THE BEGINNING:
THE SPIDER WITH THE WEB.
relates directly to Tim Ingold´s Spider (Skilled Practise Involves Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness) in his short essay “When Spider meets Ant” from Being Alive in 2011. This short essay is a hypothetical narrative conversation between Latour´s ANT (Actor-Network Theory) and Ingold´s Spider with the web.
THE GOAT WITH HERDER.
represents the dust and pollution of modern, post-soviet, and semi-nomadic Mongolia. After Mongolia joined the capitalist market, the livestock population skyrocketed. In 2019 Mongolia has 70.9 million livestock animals counted.
SAIGA OF THE STEPPE.
characterizes the last remnants of the Mammoth-Steppe that once panned from Spain eastward across Eurasia to Canada and from the arctic islands southward to China.
Daily pm2.5 pollution level in winter in UB, Mongolia is 687 micrograms ( 27 times the level “WHO” recommends as safe).
Mongolia landmass : 1,566,000 km2
Mongolia population : 3,278,290
Urban population : 2,203,469
Livestock population : 70,900,000
Capital : Ulaanbaatar
Ulaanbaatar landmass : 4,704.4 km2
Density (P/Km²) : 2 people
The median age : 28.2 years
The air pollution is caused by the ger (Yurt) district that burns raw coal for heath and cooking food or water.
Ger or Yurt is a circular tent of felt or skins on a collapsible framework, used by nomads in Mongolia, Siberia, and Turkey. These traditional mobile tent homes are now a symbol of poverty. Not only herders who lost their livestock to Dzud or Drought, as well as those who are pursuing better opportunities migrate into the capital. Half of entire the city population occupies the Ger District, which is often completely secluded from modern necessities.
LIVESTOCK MASS MORTALITY EVENT DZUD
6. Khuiten (Cold) Dzud is when the air temperature drops to extremely low for several consecutive days.
5. Tuuvaryin (Camp) Dzud is a geographically widespread all types of Dzud combined with overcrowding of livestock or during seasonal migration over certain territory.
4. Khavsarsan (Combined) Dzud is when a combination of at least two of the other phenomenons occurring at the same time.
3.Tumer (Iron) Dzud occurs when snow cover melts and refreezes to create an impenetrable ice cover.
2. Khar (Black) Dzud, occurs when lack of snow in grazing areas and leaves the livestock without any unfrozen water supplies where wells are unaccessible.
1. Tsagaan (White) Dzud is a result of high snowfall that restricts livestock from reaching the grass.
DZUD BECOMES MORE SEVERE AND LONGER IN RECENT YEARS.
When Mongolia entered capitalism the number of livestock reached 40 million. Mainly goats are most preferred by the modern Nomads, because of the cashmere industry. This results in over-exhausting grazing lands. 70 percent of all pastureland in Mongolia is degraded to some degree. The reason being that goats eat grass by digging and chewing at the roots, this process permanently damages the grass but also causes the wind to blow away the protective topsoil. End result is desertification.
“And I’, SPIDER goes on, ‘must return to my web. For I have to say that what air is for the butterfly and water is for the fish, my web is for me. I cannot fly or swim, but I can weave a web and exploit its properties of stickiness, tensile strength and so on to run around and catch flies. I may dance the tarantella with the fly that alights on my web, but the web itself is not a dancing partner. It is not an object that I interact with, but the ground upon which the possibility of interaction is based. The web, in short, is the very condition of my agency. But it is not, in itself, an agent’.”
— Ingold, Being Alive, 2011
Saiga explains to the Spider:
some say that nomadic movements in animals occur when there are limited resources. Others concluded that animals undergo nomadic cycles in case any extreme weather conditions might arise. Cold and dry land taught us, the nomadic animals and humans, to live within nature. We, Saigas have unpredictable and panic-driven behavior, only suited for vast steppes, not in any kind of captivity. My nomadic choice of living is for you your web, little spider. To utilize what we have, to not over-exhaust the limited renewable natural resource, to limit overcrowding, and to survive weather abnormalities I, Saiga travel seasonally into different settlements across unforgiving terrain. It is the sole condition of my agency, to be entangled in a meshwork of nearby acting force fields.
The majority of the living saigas are S. tatarica tatarica, native to Kazakhstan, and a lesser subspecies called S. tatarica mongolica, also known as Mongolian Saiga. The Mongolian saigas have a nomadic lifestyle, not like their cousin which is migratory.
After the two decades of Stalin’s ethnic cleansing, the locals of Ulaanbaatar are the ones who cannot write or read in their traditional language. Some of the nomadic ideals are still relevant and often orally told from elders to the younglings. For the new generation, such traditions are confusing and unfamiliar since they didn´t grow up on horseback. It is relatively common for young modern families not to introduce any of the old ways to their children. Nomadic people are however referred to as “poor” and “country people” by the city natives and often picked on by those that are fortunate to be born in a warm apartment.
Modern Mongols are now under post-colonial identity crises. in the capital, You meet swastika bearing extreme nationalists to Buddhist temple scholars with iPhones in their hands. Some will say they miss their Russian brotherhood and others even reminiscence the ancient days of Chingis Khaan. But without a doubt, there is no such thing as a mass consumerist nomadic society. Today in Mongolia wildlife and plants are drastically declining, not only due to illegal hunting, competition for resources with livestock, climate change, or Dzud but also from environmental impacts of mining.
IN CENTRAL AND EAST ASIA, CAPITALISM INDUCED MASS EXTINCTION EVENTS:
is completely reshaping the daily life of a nomad household, as well as the last ethnic minority and indigenous tribes that live in Mongolia, autonomous Inner Mongolia from China, Republic of Kalmykia, the Republic of Buryatia from Russia, and more.
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