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Daniel J. Murphy

Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 87, Number 3, Summer 2014, pp.

759-792 (Article)

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DOI: 10.1353/anq.2014.0051

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SPECIAL COLLECTION:
Hybrid Landscapes: Science, Conservation,
and the Production of Nature

Ecology of Rule: Territorial

Assemblages and
Environmental Governance
in Rural Mongolia
Daniel J. Murphy, University of Cincinnati

ABSTRACT
This article constitutes an attempt to understand political transforma-
tions in a pastoral region of eastern Mongolia where senior men, their kin
groups, and the ecologieshuman and non-humanthat bind them have
become central nodes in the territorial operation of governance. This po-
litical assemblage has emerged in what I call the balance of mastery,
a tense, uneven entanglement of landscape and authority. The argument
combines scholarly interests in political ontologies with analyses of neolib-
eral governmentality and rural social change. As such, the article traces the
circulation of power, in its various human and non-human guises, through
this landscape in ways that demonstrate the productive consequences of
unequal agency, including the shifting relations of risk and vulnerability in a
dynamic ecology of rule. [Keywords: Neoliberalism, environmental gover-
nance, political ontologies, pastoralism, Mongolia]

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 3, p. 759-792, ISSN 0003-5491. 2014 by the Institute for
Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

Introduction
In this article, I attempt to explain how senior men, their kin groups, and
the ecologieshuman and non-humanthat bind them have become
central nodes in the territorial operation of governance in rural Mongolia.
This political assemblage has emerged in the context of recent efforts by
the state and other actors to upset what I call the balance of mastery,
a tense, uneven entanglement of landscape and authority through which
territory is organized and governed. These efforts, such as the promotion
and institutionalization of neoliberal initiatives including community-based
natural resource management and possession leasing of campsites, have
been successfully implemented in Uguumur, where this research was con-
ducted, but not universally successful elsewhere in the region and coun-
try (Upton 2011). As such, this article aims to understand this success in
Uguumur, a remote pastoral district in rural Mongolia, and what this might
say about how neoliberalism and its incumbent practices and discourses
become territorialized in particular places.
Combining recent work on indigenous ontologies (Blaser 2009;
Cruikshank 2005; de la Cadena 2010; Nadasdy 2002, 2007) and the an-
thropology of worlds (Kohn 2007) with political ecological analyses of
neoliberal governmentalities (Agrawal 2005, Ferguson and Gupta 2002,
Sharma 2008, Moore 2005, Murray Li 2007), I argue that by de-centering
neoliberalism and engaging a broader consideration of political ontolo-
gies in our analyses, anthropologists can understand how neoliberalism
and neoliberal projects become territorialized and made to work. Such a
move complements and expands our analyses by providing a fuller under-
standing of how spatialized appropriation operates within such milieus and
how such workings can become themselves a kind of hybrid accumula-
tion by dispossession (Harvey 2001). Additionally, by taking the materiality
of albeit relational things seriously, we also more fully appreciate the very
real consequences such appropriation and dispossession entails.
Each of these points requires an analysis of the exercise, administra-
tion, and application of rule in particular places or emplaced governing.
Situated engagements in community based resource management and
property-making in rural Mongolia, key nodes of neoliberal development,
are therefore a proper ethnographic entry point. Here, we can trace the
circulation of power, in its various human and non-human guises, through
landscapes in ways that demonstrate the productive and material con-
sequences of unequal agency. In doing so, I argue, anthropologists can

760
 Daniel J. Murphy

broaden our vision of ecologies of rule to include explorations of how

shifting relations of risk and vulnerability in a dynamic environment marked
by catastrophic weather hazards and the encroaching specter of climate
change can simultaneously co-constitute and result from such transfor-
mations in governance.

Background
Integral to state-led property-making and resource management is the
governance of population and territory underwritten by governmentalities
or the rationalities of rule (Dean 2010, Foucault 1991). In particular, signif-
icant anthropological research has focused on how property and commu-
nities, through the operation of obligations, duties, rights, and affect, have
become critical tools of the neoliberal state in producing rational modes of
self-rule (Agrawal 2005, Creed 2006, Ferguson and Gupta 2002, Li 2007,
Moore 2005, Sharma 2008, Tsing et al. 2005). The policies and programs
I discuss in this article are emblematic cases of neoliberal governmental-
ity. Possession leasing programs, described in detail below, emerge from
a neoliberal drive to free up nature so that it can be valued through the
application of labor (McCarthy and Prudham 2007). Moreover, devolving
management authority to individual citizens through such forms of muted
privatization lays bare the rational individuals drive for self-improvement
through investment and gain. Community-based resource management
programs, emergent from diverse discursive communities on both the left
and right, have resulted in the production of what Agrawal (2005:7) calls
regulatory communities. Such modalities rely on locally meaningful sub-
jectivities, positions, and modes of affect in conditioning self-rule, thereby
creating efficient governance and space for market imperatives.
As I describe below, through such initiatives, senior male authority with-
in kin groups has become a vital circuit for these state strategies. Clearly,
neoliberal modes of rule are implicated in rural environmental governance
in Uguumur. Yet, in many ways, narrowing our focus to studying the cir-
culation of neoliberal technologies limits our vision for seeing governing
as the result of a much broader entanglement of actors, processes, and
agencies (de la Cadena 2010). I argue that the actual activities of govern-
ing are produced in the interstices of variously interacting, conflicting, and,
at times, synergistic agencies engaged in a process of assembling.

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

Drawing on theoretical advances anthropologists have made in science

and technology studies allows us to see the actual practice of governing
as associations and entanglements of human and non-human agencies
emergent in a specific time and space (Hinchliffe 2007; Latour 2004, 2008).
Here, I follow the work of Blaser (2009), de la Cadena (2010), Kohn (2007),
Viveiros de Castro (1998), Helmreich (2009), Nadasdy (2002, 2007), and
others to explore the implications of indigenous ontologies for the study
of politics broadly and environmental governance more narrowly (see also
Anderson 2000 and West 2006).1 For instance, de la Cadena argues that
by thinking about spiritual presenceswhich she calls earth-beingsas
political actors, we both broaden our notion of politics as a relation of
disagreement among worlds (2010: 346) and force ourselves to unlearn
the single ontology of politics (2010: 361). This consideration of political
ontologies (Blaser 2009, Wang 2012) enables the analysis to more fully
appreciate networks of emplacement (de la Cadena 2010) that are forged
through a process of equivocation whereby overlapping concepts (such as
community or land) allow for communication but are not mutually un-
derstood (Viveiros de Castro 1998). This process can result in either conflict
or a kind of symbiopolitics (Helmreich 2009) where synergies are formed
between the agencies that make up worlds. In short, by merging recent
developments in the study of political ontologies with advances in govern-
mentality scholarship, the territorialization of neoliberalismparticularly in
its environmental manifestationsis better understood by de-centering it.
In other words, by rejecting the singular ontological politics of the modern-
ist project that accompanies neoliberalism, we can more fully understand
how it sets root and becomes entangled with other ways of being, includ-
ing the non-human (West 2006).
However, the presentation of these various worlds, indigenous per-
spectives, and political ontologies can, at times, appear to be re-workings
of a static culture concept and often lack the dynamism of prior analyses
of cultural politics. Yet, as de la Cadena (2010) argues, this perspective
does not discard the real nature of agency, conflict, and change; rather, it
broadens our notion of an agent in terms of its relational nature (Kohn
2007, Helmreich 2009, Strathern 2004) and the set of agents to include
the non- or partially-human. Consequently, processes of articulation (of
variously distributed agencies and subjectivities) are part and parcel to
both assemblages of emplaced governing and processes of neoliberal-
ization. In this sense, we do not lose sight of the ways in which agency is

