Who Owns the Stock?: Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals 9780857453365

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
Introduction
Part I Tundra and Taiga
Chapter 1 ‘I should have some deer, but I don’t remember how many’: Confused Ownership of Reindeer in Chukotka, Russia
Chapter 2 Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks in a Post-Socialist Arctic Community: The Dolgan in Sakha
Chapter 3 Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community: Multiple Reindeer Property among West Siberian Pastoralists
Chapter 4 ‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’? Divergent Perceptions of Property in Animals among the Tozhu and the Tofa of South Siberia
Chapter 5 Milk and Antlers: A System of Partitioned Rights and Multiple Holders of Reindeer in Northern China
Part II The Eurasian Steppe
Chapter 6 Pastoralism and Property Relations in Contemporary Kazakhstan
Chapter 7 Property Rights in Livestock among Mongolian Pastoralists: Categories of Ownership and Categories of Control
Part III Africa
Chapter 8 Forms and Modalities of Property Rights in Cattle in a Fulbe Society (Western Burkina Faso)
Chapter 9 Individualization of Livestock Ownership in Fulbe Family Herds: The Effects of Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal in Northern Cameroon
Chapter 10 From Cultural Property to Market Goods: Changes in the Economic Strategies and Herd Management Rationales of Agro-Pastoral Fulbe in North West Cameroon
Chapter 11 Fulbe Pastoralists and the Changing Property Relations in Northern Ghana
Chapter 12 Multiple Rights in Animals An East African Overview
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Who Owns The Stock?

INTEGRATION AND CONFLICT STUDIES Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale Series Editor: Günther Schlee, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Editorial Board: John Eidson (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Peter Finke (University of Zurich), Joachim Görlich (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Jacqueline Knörr (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Bettina Mann (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Stephen Reyna (University of Manchester, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) Assisted by: Cornelia Schnepel and Viktoria Zeng (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) Volume 1 How Enemies are Made – Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts Günther Schlee Volume 2 Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa Vol. I: Ethiopia and Kenya Edited by Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson Volume 3 Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa Vol. II: Sudan, Uganda and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands Edited by Günther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson Volume 4 Playing Different Games: The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia Dereje Feyissa Volume 5 Who Owns the Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals Edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee

Who Owns The Stock? Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals

Edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2012 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2012 Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Who owns the stock? : collective and multiple forms of property rights in animals / edited by Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee. -- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-335-8 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-336-5 (ebook) 1. Pastoral systems--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Herders--Cross-cultural studies. 3. Domestic animals--Cross-cultural studies. 4. Right of property--Cross-cultural studies. I. Khazanov, Anatoly M. (Anatoly Michailovich), 1937- II. Schlee, Günther. GN407.7.W56 2012 306.3’2--dc23 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-0-85745-335-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-336-5 (ebook)

Contents List of Maps, Figures and Tables Introduction  Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee

vii 1

Part I. Tundra and Taiga 1. ‘I should have some deer, but I don’t remember how many’: Confused  Ownership of Reindeer in Chukotka, Russia Patty A. Gray

27

2. Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks in a Post-Socialist Arctic  Community: The Dolgan in Sakha Aimar Ventsel

45

3. Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community: Multiple Reindeer Property among West Siberian Pastoralists Florian Stammler

65

4. ‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’? Divergent Perceptions of Property in Animals among the Tozhu and the Tofa of South Siberia Brian Donahoe

99

5. Milk and Antlers: A System of Partitioned Rights and Multiple Holders  121 of Reindeer in Northern China Hugh Beach Part II. The Eurasian Steppe 6. Pastoralism and Property Relations in Contemporary Kazakhstan  Anatoly M. Khazanov

141

7. Property Rights in Livestock among Mongolian Pastoralists: Categories  159 of Ownership and Categories of Control Peter Finke Part III. Africa 8. Forms and Modalities of Property Rights in Cattle in a Fulbe Society  (Western Burkina Faso) Youssouf Diallo

179

vi  Contents 9. Individualization of Livestock Ownership in Fulbe Family Herds: The Effects of Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal in Northern Cameroon Mark Moritz

