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

虽然蒙古在2011-2014年的矿业驱动GDP增长数字是世界上最高的，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，国内经济在危机中挣扎。然而，有一个部门对政策制定者来说似乎仍然很有希望：现在以创纪录的数量放牧蒙古广阔牧场的牲畜。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，随着苏联解体，出口减少。今天，蒙古政府和国际捐助组织正在促进肉类出口，将其作为发展的关键产业，以阻止农村人口外流，降低放牧率，从而防止草原退化，同时为新边缘化的城市周边人口创造新的就业机会。目的和目标拟议的项目以社会人类学为基础，但也从人文地理学等相邻学科的讨论中汲取灵感，将由熟悉该地区及其语言的经验丰富的研究人员进行。该项目将研究牲畜如何转化为商品，这些商品如何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的演员如何导航后社会主义的出口导向型肉类工业的复兴，研究努力建立一个法律的框架和肉类生产，从而揭示从世界经济的边缘牲畜革命的影响。案例研究将突出国内生产和国际野心之间的摩擦，包括乌兰巴托和拥有中国出口许可证的省级中心的肉类加工厂等机构，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，包括小规模的季节性屠宰场和乌兰巴托郊区的市场。此外，我们的项目还将通过研究档案和当代媒体的辩论，以及通过蒙古立法者的民族志，考虑制定与国际贸易有关的法律。该项目的辐条也将以乌兰巴托为中心，探讨如何改变农村畜牧业生产，使其符合国际标准化制度，以及将牲畜从牧场转移到加工厂并为肉类工业提供基础设施支柱的贸易代理商的活动。潜在的利益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。我们的研究将探讨如何使肉类成为出口商品及其随后的流通正在改变生计的背景下，广泛的农村-城市移民，而在同一时间产生焦虑，因为这种情感和象征性的国家资源跨境交易。这项研究将感兴趣的一般公众，特别是那些关心粮食系统和可持续性问题，亚洲内陆移动的畜牧业的未来，以及伴随中国崛起的地缘政治紧张局势。我们的项目也将直接受益于研究人员从一系列学科（如人类学，人文地理学，社会学，政治学，经济学，国际关系，城市和发展研究，环境科学和食品研究），并将兴趣越来越多的利益相关者与重点放在该地区，特别是在英国和国外的政策制定者，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.