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 Daniel J. Murphy

distributed and subjectivities are formed in these articulations, whether

through various manifestations of local social exclusion or within broader,
global political economies, all of which are entangled with political ontolo-
gies. Moreover, in a similar vein, we also cannot view these processes
in the absence of their human-ecological relationality and the material-
ity of such relationships. In other words, as I show, topography and cli-
mate changethemselves relational, hybrid, yet material thingsare in-
tegral agencies in the formation of governance in Mongolian grasslands
because, like landscapes (Raffles 2002), emplaced governing is co-pro-
duced. Reflecting earlier materialisms in anthropology and more recent
critical realist political ecologies (Zimmerer and Bassett 2003), governing,
I argue, is not exterior to ecologies but an integral part of its make-up.
Environmental governance is, therefore, not the governing of the environ-
ment but rather an environment of governing in which human and non-
human-derived actions are integral to the ecology of rule itself.

Research Site and Methodology

The data discussed in this article was collected from December 2007 to
November 2008 in Uguumur county in Mongolia. Uguumur, officially re-
ferred to as the third district or Tsantiin Ovoo, is located in the western
third of Bayankhutag county along the Kherlen river valley in southern
Khentii province.2 The ecology of the district is diverse, with vast stretch-
es of open, dry desert-steppe broken up by mountain ranges and val-
leys, several small ponds, and salt pans and licks. The local plant ecology
is dominated by forages found throughout the desert-steppe regions of
Mongolia, whereas in mountain valleys other species dominate, and along
the river, a five kilometer wide expanse of extremely valuable mixture of
feathergrass and other forages runs for nearly 50 kilometers. Wild popula-
tions of numerous mammalian and avian species, including wolves and
eagles which predate on livestock, add to Uguumurs rich biotic mix.
The climate is extreme continental with bitterly cold, snowy winters
where temperatures can occasionally dip below -40 F on winter evenings.
Summers are hot and dry, although rainstorms are not infrequent in the
early month of June. Fall is pleasant and the temperature drops gradually.
Spring, on the other hand, is a period of great uncertainty, as forage is lack-
ing, animals are weak and birthing, and weather is unpredictable. A variety
of storms, rain, wind, snow, ice, and, most frequently, dust, can appear in

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

a matter of minutes. Herders in Uguumur must constantly navigate such

seasonal and daily vagaries in raising their livestock.
At the time of research, the district had a total population of 609 reg-
istered citizens divided into 166 registered households. Only 139 house-
holds actively herd livestock,
and most that do live primarily
on the products of their herds.
The composition of households
in the district at any given time is
highly varied as the shifting ecol-
ogy necessitates a mobile life.
Nevertheless, there is a stable
core of households that make up
the population of the district.
The data discussed in this
paper were gathered through
a variety of methods including
household survey question-
Figure 1: Location of research site. naires, semi-structured and un-
MAP COMPILED BY THE AUTHOR. structured interviews, and eth-
nographic observation. Detailed
data on herding groups and community-based natural resource manage-
ment programs were gathered primarily through interviews and observa-
tion, and settlement patterns were compiled through data from household
survey (n=68 households), participant-observation, and interviewing.

Landscapes of Rule in Mongolia

In 1993, the Mongolian state, responding to the influence of international
neoliberal lending agencies, decollectivized the herding negdel (collec-
tives) on which herders had depended since the early 1960s. The collec-
tives provided both significant technological and economic assistance to
herders; and as a socio-political apparatus, the negdel had formed the
backbone of rural communities.3 Following the privatization of state as-
sets, households in effect became independent operators without formal
means for managing the vagaries of a harsh, dynamic steppe ecology. In
particular, herders faced the prospect of moving on their own and secur-
ing their own campsites. In concert with decollectivization, policy-makers

764
 Daniel J. Murphy

instituted a policy of decentralization, relegating resource management

authority to local administrative bodies (Enkhbat and Odgaard 1996).
Without fiscal support, this policy forced a near complete institutional col-
lapse in rural areas (Mearns 1996, 2004a). In short, in the absence of effec-
tive regulations, monitoring, and enforcement, pastureland and campsites
became de facto open access resources with no state-based recognition
of right and minimal recognition of mutually-held customary norms of use.
Consequently, as administrative decentralization and devolution became
official state policy, a process of local institutional bricolage, built out of
new vulnerabilities and opportunities, was given significant space in which
to evolve, leading to alternative governing apparatuses and ad hoc forms
of property, territory, and right. As I found in Uguumur, kin modalities, un-
derlying moral economies of mutual aid and obligation, and spiritual econ-
omies of ritual exchange have become central operative mechanisms in
a new ecology of power constituted through inhabitation of both human
socio-political communities and as key agents in ecological webs. In this
section, I consider how mastery (e.g., custodial rights of use) and terri-
toriality over land have been constituted in this new ecology through shifts
in rural administration, re-invigorated kin modes of affect and dominance,
and a resurgence of spiritual forces.

Masters of the Land

The practice of governing, in the traditional sense, refers to the con-
duct of conduct within families, amongst kin, and in local communities
(Foucault 1991). Within Uguumur kin groups, this sense of governing is
rooted in the age and gender-based hierarchy of akh-duu, or senior-junior.
This modality of power, and its economy of affect and obligation, serves
as a political habitus from which subjects formulate courses of action. As
such, it affords senior males a position from which they can in the every-
day governance of their kin attempt to shape and mobilize the desires,
aspirations, and actions of their juniors.4 The verticality of this hierarchy is
manifest in social interaction. Seniors are referred to with the respective
ta (formal you), while juniors must avgaalakh (or avoid) using the name of
their seniors. Patrilineal beliefs encode these senior-junior social roles with
traits attributed to ideal father-son (or lineal) relations where juniors display
obedience, deference, and respect. In return, seniors provide protection,
security, and wise counsel. For example, as I heard many times, ideally

765
Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

juniors must generally ugend orokh (do as their seniors say) by literally
entering their word. This ideal act of deference is a key to harmonious
kin relations. As one wealthy, senior herder explained:

Daniel: Why are the senior mans words important?

S: This is very important. Our Mongolian people have come from and
follow our elders and ancestors. We revere knowledge and experi-
ence. Elders have great life experience. They can read the skies and
read the signs in nature. What is that there? To the north what is that?
What is happening in nature, in the skies? They see the signs. Will a
storm come? Will rain or winds come? Do we move? They say move,
so we move. Beside this, they have lived many, many years and have
many years of work experience. The youth, in this way, must see that
this certainly is better than without it. If a man tries to go by his own
wisdom, his own brain, his own mind, reading the signs he will have
separated himself from this. We must raise life upward, though. We
must follow tradition and respect the labor of experienced men who
have worked many years.
D: So their juniors do as they say?
S: Well, yes, of course! You must harmonize your own life! If you
harmonize your own life, my life will also harmonize. If you harmonize
your life, you can realize much success.

