摘要
本研究以蒙古年輕男性牧民為研究對象，探討其知識體系、多重關係的生計方式，以及價值系統。本研究旨在分析年輕男性牧民如何建構一種無法從簡化敘事中理解的認識論視角（epistemic vantage point），如何透過棲居（dwelling）與其他生命共同生活、協作，以及價值系統如何在與多重社會及環境行動者的深層互動關係中生成。
蒙古牧區歷經前集體化、集體化與後集體化三個歷史轉型階段，對牧民社群帶來深刻的社會與經濟變遷。在市場經濟體制下，牧民面臨來自國家與產業部門的多重認識論、經濟與結構性暴力。土地私有化、採礦擴張以及保育計畫持續威脅牧區既有的社會與經濟體系。這些發展介入往往將牧民描繪成社會變遷的受害者，認為其生計充滿風險與不確定性，並因此將其推向城市中的薪資勞動。
本研究透過在蒙古中部兩個鄉鎮進行的半結構式訪談，提供質性民族誌證據，主張牧民並非被動承受社會變遷，而是透過經驗知識的流動、與其他生命共同協作，以及在特定社會與環境脈絡中創造情境化的價值，積極協商自身的社會位置。研究亦指出，牧民透過在草原上的棲居（dwelling）及以地方為基礎的思維方式，使放牧生計得以跨越時間與空間，不斷演化並傳遞知識與經驗。他們的知識源自一個由人類與非人類共同構成的共享世界，在其中，各種生命彼此滋養，共同塑造相互繁榮的條件。最後，本論文進一步闡述一套深植於相互連結空間中的價值系統，在此系統中，各種生命共同參與共享世界的建構（world-making）過程。
本論文挑戰將放牧生計描繪為脆弱、缺乏生產力，並可被簡化為社會、經濟與環境變遷下受害者敘事的匱乏論述（deficit discourses）。相反地，本研究指出，牧民並非被動接受轉型的對象，而是具有豐富知識的行動者。他們透過與牲畜、地景及社群之間的緊密關係，發展出因地制宜、因境制宜的實踐策略，展現出牧業生活在生態、經濟與政治不穩定時期所具有的韌性與持續價值。因此，本研究主張重新思考以地方為基礎的學習方式、生命系統中的互惠關係，以及集體且相互連結世界中的關係性價值系統。
**關鍵詞：**蒙古、年輕男性牧民、情境知識（situated knowledge）、多於人類（more-than-human）、遊牧牧業（pastoralism）

This is a study of young male herders in Mongolia to examine their knowledge system, multi-relational livelihoods, and the systems of value. It investigates how male herders produce an epistemic vantage point that is inaccessible from within reductive narratives, how they inhabit and collaborate with other beings through dwelling, and how systems of value emerge through deep relationships with multiple social and environmental actors.

The three transitional stages, pre-collectivist, collectivist, and post-collectivist, have led to major social and economic transformations in herding communities. Herders have encountered multiple epistemic, economic, and structural forms of violence from the state and industrial actors within the context of the market economy. Land privatization, mining expansion, and conservation projects threaten herding social and economic systems. These interventions portray herders as victims of social change, living a risky and uncertain livelihood, and consequently push them toward wage labour in urban settings.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted across two rural towns in central Mongolia, this research offers qualitative ethnographic evidence to argue instead that herders actively negotiate their social positions by circulating experiential knowledge, collaborating with other living beings, and producing contextual forms of value within social and environmental contexts. It also demonstrates that herding livelihoods evolve and circulate knowledge and experience across time and space through dwelling in the steppe and place-based ways of thinking. Their knowledge develops from a shared world, where humans and non-humans nourish one another and shape the conditions for their mutual flourishing. Finally, this thesis lays out systems of value that are deeply rooted in interconnected spaces, where all beings come together in shared world-making projects.