193

10. From Cultural Property to Market Goods: Changes in the Economic  213 Strategies and Herd Management Rationales of Agro-Pastoral Fulbe in North West Cameroon Michaela Pelican 11. Fulbe Pastoralists and the Changing Property Relations in Northern  Ghana Steve Tonah

231

12. Multiple Rights in Animals: An East African Overview Günther Schlee

247

Notes on Contributors 295 Bibliography299 Index  321

List of Maps, Figures and Tables Maps 1.1 Russia showing Chukotka 29 1.2 Chukotka showing location of Kaiettyn 35 1.3 Detail of brigades at Kaiettyn 39 5.1 Northeast China 123 7.1 The Xovd-sum 163 9.1 The Far North Province of Cameroon 195 10.1 Fulbe migration into North West Cameroon 215 12.1 East African pastoralists 248 Figures 3.1 Furmarks determine, among other, the right to lasso reindeer and use them for transport. This furmark belongs to Petr Njudimovich Vanuito 3.2 The history of Khasavomboi Okotetto’s furmark can be traced back at least to the early 1900s (Evladov [1929] 1992; Stammler 2005b: 232f.) 3.3 Earmarks among reindeer herders in Yamal 3.4 Furmarks of reindeer in sovkhoz brigade 2 after counting 3.5 Furmarks of two independent herders, who merged their herds for joint grazing in summer 3.6 Tokcha Khudi’s furmark, inherited from his father Pari 3.7 Furmark of Timofei Khudi, who borrowed one of Tokcha’s bulls for transport 5.1 Olguya settlement (photograph: H. Beach) 5.2 Reindeer camp (photograph: H. Beach) 5.3 Evenki woman milking a reindeer (photograph: H. Beach) 7.1 Population of the Xovd-sum 1990–1995 (source: S.O.X.S. n.d.) 10.1 Model of multiple and overlapping property rights

67

78 79 82 83 84 91 125 131 135 164 219

viii   List of Maps, Figures and Tables 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5

Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Wambile Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Wambile Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Wambile Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Bulyarre Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Gudere

272 272 273 273 274

12.6 Sanchir and Gaalbooran (in the Subclan Gudere) 274 12.7 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Mirgichán 275 12.8 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Dokhle 275 12.9 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Teilan 276 12.10 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Asurua 276 12.11 Clan Rengumo: Subclan Batarr 277 12.12 Clan Rengumo: Subclan Ongom 277 12.13 Clan Matarbá: Subclan Gaalgidele 278 12.14 Clan Matarbá: Subclan Feecha 278 12.15 Clan Nahagan: Subclans Machán and Durolo 279 12.16 Clan Nahagan: Subclans Gaalgorowle and Bahai-Yeito 279 12.17 Clan Uiyám 280 12.18 Clan Uiyám: Subclans Basele and Gaalhaile 280 12.19 Clan Saale: Subclans Nebei and Gooborre 281 12.20 Clan Saale: Subclan Elegella 281 12.21 Clan Saale: Subclan Kimogol 282 12.22 Clan Saale: Subclans Gaabanayó and Gaaloroyó 282 12.23 Clan Urawén: Subclan Jaale 283 12.24 Clan Urawén: Subclans Silamo and Ogóm 283 12.25 Clan Urawén: Subclan Tirtiri 284 12.26 Clan Gaaldeylan: Subclan Keele 284 12.27 Clan Gaaldeylan: Subclans Keele, Elemo and Madacho 285 12.28 Clan Gaaldeylan: Subclan Burcha and Farlai, Lengima and Naaricha (Lineages of Gaalora Subclan): chában like Gaalhaile (Uiyám, s. above) 285 12.29 Gaalora, Madacho: ongom 286 12.30 Clan Tubcha: Subclan Bolo 286 12.31 Clan Tubcha: Subclan Deele 287 12.32 Gaar Phratry: Karbayu 287 12.33 Gaar Phratry: Kobola 288 12.34 Gaar Phratry: ‘Ule 288