The principles of senior-junior, when operating within kin dynamics

kin modalities, can constitute, in themselves, concrete social forms.5 In
Uguumur, senior-junior networks extend out into conglomerations of kin
referred to as uls (nation) or buleg (group or gang). These groups are
recognized as being neg door (under one) or neg tolgoi (one head), both
referring to the central role of akh (seniors) and the singular collectivity
of the group. Critical to kin-based cooperation is the ability to gar niilekh
or sanaa niilekh, literally meaning to unite the hands or minds, re-
spectively. In most cases, it is seniors who gar nii-lg-ex or to unify the
hands.6 This power, emerging from a constellation of ecological, spiri-
tual, and political powers, is evident in the degree of material and discur-
sive control over resource management decisions of juniors. Such power
is also an inherent reflection of personal power, or chadal (see Humphrey
1995 for a more detailed explanation). In Uguumur, senior male power is
often compared to the power of mountains, such as in the phrase uul

766
 Daniel J. Murphy

shig khun or man like a mountain.7 Senior males are also revered for
their knowledge and experience which emanate from their practical and
spiritual relationship with the land (see quote above). Moreover, the sym-
bolic spatial organization of the ger (=yurt, traditional Mongolian dwell-
ing), rituals of birth and death, idol and ancestor worship, marriage rites,
and, most importantly, ritual mountain or ovoo worship (uul or ovoo takh-
ikh yus) all serve in multiple ways to reinforce and naturalize the material
foundations of senior male power. Many of these beliefs and practices
invoke patrilineal ideologies that symbolically tie men, particularly senior
men, to land in ways that afford them greater privilege.
It is through these practices that nutag, customary territory or home-
land, comes into being and is invested with meaning and value. Nutag is
made not simply through collective use of the land and in concert with
local environmental actants, but also through the enacting of social rela-
tionships via exchange within the group and ritually between the group
and the gazriin ezed (masters of the land), a kind of spiritual essence that
rules over the fate of its inhabitants (Humphrey 1995, Sneath 2001). This
ecology, and the various patron-client relationships which sustain it, are
centrally mediated by male social power via the patriline.8 This is evi-
dent in customary proprietary claims. In exploring campsite disputes, the
strongest claim to campsite mastery in Uguumur, a kind of custodial claim
and duty, was through patrilineal inheritance. As one herder explained:

these are campsites that people have come to possess from the
ancestors, their uvug, their fathers. For example, here on my camp-
site one of my relatives father and mother settled here in the past.
Exactly here on this campsite they were settling. And his children got
it from him and settled here. This is how it is here and now I am here.

The built-up layers of animal droppings (buuts)9 and other signs of long-
term use by patrilineal kin serve as evidence of a deep history of both lin-
eage and livelihood on the land. In this context, senior men have come to
occupy a privileged but not exclusive position in this hierarchy of mastery.

Territoriality
This broad ecology of power, constituted historically through the inter-
action of non-human and human actants, enacts a materially significant

767
Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

territoriality in Uguumur. In everyday practice, seniors have a degree of

informal control over where juniors settle within the groups nutag (though
there are exceptions). Moreover, these groups monitor and defend their
territories in a number of ways. For example, signs of use such as build-
ings, motorized wells, and other visible markers reinforce their claims;
practices of expulsion (khuukh) such as through theft, territorial satura-
tion, and intentional pasture degradation defend them; and the permanent
settlement of a poor household from the group monitors them. In order to
organize such security measures, I found that seniors play a central role.
However, we also must not lose sight of other actors such as protective
mountains (numurtei uul), their resident spirits, and other forces.
The maps shown here (Figures 2-4) reflect settlement data gathered
during fieldwork. They were initially drawn in the field and confirmed by
Batdalai in 2008 and were later reproduced in Adobe illustrator. The maps
show the configuration of one kin group over the course of several moves.
These settlement patterns reflect widespread practices of territoriality in
Uguumur. In this section, I describe the interaction of various actants and
strategies in constituting these formations.
The kin group I describe here consists of a senior male Batdalai (67
years old), five of his younger siblings, and ten of their older childrens
households. Of these 15 households, eight are myangat (wealthy herders)
with over 1,000 head of livestock (mal). Two of the households are headed
by in-laws (khadam), but only one of these cooperates with the rest of the
kin group. As the most senior male, Batdalai has considerable leverage
both in his use of their territorial homeland (nutag) and in persuading oth-
ers to settle in specific locations; although, this is to some degree muted
with his oldest younger brother (65 years old) who also holds considerable
social weight among his kin.
In the first map (Figure 2), I have drawn the settlement pattern around
Batdalais spring campsite, or khavarjaa, in Tukhum and Khaya to the north
where his kin reside. During the collective period, the region called Tukhum
was the districts otor reserve, where assigned households would move
for fall fattening or to avoid hazardous conditions like drought or win-
ter storms. The area around Tukhum and Khaya was the area in which
Batdalais father herded prior to socialism. During the negdel period,
Batdalai and his kin continued to formally occupy the region as negdel
employees. However, at times, there would be an influx of households in
the fall when the negdel would send other non-local households to take

768
 Daniel J. Murphy

advantage of the large salt pan. The area is also surrounded by mountains
blocking the wind which minimizes the effect of adverse weather condi-
tions. It is also situated at low elevation allowing for rainwater pooling and
spring fog and dew build up. Around the salt pan is a vast quantity of feath-
ergrass as well, providing both protection from the wind and necessary for-
age in spring. Relative to other areas of the county, this is one of the most
ecologically advantageous for raising livestock. The area to the north close
to the river is called Khaya and also is a beneficial region with good quality
soda deposits, feathergrass, and river access. It is also low lying despite
the exposure to wind. Three wells dot the region allowing for widespread
pasture use. Two of these are operated and maintained as private wells
even though they are legally designated for public use. The well closest
to Batdalai was accorded to him, informally, during privatization. Although
he does not technically own it, he regulates its use. The middle well is
sparingly used as it is located in an area with poor forage. The well to the
east, however, is located in the middle of feathergrass. It was built and
maintained by Geserjav, a friend of the group. Because he does not move,
he acts as a kind of monitor (or uldsen ail, left-behind household) for the
group. This is a critical role in maintaining territorial control.
In the first map (Figure 2), we see that Batdalai has the most beneficial
campsite in Tukhum. He is protected from non-kin households by a semi-
circle of mountains running down the east, across the south and up the
southwest. The area is also buffered by a swath of extremely poor pasture
directly to the west and northwest (govi, or desert) and by the presence of
his fellow kin households to the northeast. He can easily drive his animals
back and forth to the river or throughout the small valley. He also has ac-
cess to the central road. Farther east and northeast, where other non-kin
households settle, are the youngest members of the group. It is these
households who experience conflict, theft, and attempt to expel other
households. Progressively older households who are closer to Batdalai
did not report encountering these problems. Although there are poor local
households that do camp close to him, the only other myangat (a wealthy
herder with 1,000 plus head of livestock) who settled in Tukhum in the past
has since left due to the groups aggressive efforts at expulsion. He now
camps west of the mountains.
These patterns, however, are not just a function of household fission
and settlement over time. When the group leaves on otor (outside their
regular movement patterns) collectively to other non-customary regions,