This thesis challenges deficit discourses that frame herding livelihoods as vulnerable, unproductive, and reducible to narratives of victimization amid social, economic, and environmental change. Rather than viewing herders as passive subjects of transformation, it shows that they are knowledgeable actors who cultivate the situation-based strategies through their close relationships with animals, landscapes, and communities, revealing the resilience and enduring value of pastoral life in times of ecological, economic, and political instability. This research, therefore, invites a rethinking of place-based learning approaches, reciprocal relationships within living systems, and relational value systems in a collective and interconnected world.

"Бүх нийт боловсролын төлөө" иргэний нийгмийн үндэсний эвсэл [National Civil Society Coalition "Education for All"]. (2024). Боловсролоос хөндийрч буй хөвгүүд [Boys disengaging from education]. https://www.uih.mn/sudalgaa/s/369
Atwood, C. P. (2004). Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. Facts On File Inc, New York.
Ahearn, A. (2018). Winters without women: Social change, split households and gendered labour in rural Mongolia. Gender, Place & Culture, 25(3), 399-415.
Abrahms-Kavunenko, S. (2019). Enlightenment and the gasping city: Mongolian Buddhism at a time of environmental disarray. Cornell University Press.
Ahearn, A. (2020). The new Mongolian state herder: Examining invocations and improvisations of the state in rural Mongolia. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(3), 882–898.
Ahearn, A., & Bumochir, D. (2016). Contradictions in schooling children among Mongolian pastoralists. Human Organization, 75(1), 87–96. https://doi.org/10.17730/0018-7259-75.1.87
Ahearn, A., Munkherdene, G., & Ozaki, T. (2026). Rural transitions in Mongolia and Central Asia: Pastoralism, wellbeing and economic relations.
Ahearn, A. (2026). Mapping nomadic space: Are mining maps a form of spatial injustice in contemporary Mongolia? Mongolian Journal of Anthropology, Archaeology and Ethnology, 15(1), 9–19.
Altangerel, G. (2020). Unpacking cultural heritage in Mongolia: The image of the Mongolian yurt (ger). International Quarterly for Asian Studies, 51(1–2), 243–260.
Anderson, D. (2000). Identity and ecology in Arctic Siberia. Cambridge University Press.
Arjjumend, H. (2024). Rangelands and pastoralism in globalized economies: Policy paralysis and legal requisites. Pastures & Pastoralism, 2, 34–48. https://doi.org/10.33002/pp0203
Beban, A., & Work, C. (2014). The spirits are crying: Dispossessing land and possessing bodies in rural Cambodia. Antipode, 46(3), 593–610.
Bird-David, N. (1990). The giving environment: Another perspective on the economic system of gatherer-hunters. Current Anthropology, 31(2), 189–196.
Blaser, M. (2024). For emplacement: Political ontology in two acts. Duke University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. Sage Publications.
Brisini, T. (2021). Mapping the "naturecultural turn" in performance studies. Text and Performance Quarterly, 41(1–2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2021.1916582
Burchard-Dziubińska, M., & Myagmarjav, T. (2019). Traditional pastoralism or mining? Conflict of interest in access to natural pastures in Mongolia. Economics and Environment, 71(4), 13.
Chambo, M. J., & Massoi, L. W. (2026). Pastoralism reorganised: Maasai resilience and governance in the shadow of mega-infrastructure in Tanzania. Cogent Social Sciences, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2026.2626598
Chao, S. (2021). Children of the palms: Growing plants and growing people in a Papuan Plantationocene. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 27(2), 245–264.
Chao, S. (2022). In the shadow of the palms: More-than-human becomings in West Papua. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j86bm4
Dong, S. (2016). Overview: Pastoralism in the world. In S. Dong, K.-A. Kassam, J. Tourrand, & R. Boone (Eds.), Building resilience of human-natural systems of pastoralism in the developing world. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30732-9_1
Dovchin, S. (2026). Reimagining ELT: Nomadic knowledging and nomadic languaging. ELT Journal, 80(2), 251–263. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccaf048
Dyer, C. (2013). Does mobility have to mean being hard to reach? Mobile pastoralists and education's 'terms of inclusion'. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 43(5), 601–621.