List of Maps, Figures and Tables   ix 12.35 Gaar Phratry: Rerwalan 12.36 Galbo Phratry: Lossa Moiety 12.37 Sharbana Phratry: Bahae 12.38 Sharbana Phratry: Quchabúr 12.39 Sharbana Phratry: Different sublineages of Quchabúr

289 289 290 290 291

12.40 Sharbana Phratry: Different sublineage of Quchabúr 12.41 Sharbana Phratry: Eilo 12.42 Sharbana Phratry: Oomo 12.43 Odoola Phratry: Some Lineages 12.44 Odoola Phratry: Meilan 12.45 Alganna Phratry: Yaabar, Noles and Helmalle 12.46 Alganna Phratry: Jalle (Arsi Immigrants in Gabra)

291 292 292 293 293 294 294

Tables I.1 First type of forms of property I.2 Second type of forms of property I.3 Third type of forms of property 1.1 State Farm ‘Omolon’ in Bilibinskii District, Chukotka 1.2 Status of deer owned by residents of Kaiettyn 3.1 Composition of ownership within one reindeer herd 6.1 Average number of livestock in Kazakhstan (per household) 6.2 Dynamics of the Kazakh population in Kazakhstan 6.3 Dynamics of livestock numbers in Kazakhstan (1913–1951) 6.4 Dynamics of livestock numbers in Kazakhstan (1992–2001) 7.1 Surviving newborns per 100 female animals 7.2 Number of livestock owned by nuclear families of the 3rd brigade in 1990 7.3 Livestock developments in the Xovd-sum (1989–1995) 7.4 Family of Maxmud 7.5 Family of Qarazhan 7.6 Family of Amankeldi 7.7 Family of Quandiq 8.1 Brands of cattle 8.2 System of shared rights in cattle 9.1 Comparison of livestock ownership in two villages (in percentage) 9.2 Comparison of livestock transfers in two villages 12.1 Chart of bridewealth

13 13 14 37 42 85 142 143 144 153 166 167 169 171 172 172 173 182 183 203 207 267

Introduction

Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee

T

he subject of this volume is various forms of property rights in livestock in pastoralist societies. The notion of property belongs to the most complicated and complex ones, and as Kuper (1999: 245) aptly remarked, complex notions inhibit an analysis of the relationship between the variables they pack together. The complexity of property rights in any human society, including the preindustrial, has already attracted the attention of a number of scholars (see, for example, Libecap 1989; North 1990; Hann 1998b; Ensminger 2002b). It was also noticed that these rights are never absolute or unrestricted, although they have various degrees of exclusiveness in different societies; and they are perceived in various ways and regulated in accordance with different principles and rules. The role of formal and informal institutions and norms, such as the state, political and social hierarchies, codified and customary law, reciprocity, kinship, tradition, and individual and group arrangements in regulating access to property varies significantly. Property is about excluding others from the use of a ‘thing’. Identity1 is about who these others are; it is about defining who excludes and who is excluded. The study of property relations and of the small- and large-scale politics of identification is therefore closely related. The third component in this conceptual triad is the ‘thing’, in reference to which the property relationship defines either a right or an interdiction. Many things are quite trivial and not the inspiring stuff that scholarly discourse on property or identity is made of. All sorts of tools and garments as well as items of everyday use are regarded as individual property all over the world. I drink from my cup and put on my shoes – these are circumstances easy to grasp and rarely contested. There are, however, at least two classes of objects that make matters more complex, in so far as things can belong to an individual or a collectivity of people, or two, three or more individuals simultaneously in different ways. These two categories are land and large domestic animals. In different periods of history and in widely separated regions, matters of property have been more diversified and elaborated with regard to these two classes of objects. In modern society a third such domain of complex rights can be found in the domain of industrial property and ‘financial products’. Much has been written about land rights, and we are all aware that various relationships involve overlapping rights of different people to the same object: between a nation and its national state territory; of an individual to his or her (or his   1. ‘Identity’ is taken here in the sense of identifying oneself or others with a group or social category. The complementary concept is ‘difference’. Psychologically or philosophically inspired theories of identity, related to personality, authenticity or other more existential aspects, are of little concern here. In the present context we remain at the surface of our social selves through which we interact with others.