769
Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

GOOGLE / TERRAMETRICS / DIGITALGLOBE / GEOCENTRE CONSULTING

Figure 2: Territorial configuration of Batdalais buleg in Xaya and Tuxum
beginning in March 2008.
SETTLEMENT PATTERN COMPILED FROM THE AUTHORS OBSERVATION AND FIELDNOTES.

the pattern is replicated. In this case, there is a more explicit organization

of household settlement and Batdalai is integral in shaping it. Below, we
see the otor settlement pattern in August when the group moved en masse
to the eastern side of Bayankhutag, roughly 80 kilometers away from their
home nutag, near the Kherlen river in the first district. When households
go on otor they must contend with local households and other non-local
otor households. In the map (Figure 3), we can see how the group has oc-
cupied the northern reaches of a long running valley with Batdalai directly
in the middle of the group. There is no well in the valley and the southern
reaches have no access to salt pan or soda deposits, preventing the set-
tlement of other households. However, as the valley opens up to the flood-
plain on the western and eastern sides of the settlement there are other
households. In this case, these are other Uguumur households returning

770
 Daniel J. Murphy

GOOGLE / TERRAMETRICS / DIGITALGLOBE / GEOCENTRE CONSULTING

Figure 3. Territorial settlement of Batdalais buleg on the northeastern
border with Batnorov soum in late summer and early fall of 2008.
SETTLEMENT PATTERN COMPILED FROM THE AUTHORS OBSERVATION AND FIELDNOTES.

from otor in the north. Yet, they arrived after Batdalais group and had to
locate themselves in a less advantageous positions. From here, Batdalai
can easily graze his herds up and down the valley with little threat from
these other households. However, in just a few weeks, the lack of salt pans
and soda even in the northern reaches near the river and the evaporation
of water pools to the south proved to be too much and so the group orga-
nized another move just east of the great Bayan Khuree mountain about
20 kilometers away (see Figure 4).
In Figure 4, we see a very similar settlement pattern, adapted as it is to
the local terrain. Batdalai has situated himself in a shallow valley between
two small mountains. Four of the junior households have also occupied
the three small valleys to the north. They are all protected on the east by a
long ridge running north and south. On the far side of the ridge to the east

771
Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

GOOGLE / TERRAMETRICS / DIGITALGLOBE / GEOCENTRE CONSULTING

Figure 4: Territorial configuration of Batdalais buleg during late summer
and early fall of 2008 near the eastern border of Bayankhutag soum and
Sukhbaatar province.
SETTLEMENT PATTERN COMPILED FROM THE AUTHORS OBSERVATION AND FIELDNOTES.

is Tumentsogt county in Sukhbaatar province. The small valleys open to

a wide plain, with a stream running at the center of it. Near the stream is a
well. Batdalais group has effectively occupied the east side of the stream.
Since it is fall and the stream is too deep for sheep and goats, herders
would be reluctant to cross it with their stock, shielding Batdalais group
from problems like herd mixing and competitive grazing. On the other side
of the stream are a series of local households, none of which have herds
comparable to Batdalai or his group. Near the opening of the small val-
ley, on each side, he has placed two of his client households. If there are
encounters at the well or a theft, then it is more than likely juniors who will
contend with it. Conditions proved to be so favorable in this location that

772
 Daniel J. Murphy

the group wintered here as well, moving camp only once to the north along
the stream in another series of valleys.
Other groups also practice these territorial strategies and, as I describe
below, recent policies and programs have further supported such prac-
tices. In home territories, these practices create a deep connection be-
tween resident groups and the land. We can see in the map of Uguumur
(Figure 5) the territorial location of kin and cooperative groups. This map
is a compilation of data from possession lease data, campsite data, in-
terview data, and ground observation. Across the district and county, lo-
cal place names of these customary regions are strongly associated with
particular kin groups. When someone refers to the region of Khaya, other
herders understand that this is the territorial nutag of Batdalais group and
to settle there potentially exposes one to khuukh (expulsion). Moreover,
these landscapes are marked by shuutdeg uul (or mountains of worship)
and are objects of intense devotion and instill an intimate identification
and sense of belonging to these specific territories. Consequently, each
of these spaces, through everyday practice and mountain worship rituals,
over time has become associated with kin groups and their senior males.
Moreover, the role of mountains and other non-human actants dem-
onstrates the way that the landscape actively participates in the con-
stitution of such territorialities rather than acting as an inert arena in
which herders navigate nature like players on the stage. Mountains,
for instance, and the spirits that dwell in them are capable of bestowing
buyan khishig (good fortune) as well as bad fates on those who inhabit
their lands. Herders must engage in proper, ritualized exchange in order
to curry favor and minimize offensive actions that evoke the mountains
wrath. Rain rituals in late spring beckon favor from the mountain spirits
(gazriin ezed) and father sky (ezen tengger) and appease their appetites.
If such prestations are lacking or if spirits become offended, mountains
and their spirits can enact serious calamity through drought and winter
storms, potentially laying waste to a familys herd. The material agency of
this spiritual ecology is a critical element in forming the balance of territo-
rial mastery in Uguumur.
Even in the absence of such spiritual ecologies, non-human agencies
are ever-present. Events like the sudden onset of tumbleweeds, flash
flooding, blizzards, freezing rain, and other uncertainties evince an im-
mense material power in the lives of Uguumur herders. Even more proba-
bilistic eventslike wolf and eagle predation, patchy forage distribution,

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

water evaporation in summer, and spring dust stormsloom large in this

political ecology. Yet, in other ways, these non-human actants can also
be participants in herder strategies as mountains can provide protection
against dust storms, tumbleweeds, flash-flooding, and even snowdrifts
from blizzards. In short, then, these territorial configurations are nature-
culture hybrids and are not solely the creation of human agencies (Raffles
2002). Below I look at how this ecology of power, a balanced assemblage
of variously constituted masters, has been modified in recent years fol-
lowing not only policy reforms and new programs but also in concurrence
with shifting environmental agencies brought about by climate change.
As I argue, this mutated ensemble and re-networked assemblage is not

Figure 5: Territorial locations of the eight major territorial kin groups. The
territorial divisions in some of the groups represent seasonal territorials.
Batdalais group is the darkest grey color.
MAP COMPILED AND CONFIGURED BY THE AUTHOR.

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 Daniel J. Murphy

simply the result of territorialized neoliberal governmentalities but also the

articulation of variously powerful agencies.