Dyer, C. (2014). Livelihoods and learning: Education for all and the marginalisation of mobile pastoralists. Routledge.
Enkhjargal, E. (2021). Mining shadows on Mongolia's environment and heritage. In The impact of mining lifecycles in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan (pp. 195–217). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003097341-12
Fan, M., Li, W., Zhang, C., Zhang, F., & Chen, L. (2014). Impacts of nomad sedentarization on social and ecological systems at multiple scales in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. AMBIO, 43(5), 673–686. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-013-0445-z
Fernández-Giménez, M. (1993). The role of ecological perception in indigenous resource management: a case study from the Mongolian forest-steppe. Nomadic peoples, 31-46.
Fernández-Giménez, M. E. (1999). Sustaining the steppes: A geographical history of pastoral land use in Mongolia. Geographical Review, 89(3), 315–342.
Fernández-Giménez, M. E., Batkhishig, B., & Batbuyan, B. (2012). Cross-boundary and cross-level dynamics increase vulnerability to severe winter disasters (dzud) in Mongolia. Global Environmental Change, 22(4), 836–851.
Fernández-Giménez, M. E., Bayarbat, T., Jamsranjav, C., & Ulambayar, T. (2025). Motherhood, mothering and care among Mongolian herder women. Agriculture and Human Values, 42(1), 139-157.
Field, E. M., Linden, L. L., Malamud, O., Rubenson, D., & Wang, S. Y. (2019). Does vocational education work? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Mongolia (Working Paper No. 26092). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fijn, N. (2011). Living with herds: Human-animal coexistence in Mongolia. Cambridge University Press.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2023). Mongolia's livestock breeds: A precious part of global biological diversity. FAO.
Ganbold, M., & Ali, S. H. (2017). The peril and promise of resource nationalism: A case analysis of Mongolia's mining development. Resources Policy, 53, 1–11.
Gibson, J. J. (2014). The ecological approach to visual perception: Classic edition. Psychology Press. (Original work published 1979)
Government of Mongolia. (2020). Law on administrative and territorial units and their governance. https://legalinfo.mn/mn/detail?lawId=16106891904801
Government of Mongolia. (2025). Regulation for selecting "State Champion Herder Households" and "State Double Champion Herder Households". https://legalinfo.mn/mn/detail?lawId=17355924073731
Government of Mongolia, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. (2006). Master plan to develop education of Mongolia in 2006–2015.
Graeber, D. (2001). Toward an anthropological theory of value: The false coin of our own dreams. Palgrave Macmillan.
Graeber, D. (2013). It is value that brings universes into being. HAU: Journal of ethnographic Theory, 3(2), 219-243.
Gurung, L. (2020). Feminist standpoint theory: Conceptualization and utility. Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 14, 106–115.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledge: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066
Haraway, D. J. (2008). When species meet. University of Minnesota Press.
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Cornell University Press.
Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives. Cornell University Press.
Harding, S. (Ed.). (2004). The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies. Routledge.
Hartsock, N. C. M. (1983). The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In S. Harding & M. B. Hintikka (Eds.), Discovering reality (pp. 283–310). Reidel.
Haynes, E. (2015). The awards of Mongolia: A survey in a broad historical context. Journal of the Orders and Medals Society of America, 66(1), 26–28.
Herzfeld, M. (1985). The poetics of manhood: Contest and identity in a Cretan mountain village. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv131bw5r
Humphrey, C. (1978). Pastoral nomadism in Mongolia: the role of herdsmen’s cooperatives in the national economy. Development and Change, 9(1), 133-160.
Humphrey, C., & Sneath, D. (1999). The end of Nomadism?: Society, state, and the environment in Inner Asia. Duke University Press.
Humphrey, C., & Ujeed, H. (2012). Fortune in the wind: An impersonal subjectivity. Social Analysis, 56(2). https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2012.560211
Ingold, T. (1974). On reindeer and men. Man, 9(4), 523–538. https://doi.org/10.2307/2801122
Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2007). Earth, sky, wind, and weather. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13, S19–S38.
