In the framework of the Inner Asian and Altaic Studies 2024-25 Lecture Series, Prof. Charlotte Marchina (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations) will address the topic “Watching herds: multispecies interactions in Mongolian nomadic pastoralism”.
Abstract
Mongolia’s nomadic herders share their daily life with the “five muzzles” (horses, camels, cattle, sheep and goats). In their herd management techniques, implying several species on vast unfenced pastures, herders rely heavily on the autonomy of their animals, not only to feed, reproduce and defend themselves against predators, but also in daily pastoral activities that involve collaboration between humans and animals: cows return alone to encampment for milking, in the Gobi goats set themselves up for milking in the absence of pens, and a drunk rider can count on his horse to bring him back to the encampment.
For decades, anthropology has studied the relationships that humans have with their animals and their environment. Since the work of Descola (2005), the way anthropology approaches these questions has been marked by a decentering of perspective, proposing to study not only unidirectionally what humans do to animals, but also the collective impact of humans and animals living together, and the ways in which this life in a ‘hybrid community’ (Lestel 2004) mutually influences humans and domestic animals. At a time when the active role of humans and other living beings is increasingly integrated across the environmental and social sciences, a key theoretical challenge for anthropology is to incorporate non-human elements that shape human societies, expanding beyond human-centered approaches and methods, without losing the social and cultural perspective proper to the discipline.
In this lecture, I will highlight the interactive dynamics between Mongolian herders and their animals in a pastoral system that places such great emphasis on animal agency in its practices, through theoretical and methodological tools that I have been developing for over 15 years, by dialoguing, as an anthropologist, with photography, documentary film, archaeozoology, ethology, movement ecology and biogeochemistry.
In person: Thomas Chan-Soo Kang Room, S050 CGIS-South
Virtual: Zoom Registration
For information, please visit https://iaas.fas.harvard.edu/pages/iaas-lecture-series.