Collectivizing the Decollectivized and Making Masters

From 1999 to 2002, a series of winter disasters (or dzud) struck much of
rural Mongolia leading to a 30 percent decline in the national herd from
33 million to just around 20 million, precipitating the near instantaneous
impoverishment of thousands of rural households, massive rural to urban
migration, and fierce calls in the public arena to strengthen rural resource
management policies passed in the mid-1990s that had fallen on deaf ears
(Fernandez-Gimenez and Batbuyan 2004, Mearns 2004b). In 1994, the
national parliament passed legislation that allowed for campsite leasing,
but local governorswho have considerable powers in the current decen-
tralized administrative apparatusviewed the legislation as too weak and
ambiguous to enact. Subsequent legislation in 1996 and 1998 also passed
without being enacted at local levels. As blame circulated around the halls
of government and in the public square following the dzud, the misman-
agement of rangelands by herding households was positioned as the cul-
prit (Dashnyam 2003, Tumenbayar 2000).10 Consequently, policy-makers
sought to strengthen these prior reforms in ways that would enact a pro-
gram of rational pastureland management with herding households being
incentivized to properly care for and manage what is widely viewed by the
Mongolian public as an increasingly degraded environment.11 The primary
policy and program initiatives offered by the government and NGOs alike
have been the furtherance of decentralization through campsite leasing
and community-based resource management initiatives. Clearly, neolib-
eral rationales lie behind these policies and programs.

Neoliberal Governmentalities and Rural Resource Management

The primary thrust of neoliberal conceptualizations of rural resource man-
agement has centered around two policy initiatives: decentralization and
privatization. Here, I will briefly discuss the discursive genesis of these
frameworks.
Decentralization concerns the devolution of former central state powers
to local actors and administrative bodies and is rooted in social scientific
conceptions of collective action and rational choice. Both decentralization

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

and its allycommunity-based natural resource managementcome

from a convenient admixture of both left-leaning and conservative dis-
courses about community and the local. These initiatives emerged in the
1980s as a backlash against statist approaches to development and de-
mocratization. Lack of representation by rural peoples, questions of voice
and justice, and other critiques from Southern intellectuals, indigenous
groups, and environmental activists initiated what Neil Smith (1992) calls a
politics of scale in which critics sought to draw on the power of community
to combat the double juggernaut of capital and the state.
In academic circles, theories of collective action (Olson 1971), com-
mon property (Ostrom 1990), and social capital (Putnam 1993) arose
as serious counters to neoclassical models of economic development
while providing theoretical grounds for community and other non-state
development initiatives. The intellectual fusing of these rational choice
models with pro-democratic, people-centered, bottom-up development
initiatives positioned communities (Creed 2006), the local (Purcell and
Brown 2005), and non-state actors as natural vehicles for promoting
equity, justice, and sustainability because, in this view, as Tsing et al.
point out:

local populations have a greater interest in the sustainable use of

resources than does the state or distant corporate managers;local
communities are more cognizant of the intricacies of local ecological
processes and practices; and[they] are more able to effectively
manage those resources through local or traditional forms of ac-
cess. (2005:1)

By empowering local communities, such moves would engender more

appropriate, targeted services, and ultimately foster better governance.
Additionally, individuals and communities would become responsible for
their own regulation and common well-being. It is no stretch to understand
how the theoretical efficiency of such programs found favor with agendas
that sought a reduced role for state government and state welfare through
the promulgation of structural adjustment reforms (Agrawal 2003).
It is through such privatizations of power (Zhang 2001) that decen-
tralization and community-based approaches to resource management
have become a critical tool for establishing governmentalized localities
(Agrawal 2005, Ferguson and Gupta 2002, Rose and Miller 2008). By

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 Daniel J. Murphy

enlisting local political economies, subjectivities, and modes of affect,

states can effectively manage populations through apparently empow-
ered forms of self-rule (Sharma 2006). It is, as Berry (1993) has called
colonial forms of in-direct rule, hegemony on a shoestring. In these
contexts, states can rule without ruling while simultaneously supporting
their own strategic absence and neglect of duties and obligations, many
of which only states can provide.
Privatization initiatives have a similar genealogy, emerging from Western
histories of dispossession (Polanyi 2001, Thompson 1966) and modern
capitalist economic science, in which the idea of property is central. Only
by delimiting individual rights can things be properly valued through the
application of labor and effectively priced through market transaction.
Although campsite leasing programs are a muted form of privatization,
the rationale is effectively the same. By motivating self-interested desires
through the incentives of private access, property designations foster
proper care and investment. In this sense, property isin conjunction
with decentralization and community-based programsa critical tool of
neoliberal imaginaries of self-rule and responsibilization (Rose and Miller
2008). By territorializing state power through individual bodies and de-
limited territories, such technologies in effect governmentalize localities
in ways that intimately tie them to the states own project. The posses-
sion lease legislation and community-based program described here in
Uguumur are quintessential examples of such efforts.

Programs and Policies

In order to alleviate the problems encountered in rural areas since decol-
lectivization, in 2002, the parliament passed the most recent land law
which gave herding households the opportunity to obtain 60-year non-
transferable possession leases to campsites and 15-year leases for wells
for small initial fees. At the same time, in development circles, coopera-
tive initiatives became the central focus of rural development in the coun-
try. As cures for the vacuum left by decentralization, such moves were
lauded for the way in which they resembled traditional regimes. In the
space vacated by the state, community organizations (i.e., civil society)
and possession leasing became the means by which to bring herders
into legal categories and formalize their rights and claims. By doing so,
herders not only invest in the care and maintenance of their property as

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

responsible citizens, but also can protect their traditional claims against
incursion or dispute.
In an unpublished, but widely circulated memo entitled What Should Be
Done, written by Enkh-Amgalan, then director of the most influential think-
tank on rural issues in Mongolia, states that the introduction of contracts
aims to make the protection and the efficient use of pasture resources a
matter of self-interest to herders (Enkh-Amgalan 2009).12 In other words,
state-level requirements for the protection and efficient use of resources
could be activated by motivating particular desires. Additionally, coordinat-
ing these policy initiatives through forms of community could negate equity
concerns by drawing on local moral economies of mutual aid and support.
Consequently, the possession leasing initiatives were incorporated in most
CBNRM (community-based natural resource management) and coopera-
tive programs, which he states are the easy solution to Mongolias cur-
rent pasture problems. In doing so, these measures would have a poverty
alleviation effect by mitigating the exclusionary systems that force poor
herders to the margins of the grassland. Enhancing the collective actions
among herders through strengthening the traditional customary arrange-
ments is seen as a key to achieving the project objectives of poverty allevi-
ation and rational resource management (Enkh-Amgalan 2009). Evidently,
connecting these exclusionary systems with the very communities these
programs seek to transform seems lost.
In Bayankhutag, where Uguumur is located, the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) implemented a local herder cooperative
project as an extension of their Rural Poverty Reduction Project (RPRP)
which began in 2003 and grew out of the increasing focus on the estab-
lishment of cooperative herders groups as a rural development pathway.
As stated in a 2008 RPRP pamphlet, the overall goal of the program is the
alleviation of poverty while at the same reducing the detrimental effects of
poor management of pastoral environments.13
During the seminar that I attended, the provincial project implementa-
tion unit (PIU) director reiterated these sentiments saying that the pas-
ture management component of the project seeks to do this by empow-
ering (chadavkhjuulakh) herders and strengthening (bekhjuulekh) rural
livelihoods primarily through cooperative groups (buleg or nuxurlul). The
core of the programs institutional activities in regards to herder groups
would be centered on ezemshuulex, a term which references the word
ezen (master) and the verb ezemshix (to possess/have mastery over).