Ingold, T. (2010). Footprints through the weather-world: Walking, breathing, knowing. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16, S121–S139. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40606068
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge.
Keane, W. (1994). The value of words and the meaning of things in eastern Indonesian exchange. Man, 605–629.
Khan, A. W. (2025). The transformation of maldarai (pastoralist livelihood) in Yarkhun Valley, Chitral, Pakistan: Impacts of neoliberalism, school education and climate change. Nomadic Peoples, 29(1), 118–143. https://doi.org/10.3828/whpnp.63837646691
Khavagchamba. (n.d.). Мянгат малчдыг дарамтлах коммунист хөшүүргийн тулах цэг нь шорон байлаа. http://www.baabar.mn/article/1670
Kohn, E. (2013). How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human. University of California Press.
Krätli, S. (2001). Education provision to nomadic pastoralists: A literature review. Institute of Development Studies.
Lacaze, G. (2024). Why are women disappearing from yurts? The postsocialist transformations of Mongolian nomadic pastoralism. Cahiers de la recherche sur l'éducation et les savoirs, 23. https://doi.org/10.4000/132q3
Lassila, M. M. (2025). Reindeer herders in the green sacrifice zone. Journal of Political Ecology, 32(1), 5696. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5696
Marzluf, P. P. (2017). Literacy under authority: The Mongolian cultural campaigns. The Journal of Asian Studies, 76(1), 135–157. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44506827
Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2(1), 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147300000003
Mignolo, W. D. (2002). The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference. South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 57–96. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-101-1-57
Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 449–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647
Mignolo, W. D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7–8), 159–181.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Pantheon Books.
Ministry of Education and Science of Mongolia. (2021). Statistics of the higher education sector 2020–2021 academic year. https://en.moe.gov.mn/post/65490
Mkodzongi, G., & Spiegel, S. (2019). Artisanal gold mining and farming: Livelihood linkages and labour dynamics after land reforms in Zimbabwe. The Journal of Development Studies, 55(10), 2145–2161. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2018.1516867
Munkh-Ochir, J. (2013). Малчдад мэргэжлийн үнэмлэх, тэмдэг олголоо. GoGo.mn. https://gogo.mn/r/3ge8g
Munn, N. D. (1986). The fame of Gawa: A symbolic study of value transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) society. Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, D. (2011). Going on otor: Disaster, mobility, and the political ecology of vulnerability in Uguumur, Mongolia[Doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky].
Murphy, D. (2018). Disaster, mobility, and the moral economy of exchange in Mongolian pastoralism. Nomadic Peoples, 22(2), 304–329. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537167
Munkherdene, G., & Ahearn, A. (2026). Fieldnote from Bayankhongor, July 2025. Nomadic Peoples, 30(1), 155–163.
Mearns, R. (1993). Pastoral institutions, land tenure and land policy reform in post-socialist Mongolia.
Myadar, O. (2009). Nomads in a fenced land: Land reform in post-socialist Mongolia. Asia Pacific Law & Policy Journal, 11(1), 161–203.
National Committee on Gender Equality. (2021). Ergetey emegtey zaluu malchdyn amdral akhuy dakh zhenderiyn dүн шинжилгээ. Sudalgaa.gov.mn.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2018). The dynamics of epistemological decolonisation in the 21st century: Towards epistemic freedom. The Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 40(1).
Nixson, F., & Walters, B. (2006). Privatization, income distribution, and poverty: The Mongolian experience. World Development, 34(9), 1557–1579.
Nkedianye, D. K., Ogutu, J. O., Said, M. Y., Kifugo, S. C., de Leeuw, J., Van Gardingen, P., & Reid, R. S. (2020). Comparative social demography, livelihood diversification and land tenure among the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania. Pastoralism, 10(1), 17.