2   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee and her) residential plot; the right of an apartment owner in a high-rise condominium building and his duty to contribute to the maintenance of its collectively used parts; and the rights of an owner, a tenant farmer and a game tenant on the same plot of agricultural land. Feudalism, for example, is a complex political system based on land allocations at different levels of the hierarchy. Very little has been written on the other domain where collective and multiple forms of property are found, for example large domestic ungulates such as cattle and camels. Allocations, direct and indirect loans, dedications to future transfers, and various types of rights by different people can all exist in the same cow or camel. It is no coincidence that the terminology we use in referring to the complexity of modern industrial property is largely derived from how cattle were referred to: pecuniary (Lat.: pecus – ‘cattle’), capital (Lat.: caput – ‘head’ [of cattle]), and the ‘stock’ exchange. Conversely, an East African pastoralist discussion on cattle is reminiscent of corporate law and industrial property relations. Cattle, camels … what else? What animal species is the object of these more complex, multiple, overlapping relations? Smallstock (sheep and goats) are not affected as a rule. The Rendille of northern Kenya say ‘adi a dahan’ (smallstock is hand) – in other words, something to give, sell or barter, and to eat or to slaughter for guests. Smallstock are disposed of in a straightforward manner. There are no shared rights in individual ewes or she-goats. Even the herdsman Jacob, to use the Biblical example, gets the speckled and spotted goats from his father-in-law, Laban, who keeps those that are plain-coloured, instead of giving the former ideal shares in all of them. Reindeer are found at the boundary between small and large stock. Some reindeer herders talk about their deer in the same way as African pastoralists talk about cattle; others treat them the way people all over the world treat sheep and goats (Ingold 1980: 178, 186–87). What other objects are invested with multiple or collective forms of property in non-industrial societies? Certain environments may contain several examples: ships?; the town hall?; the guild house?; churches, mosques, holy mountains (Schlee 1990a, 1992), refugia or other sacred sites? It can safely be said that land and large ungulates are the two outstanding and most widespread objects to which these more complex rights tend to be attached. It is obvious from the above that an examination of multiple rights in animals must include examples of pastoralists who keep horses, cattle, camels and reindeer.2 A word about where they are found and how they are historically interrelated would therefore be in place. Apart from Andean pastoralism, which involves New World camelides, and excluding capitalist ranching from the present analysis, we can say that there are basically two regions in the world where a high proportion of specialized, mobile   2. Horses may have been unfairly neglected in this volume. Traction services to a lord or having to supply a horse for military purposes in the sedentary societies, as one could observe until the Second World War, certainly establishes rights in horses by more than one person or legal entity. Modern racehorses or valuable stallions also tend to be owned by shareholders or cooperatives.

