UNM anthropologist examines nomadic pastoralists in Russia
June 27, 2023 - Mary Beth King
For centuries, nomadic pastoralists have been moving their livestock with the seasons between camps at the headwaters of the Yenisei River in Tuva in Russia and northern Mongolia. In new research, Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at The University of New Mexico Paul Hooper examines the use and informal ownership of these camps depending on season and how they illustrate evolutionary and ecological principles underlying variation in property relations.
According to the research titled Inheritance and inequality among nomads of South Siberia, “given relatively stable patterns of precipitation and returns to capital improvement, families generally benefit from reusing the same camps year after year. We show that locations with higher economic defensibility and capital investment—winter camps and camps located in mountain/river valleys—are claimed and inherited more frequently than summer camps and camps located in open steppe.”
Hooper carried out his research in Tuva and Mongolia over a four-year period.
“I traveled with a small team in a four-wheel-drive van to visit families at their camps up in the region’s high mountain valleys. We drank hundreds of bowls of milk tea while listening to family histories and stories of migration. People would study the maps with concentration in order to point out the best locations to forage wild blueberries during the summer. The herders know and appreciate their landscape at a level that I found inspiring. The generosity of families in hosting us was also just exceptional,” he said.
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