Abstract
China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is experiencing a marked decline in grassland quality partially as a result of government policies to sedentarize nomadic pastoralists and privatized collective grasslands. Previous research suggests that traditional forms of cooperation among Inner Mongolian pastoralists have deteriorated as a result of privatization and sedentarization. Herders in New Barag Right Banner (n = 50) representing both sedentary and mobile livestock management strategies were asked to respond to a scaled survey regarding their attitudes towards cooperation with other pastoralists. Inter-rater reliability and Mann–Whitney U Tests were utilized to compare the attitudes towards cooperation across sedentary and mobile settlement categories and to assess whether or not sedentary and mobile herders share the same cultural model regarding cooperation. The authors show that there is both high intra- and inter-group agreement on the survey variables across settlement categories, indicating that sedentary and mobile herders share the same cultural model regardless of their settlement pattern.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by funding from the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund Program. The authors would like to thank Dr. Liu Bingwan and Li Jianshu of Northeast Forestry University in Harbin for their help with field surveys and interviews and the pastoral community of New Barag Right Banner for their hospitality and participation. We also thank Dr. Shane Macfarlan, Dr. Michael Zukosky and Justin Holcomb for their guidance during the data analysis process.
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Conte, T.J., Tilt, B. The Effects of China’s Grassland Contract Policy on Pastoralists’ Attitudes towards Cooperation in an Inner Mongolian Banner. Hum Ecol 42, 837–846 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-014-9690-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-014-9690-4