Introduction  3 pastoralists (nomads) among the otherwise sparse population can be found, namely in the dry belt of the Old World and the tundra of arctic Eurasia. In Siberia, these two zones are separated by a forest belt where less specialized and mostly smallscale forms of reindeer keeping are practised in combination with hunting and gathering. There is a typological distinction between tundra pastoralism, which involves only one species of ungulates, and dry-belt pastoralism (with the exception of a few specialized camel herders), which is typically a multispecies form of animal husbandry (Khazanov 1994: 41). The Eurasian tundra extends more than half way around the globe, the Old World dry belt slightly less. But although the tundra spans more degrees of longitude (from about 10° E eastwards to 170° W) than the dry belt (from about 10° W eastwards to 130° E), its west-east distance is shorter because the meridians converge as they approach the pole. It is also much narrower than the dry belt and therefore has a far smaller area. Tundra reindeer pastoralism is no longer considered a phenomenon that emerged independently of the pastoralism in the dry zones south of the forest belt. Although hunters may turn into pastoralists and pastoralists may become hunters, it is now widely accepted that pastoralism evolved from mixed agriculture (crop production combined with keeping ungulates). This must have taken place in and around the Fertile Crescent, covering the eastern Mediterranean littoral, Anatolia and Mesopotamia (Khazanov 1994: 89ff., 97). Little is known about the Sahara as a possible early area of ungulate domestication before it dried out. Mobile pastoralism as the main economic activity later spread from areas where livestock keeping could be combined with cultivation to areas where aridity (dry belt) or low temperatures (tundra, high mountain zones) made mixed agriculture either impossible or less productive than pure animal husbandry. It is believed that reindeer in the forest zone were kept, loaded or ridden in line with the usage of horses on the steppe. The use of reindeer for pulling sledges may well have been shaped by how dogs had been exploited earlier for the same purpose (Vajda 1968: 379–83, 401). Inhabitants of the forest-steppe zone south of the taiga had seen their neighbours keep domestic ungulates for thousands of years before they began to emulate them by domesticating a ruminant adapted to their own ecological zone: the reindeer.3 Sayan, where the same people kept horses and reindeer, seems a likely place for reindeer to have been initially treated like horses (Khazanov 1994: 112).4 The techniques for keeping, handling and harnessing reindeer in the taiga, and even the introduction of the larger taiga strain of reindeer used for transport purposes by those who were primarily hunters, were later crucial to the development of a specialized tundra pastoralism (Ingold 1980: 108–9).   3. The alternative hypothesis, namely that reindeer domestication occurred without influence from peoples who kept other domestic ungulates, seems to have few adherents left. The taming of reindeer as decoy animals for reindeer hunting was assumed to have been the origin of reindeer husbandry. This hypothesis has been rejected on the grounds that caribou hunters, who do not keep reindeer for other purposes, as they do in North America, did not bother or were unable to tame deer for use as decoys (Vajda 1968: 114; identically, Ingold 1980: 103).   4. See Donahoe (this volume) on the recent Sayan type of reindeer herding.

4   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee The fact that domestic and wild reindeer coexist and interact in many ways and in a great number of areas makes reindeer keeping different from all other forms of livestock husbandry: they interbreed, and the domestic follow the wild deer and vice versa. Humans interact with domestic and wild deer alike, as reindeer keeping and hunting can be combined in various forms and various proportions. This is in stark contrast to all other species of domestic ungulates. Wild forms of cattle are already extinct. Nowadays feral horses are more numerous than wild ones and can be caught and tamed, albeit their numbers are small in comparison with domestic stock. Wild camels, sheep and goats are confined to remote areas and are insignificant for any economic system that involves their domestic homologues. Wild cattle probably lived in the Sahara before it dried out and the wild form of the donkey may well have been the African variety of the species. All other domestic ungulates in Africa stem from outside the continent and have expanded into areas where buffaloes and the many species of antelope are the naturally occurring herbivores. That is the prevalent pattern. Generally, domestic ruminants are kept in areas where their wild forms have never lived or have long been extinct. The relationship of human beings to these domestic herbivores is very special. Most of these animals would never exist where we find them if human beings had not taken them there. On the other hand, numerous marginal areas would be void of human beings or more sparsely populated had domestic herbivores not converted their meagre resources into human food. In the ‘Neolithic’ revolution both plants and animals were domesticated. Growing crops and keeping livestock evolved as systems of mixed farming, which in turn gave rise to the evolution of specialized pastoralism, a comparatively recent adaptation to extreme environments like the tundra, the desert, dry steppe, and high mountain areas. This younger and specialized form is by no means ‘primitive’ (as it is frequently referred to by those who believe it evolved directly from hunting at an early stage). On the contrary: • • •

it is technically sophisticated, involving portable dwellings and the training, bridling and saddling of pack and (later) riding animals; it requires highly complex organization, coordination of movement and the regulation of rights to pasture and water, or else the ability to contest them forcefully; it is ecologically specialized. Since pacification and modern statehood have enabled farming to spread to ecological zones in which they are just about feasible but precarious, pastoralists who have not taken up farming have often been pushed into even more marginal areas where cultivated plots do not block their pastoralist routes, and which are in effect unattractive to farmers.5

  5. Schlee (1991: 137f.). See Amadou (1999: 333) and Moutari (1999: 431) about the problem of the champ piège (trap fields), i.e. small fields cultivated in pastoral zones to provoke devastation by animals, so that compensation can then be claimed.

