PRIO Network

Pastoralism in China: National Policies and Local Practices
Led by Åshild Kolås
Jan 2008 - Dec 2011

As pastoralists in China change their way of life from subsistence activities to ranching and other income generating activities, government policies to sedentarise nomadic herders and fence pastures have a vital impact on social and environmental conditions on the grasslands.

The project 'Pastoralism in China: National Policies and Local Practices' focuses on the issue of rangeland environmental degradation, investigating the interface between the use of resources (especially grazing land and water), the legal framework regulating rights to resources, policy implementation and the negotiation of rights within and between local communities. The project studies the dynamics between policy-making and implementation, socio-economic relations and resource management, and the impacts of these dynamics on a fragile natural environment.

This project was funded by the Research Council of Norway (FRIMUF).

Past Events

Peer-reviewed-Journal-Article

Kolås, Åshild (2011) Reclaiming the Forest: Ewenki Reindeer Herding as Exception , Human Organization 70(4): 397–404.
Nyima, Tashi (2010) Development Discourses on the Tibetan Plateau: Urbanization and Expropriation of Land in Dartsedo , Himalaya 30(2): 77–88.
Xie, Yuanyuan; & Kolås, Åshild (2010) Jin sanshi nian lai nuowei sami ren shenfen diwei de bianhua [Changes in the status of Norwegian Sami identity in the past thirty years] , Shijie Minzu [World Ethno-National Studies] 2010(3): 81–90.

Conference Paper

Nyima, Tashi 2010 The Social Construction of Sanjiangyuan: An Analysis of China's Sustainable Development Discourse in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, presented at 12th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, , 15–21 August.
Kolås, Åshild 2009 Lost in a State of Exceptions: Ewenki Reindeer Herders in China, presented at Annual conference of the Norwegian Association for Development Research, , 24 November.
Nyima, Tashi 2009 What is 'Development'? An Ethnographic Analysis of Development Discourses in Tibet, presented at The Seventh Nordic Tibet Research Conference, , 25 September.
Nyima, Tashi 2009 Tibetan Pastoralists on the Move - A Study of China’s Development Policy and Practice, presented at The Future of China’s ’Wild West’ – Tibet and Xinjiang, , 24 September.

Book Review

Kolås, Åshild(2008) Review of The Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China 537–539.