authenticity, strengthens not only analytical grasp of biological, socio-cultural and economic dimensions to globalization in and par-delà Mongolia, but also strategy vis-à-vis eth(n)ofuturistic concrete utopia(s).