778
 Daniel J. Murphy

Ezemshuulex, in this sense, means to afford possession or, literally, to

make masters. In order to accomplish this, the program, according to the
rationale stated above, has required that herder groups obtain possession
leases for a minimum number of winter and spring campsites (two of each)
and, in conjunction with registering as a herder group, each cooperative is
provided possession leases for renovated or, in some cases, new motor-
ized wells. Following familiar arguments, project staff and local committee
members at the two meetings I sat in on continually reiterated two points:
1) secure access to resources enables the poor to benefit more from those
resources, increase production, and better manage risk, and 2) institu-
tionalizing property rights incentivizes individuals to properly care for and
invest in the natural resources they use.

DIY Governance
The RPRP began in Khentii in 2003 along with the 3 other provinces:
Bulgan, Khuvsgul, and Selenge in the northwest. Bayankhutag county
where the research site Uguumur is locatedbegan program operations
in 2006. In the six years since the program began in Khentii province, 19
counties have benefitted directly. The Pasture Management division of
the program has helped establish 330 herder cooperatives groups in 19
counties. Of those 330, only 122 are currently operatingmostly in the far
northern regions where livelihoods are more settled and, as I describe in
detail below, in the south where increasing aridity and herd sizes are fos-
tering increased competition for resources.
Local governors across the province that I interviewed were quite wel-
coming of the program, seeing it as a critical governance tool. In their
view, since they could not regulate and monitor such a vast territory, herd-
ers must do it themselves (uursduu zokhitsuulakh), and cooperatives were
an important pathway for this kind of do-it-yourself governance. For
example, the district governor in Uguumur felt that, although the coop-
eratives were playing no role in reducing poverty or combating environ-
mental degradation, they were important for monitoring and regulating
land use. Despite negative sentiments from non-cooperative households,
cooperative herders also lauded the institutional governing capacity of
these groups because, as they argued, since decollectivization there is
no neme or support from administrators or governors, and now these
groups can do it themselves.14

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

Yet the success of the program has depended, to a great extent, on

the political economy of affect, obligation, and obeisance that undergirds
kin groups in Uguumur and the spiritual economy in which power be-
comes meaningful. In late 2005, the district governor announced at a dis-
trict herder meeting that the RPR program would be starting in Uguumur.
Representatives from the provincial office were in attendance and provided
herders with a short lecture and a handbook about the project. According
to the program officer in Bayankhutag, they informed the herders that
cooperatives would share labor, protect pasture, and take over well op-
eration and maintenance, thereby helping reduce poverty andstating a
new rationalestem the effects of global warming; surely, a tall task. They
specifically targeted kin groups, requesting seniors to organize their kin
into group. The program officer told me that kin groups were best because
they were of neg tolgoi (one head) and would neg yavax (go as one).
It should come as no surprise then that it has been largely kin groups
with central, wealthy, senior males that have become involved in the
program (7 out of 8). The groups were required to elect a senior leader
(akhlagch)which was largely a foregone conclusionand establish
rules for restocking poor households thereby maintaining and formalizing
the patron-client modalities at the heart of these groups (see Murphy
in press). In fact, mountain worship rituals were often cited as evidence
of group cooperation, even though they are male-only events and are
centered around senior-junior principles. Consequently, these programs
have formalized these territorialities and the monitoring, defense, and en-
forcement tactics of kin groups. In addition, this new landscape of power
has led to the failure of a number of the projects stated goals, includ-
ing its vision of equity, poverty alleviation, and the inclusion of marginal
households in resource management. In fact, the majority of households
in the cooperative program would be described as bayan, or wealthy.
At the time of research, the leaders of the six official and two unofficial
groups are some of the wealthiest households in the district, the county,
and even the province.
The failure of this program to achieve these goals is clearly rooted in a
fundamental misunderstanding of rural political economies and the con-
stellations of territorial authority that have emerged in the years since de-
collectivization. Rather than empowering the poor and marginalized, the
program fused new, formal rights on these existing forms of power and
subjectivity. But why has it been so successful in Uguumur?

780
 Daniel J. Murphy

Hybrid Governance
Regardless of the degree to which governors and administrators support-
ed this program, this project has been a failure across the province as it
has not become the pathway for manageable, replicable rural governance
as envisioned by project designers, think-tanks, academics, parliamentar-
ians, and others. According to the project implementation unit director,
over half of the groups in the province have dissolved and the success of
the program has been atomized in the settled areas of the north and pock-
ets of the increasingly arid and highly nomadic south. Uguumur district has
been one of those successes and, although it has few groups compared
to other districts, the per capita participation is high with nearly half the
households in the district registered. Moreover, the groups tend to be large
and made up exclusively of actively herding households. When I left the
field, there were six official groups as well as two more in the process of
registering. Understanding why this program was a success in Uguumur is
important to demonstrating how governance is spatialized through these
groups. Yet, I argue that neither tracing neoliberal rationalities in project

Figure 6: Comparison of leasing rates between provincial counties.

County Linear (County)

70%

60%
Percent Leases Available

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Percent of Households with Registered Leases

781
 Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

Figure 7: Temperature data collected from the provincial Institute for

Meteorology and Hydrology weather station. July is a critical month in
which high temperatures can increase evaporation.

July Avg. Temp. Linear (July Avg. Temp.)

25
Temperature in Degrees Celsius

20

15

10

0
1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008
Average July Temperature

Figure 8: Rainfall is typically variable, but as we can see, there is a clear

downward trend.

Annual Precip. Totals Linear (Annual Precip. Totals)

