Trading Mongolia's Sovereign Meat: the Social Transformations and Everyday Geopolitics of the 'Livestock Revolution'

背景虽然蒙古2011-2014年间由矿业推动的GDP增长数据是世界上最高的之一，但蒙古现在正在经历所谓的“资源诅咒”的全面影响。腐败和不信任盛行，其国际金融声誉支离破碎，国内经济一次又一次的危机中挣扎。然而，在政策制定者看来，有一个领域仍然前景看好：目前在蒙古广阔牧场上放牧的牲畜数量达到了创纪录的水平。作为一个前社会主义集团国家，蒙古曾经向其他社会主义国家出口大量肉类；然而，在苏联解体后，出口减少。今天，蒙古政府和国际捐助组织正在推动肉类出口，将其作为一个关键的发展产业，以阻止农村人口外流，降低畜牧率，从而遏制草原退化，同时为新被边缘化的城市周边人口创造新的就业机会。目的和目的拟议的项目以社会人类学为基础，但也从人文地理学等邻近学科的讨论中汲取灵感，将由对该地区及其语言有深入了解的有经验的研究人员实施。该项目将研究如何将畜群动物转化为商品，如何使这些商品在蒙古境内和跨境流通，以及这些过程的政治影响。我们的目标是研究一系列参与者如何驾驭后社会主义时代以出口为导向的肉类行业的复兴，研究建立法律框架和标准化肉类生产的努力，从而从世界经济的边缘揭示畜牧业革命的影响。案例研究将突出国内生产与国际雄心之间的摩擦，包括乌兰巴托的肉类加工厂和拥有中国出口许可证的省级中心等机构，这些机构是参与者努力应对新标准的关键地点，以及肉类贸易的地缘政治影响。我们还将研究肉类生产和交换的非正式空间，包括小型季节性屠宰场和乌兰巴托郊区的市场。此外，我们的项目将通过研究档案和当代媒体中的辩论，以及通过蒙古法律制定者的民族志来考虑制定与国际贸易相关的法律。该项目的分支机构还将以乌兰巴托为中心，研究将农村牲畜生产转变为符合国际标准化制度的尝试，以及将牲畜从牧场转移到加工厂并提供肉类行业基础设施骨干的贸易商代理的活动。潜在好处来自不同学科的学者已经探索了肉类生产和肉类消费，但我们的项目在将肉类作为日常地缘政治的载体方面做出了独特的贡献。我们的研究将调查在大规模的农村向城市迁移的背景下，肉类的制造及其随后的流通如何改变人们的生计，同时也产生了焦虑，因为这种具有情感和象征意义的国家资源被跨境交易。这项研究将引起公众的兴趣，特别是那些关注食品系统和可持续性问题、中亚流动牧业的未来，以及伴随中国崛起的地缘政治紧张局势的人。我们的项目还将使一系列学科(如人类学、人文地理学、社会学、政治学、经济学、国际关系学、城市与发展研究、环境科学和食品研究)的研究人员直接受益，并将使越来越多的关注该地区的利益攸关方感兴趣，特别是英国和海外的政策制定者、开发银行和非政府组织。

ContextWhile its mining-driven GDP growth figures in 2011-2014 were among the highest in the world, Mongolia is now experiencing the full effects of the so-called 'resource curse'. Corruption and mistrust are rife, its international financial reputation is in tatters, and the domestic economy flounders from crisis to crisis. One sector, however, still appears promising to policymakers: the livestock that now graze Mongolia's vast pasturelands in record numbers. As a former socialist bloc state, Mongolia once exported significant amounts of meat to fellow socialist countries; however, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, exports dwindled. Today, the Mongolian government and international donor organizations are promoting meat export as a key industry for development in order to halt the rural exodus, and reduce stocking rates, thereby combatting grassland degradation, while generating new employment opportunities for the newly marginalised peri-urban population. Aims and ObjectivesThe proposed project, grounded in social anthropology, but also drawing inspiration from discussions in adjacent disciplines such as human geography, will be carried out by experienced researchers with intimate knowledge of the region and its languages. The project will study how herd animals are transformed into commodities, how these commodities are made to circulate both within Mongolia and across its borders, and the political effects of these processes. We aim to examine how a range of actors navigate the post-socialist revival of an export-oriented meat industry, study the efforts to establish a legal framework and standardise meat production, and thus uncover the effects of the livestock revolution from the margins of the world economy. Case studies will highlight the frictions between domestic production and international ambitions and include institutions such as meat-processing plants in Ulaanbaatar and provincial centres with Chinese export licenses, key sites where actors grapple with new standards and the geopolitical implications of the meat trade. We will also study informal spaces of meat production and exchange, including small-scale seasonal abattoirs, and markets in Ulaanbaatar's outskirts. In addition, our project will consider the making of laws relating to international trade through the study of archives and debates in contemporary media, as well as through ethnography of Mongolian law-makers.Centred in Ulaanbaatar, the spokes of the project will also move out to examine attempts to transform rural livestock production to conform with international standardisation regimes, and the activities of trader-agents who move livestock from pastures to processing plants and provide the infrastructural backbone of the meat industry.Potential BenefitsMeat production and meat consumption have been explored by scholars from a variety of disciplines, but our project makes a distinctive contribution in approaching meat as a vector of everyday geopolitics. Our research will investigate how the making of meat into an export commodity and its subsequent circulation is transforming livelihoods in the context of extensive rural-urban migration, while at the same time producing anxieties as this emotionally and symbolically-charged national resource is traded across borders.This research will be of interest to the general public, especially those concerned with questions of food systems and sustainability, the future of Inner Asian mobile pastoralism, and the geopolitical tensions that are accompanying China's rise. Our project will also be of direct benefit to researchers from a range of disciplines (e.g. anthropology, human geography, sociology, politics, economics, international relations, urban and development studies, environmental science, and food studies), and will interest the growing number of stakeholders with a focus on the region, in particular policymakers in the UK and abroad, development banks, and NGOs.