Nozaki, Y., Aranha, R., Fix Dominguez, R., & Nakajima, Y. (2009). Gender gap and women's participation in higher education: Views from Japan, Mongolia, and India. In Gender equity in higher education (pp. 1–20).
Unesco regional office for education in Asia (1973). Educational policy and organization and structure of education. In World Survey of Education (ERIC Document ED076557). International Bureau of Education/UNESCO.
UNESCO. (2020). Mongolia, Education Policy Review: Towards a Lifelong Learning System. Retrieved from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373687.locale=en
Pálsson, G. (1994). Enskilment at sea. Man, 29(4), 901–927. https://doi.org/10.2307/3033974
Parliament of Mongolia. (2008). Millennium Development Goals-based comprehensive national development strategy of Mongolia (2007–2021). https://extranet.who.int/countryplanningcycles/sites/default/files/planning_cycle_repository/mongolia/nds_approved_eng_1.pdf
Potkanski, T. (1993). Decollectivisation of the Mongolian pastoral economy (1991-92): Some economic and social consequences. Nomadic Peoples, 123-135.
Ptáčková, J. (2011). Sedentarisation of Tibetan nomads in China: Implementation of the nomadic settlement project in the Tibetan Amdo area; Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice, 1, Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/2041-7136-1-4
Sandagdorj, D. (2023). Fewer women say 'I do' to herding life. Global Press Journal. https://globalpressjournal.com/asia/mongolia/fewer-women-say-herding-life/
Scoones, I., & Cousins, B. (1994). Struggle for control over wetland resources in Zimbabwe. Society & Natural Resources, 7(6), 579-594.
Scoones, I. (2021). Pastoralists and peasants: Perspectives on agrarian change. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 48(1), 1–47.
Scoones, I., & Nori, M. (2023). Pastoralism, uncertainty and development: Perspectives from the rangelands. In I. Scoones (Ed.), Pastoralism, uncertainty and development (pp. 1–20). Practical Action Publishing.
Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale University Press.
Smith, D. E. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Northeastern University Press.
Sneath, D. (2003). Land use, the environment and development in post-socialist Mongolia. Oxford Development Studies, 31(4).
Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Stolpe, I. (2004). Decentralization and recentralization reform in Mongolia: Tracing the swing of the pendulum. Comparative Education, 40(1), 29–53.
Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Stolpe, I. (2005). Non-traveling 'best practices' for a traveling population: The case of nomadic education in Mongolia. European Educational Research Journal, 4(1), 22–35. https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2005.4.1.2
Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Stolpe, I. (2006). Educational import: Local encounters with global forces in Mongolia. Springer.
Sternberg, T., McCarthy, C., & Enkhjargal, E. (2025). Mongolia mining: Licensed tenure or commons grabbing. International Journal of the Commons. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1467
Sukachevin, P., Leimone, J. E., Rozwadowski, F., & Milne, E. (1991). The Mongolian People's Republic: Toward a market economy (Occasional Paper No. 1991/006). International Monetary Fund. https://doi.org/10.5089/9781557752079.084
Sukhbaatar, O. (2001). Sacred sites of Mongolia. Alliance for Religions and Conservation/The World Bank.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
Turner, T. S. [1980(2012)]. The social skin. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2(2), 486–504.
Tran, K. C. (2025). On being education nomads: Mongolian herders’ children straddling ways of knowing and relating. [Doctoral Thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam, International Institute of Social Studies]. International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).
United Nations Development Programme. (2000). Human development report: Mongolia 2000. UNDP.
Wang, S., Meng, X., Li, Q., Li, Z., Yang, P., Niu, W., & Shang, L. (2025). Environmental impacts of pastoral-integrated photovoltaic power plant in an alpine meadow on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 25, 11301–11315. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-11301-2025
Wood, J. T. (2009). Feminist standpoint theory. In S. W. Littlejohn & K. A. Foss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of communication theory (pp. 397–399). SAGE.
Work, C. (2019). Chthonic sovereigns? 'Neak Ta' in a Cambodian village. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 20(1), 74–95.