Introduction  5 Although cattle and horses are bearers of social and ritual functions for farmers as well, it is among the specialized pastoralists that livestock become the sole medium of expression of social relationships, and where multiple rights and claims are attached to camels, cattle and reindeer. Property relations are, as mentioned earlier, relations between people. The ungulates involved are unaware of them. But there are other relationships of which they, too, are a part. From a biological perspective, a household or group and their livestock can be seen as a symbiotic system, even a far more complex one than the textbook examples of ants and lice, since it comprises a great number of species. The Rendille system of production, like many others in Africa and on the Eurasian steppes, requires the regular interaction of human beings, dogs, camels, donkeys, sheep, goats and, in many cases, cattle as well. These individual species interact in countless ways. Human beings and dogs consume the bodily substances of camels, sheep, goats and cows. (Unlike the neighbouring Turkana, the Rendille consider donkeys impure, so do not milk, bleed or butcher them, but use them for transport only.) Since all the species involved are mammals,6 the flow of milk between them plays a prominent role. The ungulates interact in the production of pasture conditions. On the steppes, horses are capable of uncovering fodder from under the snow, thus, making it available for other species. Dense bush could be opened by the browsers (camels, goats), which not only makes access easier for grazers (cattle, sheep) but by reducing the tree layer improves conditions for grass re-growth. Disease interaction is also common between species (including wild species) that share a habitat: if two herbivore species mutually transmit disease, the animal with the lower mortality rate will expand at the expense of the other. Human beings make camels pull thorn-tree branches to the sites where smallstock are to be fenced in, and so on. This multiple interaction between different species of animals is, in the wider sense,7 social. Nevertheless some social scientists would prefer to restrict the term ‘social’ to relationships between humans. However, observing the interaction of other higher vertebrates, both intra- and interspecific, leaves no doubt that all attributes of human interaction (e.g. individual recognition; intentional communication) equally apply to the interspecific (e.g. human/ungulate; human/ canine/ungulate) interaction in pastoral systems. One can therefore speak of social relations between humans and ungulates, and between different species of ungulates. In a mixed flock, for example, goats will take the lead and browse ahead, and, both species being gregarious, thus stimulate the sheep to follow. As true ownership is sometimes tied to standards of successful interaction with animals and proper care, this ‘social’ human/ungulate interaction will also be discussed by some of the contributors to this volume. Some remarkable forms of interspecific interaction have also been developed in the livestock sector of complex and sedentary societies. One   6. The neighbouring Somali also keep chickens but value them little, and readily abandon them when moving on if the children are not fast enough to catch all of them in time.   7. An example of this wider sense is the term ‘plant sociology’, which examines how different plant species interact to form a flora. An ecological system could be interpreted as a society of species.