350

300
Millimeters of Rainfall

250

200

150

100

50

0
1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007

Annual Precipitation

782
 Daniel J. Murphy

design nor simply by exploring the way implementation nefariously aligns

subjective desires with state strategy can fully provide us that understand-
ing in this case. Rather, I argue that we must consider a broader range
of factors. Here, in addition to the political synergies enabled by various
forms of equivocation, appropriation, and incorporation, as well as in-
creasing aridity, massive increases in livestock, and highly variable and
patchy distribution of environmental resources have played key roles in
producing Uguumur as a fertile entry-point for neoliberal rule.
Uguumur has one of the highest livestock per capita ratios in the coun-
try with 192 head of livestock per household. Moreover, Uguumur, as of
2008, had 28 myangat malchin (herders of 1,000 livestock), the highest
concentration of wealthy herders in the country. Many of these herders
reside in Uguumurs far west, a region noted for plentiful but highly patchy
distribution of critical resources like salt deposits, water, and forage par-
ticularly suited to sheep and horses, the most profitable livestock species
in this region. With such a high concentration of wealth and resources, it
is evident that this area would be the most competitive pastureland in the
county, if not the province. It is for this reason that Uguumur has the high-
est rate of campsite possession leasing in the whole province.
The success of the project in Uguumur can be seen by comparing pos-
session leasing rates between counties and districts. In Figure 6, we see
that Bayankhutag county has a high participation rate (38 percent) and
the highest percentage of leased campsites (62 percent).15 In fact, this is
the most unequal distribution of campsites among the various counties,
which is interesting because other counties began leasing much earlier.
Additionally, although other counties have greater participation rates in co-
operative projects, only in Bayankhutag have nearly all of the cooperative
group members individually acquired possession campsites. Uguumur has
half of all leases in Bayankhutag (48 of 96). It is also a reflection of the high
level of socio-economic inequality in Uguumur as 52 percent of leases in
Uguumur are held by myangat, almost all of whom are members in coop-
erative groups, with most of the remaining leases held by their kin.
As leases have bestowed a significant amount of rights and privileges
on leaseholders, it is critically important to understand their place in herder
territorial strategies. Moreover, it is duly important to situate these strategies
in a dynamic and shifting ecology. Many of the akhlagch that I interviewed
stated they would not have formed their groups if grass were plentiful. The
motive for group formation was largely an adaptive response to changing

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

ecological conditions and increased competition. Although akhlagch also

stated that they organized these groups in order to cement their control
over wells and territory to which they had both a spiritual and economic
attachment, this rationale cannot be viewed outside of recent shifts in local
ecological dynamics and the role of other actants. With increasing sum-
mer temperatures and wildly fluctuating rainfall patterns from year to year,
herders have also noted an increased frequency of drought. As we can see
in Figure 7, the temperature data I collected from the local weather station,
shows that there has been a steep increase in July temperatures over the
last 15 years. Moreover, in Figure 8, we see that rainfall has significantly
decreased over that same time period. In fact, the years 2006 and 2007,
the first two years of the program, were the driest and warmest on record.
In this context of sustained drought, maintaining and strengthening
control over pasture has become critical. In fact, several akhlagch stated
their goals were to protect pasture against incursion from other house-
holds into their territory. As one group leader described:

Herder: Since nature has become like this, where land and water are
becoming scarcewe formed this group to improve our livelihoods
and protect our pasture.
Daniel: How do you protect pasture?
H: We attempt to protect our customary territory ourselves and this
project allows us to do so.
D: What do you protect the pasture from?
H: We protect the pasture from other local households, outside
households, households on otor, whatever kind of household!

During my research, I collected data on campsite and pasture disputes.

Nearly all of the disputes occurred between herders on otor, fleeing their
home nutag due to drought conditions. Many of these households came
from Galshar county to the south where herders stated desertification is
significantly worse. In fact, in one interview, a senior herder stated that
disputes used to exist everywhere. Herders would come from all direc-
tions to Uguumur and, at other times, Uguumur herders might move in
any direction depending on the conditions. Although most disputes were
not like they are today; nowadays, he said, disputes only involve people
from the south. When I asked him why, he stated delkhiin duularal, or
global warming. In another instance, the local county project coordinator,

784
 Daniel J. Murphy

in contrast to project rationale, explicitly evoked global warming as a criti-

cal element in promoting cooperatives:

On one side, the project is meant to reduce poverty; on the other

side, it is meant to help herders deal with natural change and global
warming. Herds and herd income has decreased for most house-
holds. From this projects support, a household with 200 to 300 head
of livestock can finally exit poverty and cross the ovoo. Because of
environmental risk, drought, and dzud, the expense and additional
needs of herders are increasing and animals will be lost.

Although such dramatic ecological shifts clearly present agencies with

which herders must contend, how do possession leasing and cooperative
formation actually benefit them in such conditions?
Indeed, there is much dispute in Uguumur as to how herders rationales
of protection actually work in practice. The district governor, who is him-
self a herder, disputed the rationale of pasture protection.

Daniel: If there are a lot of households [neg door] its difficult, right
[to protect pasture]?
Ts: Yes, of course. Going like this the land, the grass, the water will
disappear. They will trample it and degrade it and will become bald.
D: These groups say they can protect pasture and so they form these
groups. In your opinion can they protect pasture?
Ts: No, they cannot. There are many animals. For example, if ten ail
are together [neg door], Luvsandorj has seven or eight under him,
they will eat up all the grass by going as one [neg yavax].

Yet, I argue that the district governor underestimates herder rationales.

Although there are problems with pasture protection strategies, I contend
that, on the whole, they are largely successful because he misinterprets
what herders mean by protect pasture (belcheer khamgalakh). He un-
derstands this to mean that herders are intent on conserving pasture for
the purposes of preventing overgrazing or combating desertification.
From the perspective of cooperative groups, however, protecting pasture
refers only indirectly to these problems. Rather, the groups, and primarily
the akhlagch, are concerned with excluding competitive use of pasture-
land in the strategically well-endowed regions of their home territories or

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

nutag. Akhlagch and large herd-owners fully understand the implications

of their own excessive grazing. In contrast, their strategies are to access
as wide a range of resources as possible and secure what they can. By
securing a large territory with campsite and well leases, and through ter-
ritorial practicessuch as khuukh (which they are now legally entitled to
do)akhlagch can prevent others from grazing their customary pastures
while they themselves use pasture elsewhere through otor (non-custom-
ary moves), stock placement (mal tavikh, to put livestock), and various
other mobile strategies. In fact, cooperative group leaders are among the
most strategically mobile of all households.
In many ways, what has occurred is contrary to the predictions of pro-
gram designers and policy-makers. Instead of investing in the mainte-
nance of their own pastureland for continued use, herders are investing
in securing their own pasture as good year reserves and opportunistically
grazing others during drought and times of stress.16 During good times,
they have access to the best pasturage, their own; during bad times, they
are the most capable of moving. Additionally, with the increased legal enti-
tlements and organizational capacity obtained through the leasing and co-
operative programs, these groups and their leaders can more effectively
defend their land from incursions during those bad times and exclude oth-
ers in the community who otherwise would have a claim during the good.

Conclusion
Former rights of mastery were an outcome of ones position in a dynamic
assemblage of intersecting agencies, a kind of tense ecology in which
spiritual forces, kinship-based modes of rule, and the various duties, ob-
ligations, and exchanges that sustain them were constituted in relation
with an active, lively landscape. This vibrant assemblage of differen-
tially distributed agencies, in the context of decentralization, produced
articulations of entitlement that privileged some and excluded others.
Yet as clients, competitors, or unruly neighbors, these other households
played critical roles in formulating this ecology of power. By demarcating
and limiting the space in which others can carry out livelihood activities
and shifting the tense balance of mastery through formalization, the state
has, in effect, dispossessed a large portion of rural society of their role in
formulating that very balance. It is through this incursion that neoliberal

786
 Daniel J. Murphy

forms of rule have become critical elements in the architecture of govern-

ing in Uguumur. Nevertheless, leasing through cooperatives has not all
together changed the nature of making masters (ezemshuulex) and gov-
erning to ones in which custodial possession is mediated solely between
citizens and the amorphous neoliberal state, even though some activists
and even the state itself might like to view them in such light. In contrast,
neoliberal forms of governance have become integralbut not centralin
these synergistic, hybrid processes of accumulation by dispossession.
The appropriation and realignment of the intended project goals and out-
comes by akhlagch and others demonstrates this.
In addition to these networks of emplacement (de la Cadena 2010), it
is clear that shifting weather patterns and increasing frequency of drought
ripened space within Uguumur for these programs and policies to become
territorialized. In other words, neoliberal governmentalities operate only
because the balance of mastery had shifted in ways that certain agen-
ciesi.e., climate and weather (themselves hybrid, relational things)
had forced actors within that assemblage to consider them. Similar to
the work of Blaser (2009) and others, it was only by engaging with other
political ontologies, de-centering neoliberalism, and opening up the study
of governing to the entanglements of emplaced governing that one could
understand how and why these neoliberal technologies became territori-
alized in Uguumur. This is important because the programs and policies
have not resulted in what designers and implementation units planned.
In many ways, the dynamic, lively presence of other agencies foiled the
goals of these projects which assumed an inert, unchanging nature and,
in turn, inert, unchanging interests amongst herders; attributes of the sin-
gular, modernist political ontology that underlies neoliberal perspectives.
Lastly, achieving this kind of understanding is critically important be-
cause of the serious consequences these developments have had for the
poor. Instead of including the most marginal, fostering space for labor co-
operation, restocking the poor, and thereby reducing poverty and inequal-
ity, none of which these groups actively do in any significant sense, the
cooperatives have instead become an integral tool in herders strategies
of securing territorial space. Consequently, these new symbio-politics
(Helmreich 2009) entail new spatial exclusions that limit household and
herd mobility, thereby shifting the relations of risk in ways that severely
increase the vulnerability of poor to catastrophic weather hazards and the
growing array of threats posed by a rapidly changing climate. n

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Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia

Acknowledgments:
Financial support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (Dissertation
Improvement Grant 0719863), Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Institute for
International Education Fulbright Program, Lambda Alpha National Honor Society, and the University
of Kentucky with institutional support from the National University of Mongolia, Center for Development
Research, and the American Center for Mongolian Studies. I would like to thank the people of Uguumur,
Bayankhutag, and Undurkhaan who were so welcoming, understanding, and caring throughout the re-
search and my various trials and tribulations. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Peter Little,
Lisa Cliggett, and other faculty in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Lastly, I
would like to extend a great deal of gratitude to Reade Davis and Laura Zanotti for organizing the session
that led to the development of this article and for investing great effort in bringing it to publication. Though
many contributed to this work, all errors of commission and omission are my own.

Endnotes:
1See Morten Pedersens (2011) work for examples from Mongolia.
2My use of the name Uguumur is somewhat arbitrary. The area is typically referred to as gurav dugaar
district or third district in local speech and on official documents as Tsantiin Ovoo. But third district is
too cumbersome and many would not recognize the name Tsantiin Ovoo. In the past, however, much of
the area was referred to as Uguumur, owing its namesake to a large mountain in the middle of the dis-
trict. Each area of the district has its own place name and many of these overlap into other districts and
counties.
3See the work of Rosenberg (1981), Humphrey (1978), and Goldstein and Beall (1994) for negdel
operations.
4See Sneath (2000, 2007) for similar arguments.
5Akh-duu can also be used to refer to friends and acquaintances more broadly (Humphrey 1995). Akh
in these contexts simply means someone who is older, and duu means someone who is younger.
Nevertheless, the senior-junior framework still operates in order to formulate an age-based hierarchy that
regulates the kinds of duties and obligations the relationship entails.
6The causative infix -lg- or -uul- shift the meaning of gar niilekh from unite the hands to make the hands
unite or gar niilekh.
7In Mongolian spiritual geographies, features of the landscape are differentiated in two primary ways: 1)
through gender and 2) through chadal or a kind of mystical power, force, and effectiveness (also ability). In
many ways, these two elements are mutually constitutive, as the spirits that inhabit and exhibit control or
possessiveness over space as masters are differentiated in such ways. These spirits baigali zoxiruulax,
or control nature (literally state of being) (Sneath 2001), and include deities, spirits, dragons, and other
beings that inhabit spaces like mountains and lakes. These spirits/landscape features (de la Cadenas
[2010] term earth-beings seems especially appropriate) are even given titles (like khan, king) and are
ascribed with characteristics normally reserved for humans (like buyantai, charitable). See Sukhbaatar
(2001) for detailed discussion.
8There is considerable scholarly work on these themes in Mongolian ethnography (see Sneath 2000,
Humphrey 1995, Humphrey and Onon 1996, Humphrey and Xurelbaatar 2006, Pedersen 2011, Empson
2011). In many ways, Uguumur seems to be on one end of the spectrum in terms of the salience of these
modalities in daily life. The dominance of these patrons in this particular locality does not necessarily
resonate in other locales. Much of this, I argue, can be attributed to the vast build-up of livestock wealth
in Uguumur. In other counties I visited, which were significantly poorer in livestock, the tendencies toward
strongly affiliated patron groups was more tempered. Even in Uguumur, there were counter-movements.
In fact, one cooperative group not discussed in this article was made up of youth; however, the group did
not survive longer than a year.
9Elsewhere, I describe the ways buuts connect patrilineal beliefs with notions of campsite rights (Murphy
2011).
10A 2005 Government of Mongolia report argues: cultural norms and mentalities dating to the socialist
times [which] have meant many within this group [poor herders] exhibit ready-made mentalities, are wel-
fare dependent, and lack their own initiative to escape their current conditions. In fact, in 1999, the Prime
Minister publicly stated that Mongolians must stop being nomads! since the continuance of mobile
livestock keeping was only a source of vulnerability to the Mongolian people (GOM 2005).

788
 Daniel J. Murphy

11This is, however, highly debatable. There have been a number of local studies, principally in areas
around the capital that have shown increased degradation. Overall, though, there is little data that effec-
tively demonstrate that this is the case in more rural areas.
12The basic argument of this unpublished memo was previously published as Lets Decide the Pasture
Issue this Way Zunii Medee 30, Dec 18, 2007.
13This information is also available at www.ifad.mn.
14One non-cooperative household was angered by the fact that most households in the poverty reduc-
tion program were the wealthiest. He said to me, how can they reduce poverty, when none of them are
poor?!
15The number of campsites available is set by the county pasture management committee which is typi-
cally made up of the county governor, the district governors, the MoFALI (Ministry of Food, Agriculture,
and Light Industry) extension agent, and council representatives.
16In many ways, this is very similar to what occurred during the implementation of the household respon-
sibility system in Inner Mongolia (Williams 2002).

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F o r e i g n L a n g u a g e Tr a n s l a t i o n s :
Ecology of Rule: Territorial Assemblages and Environmental Governance in Rural Mongolia
[Keywords: Neoliberalism, environmental governance, political ontologies, pastoralism, Mongolia]
:
[ : , , , ]
Ecologia da Ordem: Assemblagens Territoriais e Governana Ambiental na Monglia Rural
[Palavras-chave: Neoliberalismo, governana ambiental, ontologias polticas, pastoralismo, Monglia]

[]
:
[ : , , ,
, ]
:
] :

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