6   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee only has to think of shepherds and their dogs or of horses with ‘cow sense’, but these are beyond the scope of this study. In a general discussion of the property rights in livestock, Gudeman’s (2001) concept of two spheres of exchange – the communal and the market – can be aptly applied. As a rule, property rights in the communal sphere involve certain social obligations and entitlements. Therefore, in pastoralist societies, as well as in those hunting societies that use domesticated reindeer, it is worth differentiating between rights of ownership in animals and rights of possession and use. A few exceptions notwithstanding (e.g. Ingold 1980: 172), multiple rights in stock in pastoralist societies and the changes they are undergoing under the direct or indirect influence of modernization and globalization processes have not been sufficiently explored, especially from a cross-cultural and comparative perspective. It is our hope that this volume will contribute simultaneously to the field of economic anthropology and to the study of pastoralist societies. The articles published in this volume deal with three major regions: the Far North and Siberia including the Chinese taiga, the Eurasian steppes, and Africa, all of which represent different types of pastoralism. African pastoralism is frequently associated with cattle breeding as a result of the social and symbolic significance of these animals; in some arid areas the camel replaces cattle in the cultural focus. In many cases smallstock (sheep and goats) exceed large stock in economic but not in ritual importance. The Northern pastoralism is about reindeer, while the Eurasian steppe is concerned with multispecies pastoralism (Khazanov 1994: 40ff.), both in economic terms and in the sphere of values in and attitudes to animals. The horse comes closest to a privileged position in terms of prestige and as an object of affection. Other remarkable differences between these types manifest themselves in traditional socio-political organization, or patterns of pastoralist ways of life and the transformations during the colonial and postcolonial periods. In addition, a few of the articles in this volume deal with reindeer ownership in hunting societies, which allows for comparison. In describing multiple rights in stock in the different pastoralist societies, the authors of this volume often use different, occasionally overlapping terminology. We made no attempt to unify it because we were unwilling to straightjacket a rich variety of individual ethnographic cases, or to impose our views upon the authors. Still, it is worth making some comments on the issue. The relationships between property and other social relations are manifold. Many authors in this volume have demonstrated that animals in pastoralist societies not only have importance as a commodity but possess other social and symbolic values. Not infrequently, scholars confuse multiple property rights in animals with multiple aspects of social and production relations around animals, such as cooperation and assistance (in pasturing and risk alleviation), marriage arrangements, alliance building, bonds of kinship and friendship, and various kinds of reciprocity. Although the former do not exist independently of the latter, they are not tantamount to them.

Introduction  7 In fact, in theoretical analysis, multiple property rights in stock can be reduced to several basic types: 1. Full rights of ownership, which imply the ultimate right of allocation, disposal, and sale of animals. 2. Nominal rights of ownership, where rights of control or even of disposal belong to another person (e.g. when animals are gifted to a child by his father, or to a bride by her father-in-law or groom). A nominal owner is temporarily deprived of ultimate ownership. Thus, in the Fulbe society of Western Burkina Faso described by Diallo, a father retains complete control of any stock he has given to his sons, and even has the right to sell it. Among the pastoralists of the Eurasian steppes, on the other hand, the nominal rights of married sons in stock become real as soon as they get their share of the family herd and establish their own households. 3. Shared ownership (co-ownership, joint ownership) implies different degrees of rights and even a different percentage of ownership in individual animals. It seems that this type of ownership, which is widespread among African pastoralists, is much less common in other parts of the world. 4. Usufruct rights, such as milking or transportation, which in many cases are merely of a temporary order. Usufruct rights proceed from the right of ownership and do not imply a right of disposal. 5. The rights in the offspring or a defined part of the offspring of an animal can also be seen as concerning a part of the animal, namely its future potential. Often calves are promised to hired shepherds for their services. It seems that the most complicated, multiple and overlapping property rights in stocks are characteristic of African pastoralists. The reasons for this are far from clear and need more research. One possible line of enquiry might be the study of specific culturalhistorical traditions and trajectories. Unfortunately, very little is known in this regard about African pastoralists in the precolonial period. Another direction is connected to the specifics of social relations among African pastoralist groups and societies. It could be argued, and not without reason, that multiple rights in stock in the absence of strong socio-political organization enable African pastoralists to strengthen ties of kinship and affinity, and to extend relations of cooperation and solidarity beyond the family and the lineage. This is in fact what Diallo argues in his chapter. That differentiated rights in animals below the level of the household or family are more often discussed in an African context may have two reasons. One is that they are less prevalent in other parts of the world. The other is that the focus of attention in such matters was on Africa. Classics on pastoral economy like Stenning (1959) just happen to have dealt with African cases and may have set the tone for other Africanists. Moritz (this volume) describes Fulbe in a peri-urban setting in Cameroon, who buy cottonseed cake, a by-product of vegetable oil production, from factories as supplementary feed for their cattle. Inside the households, we find a complicated and contested balance between the consideration that the household head has to organize livestock production and is responsible for the well-being of the

8   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee family and the herd, and the special rights and duties of individual members of the household, such as individual wives or children or relatives who live there, or others who reside elsewhere and have merely entrusted an animal to the household. Those who buy cottonseed cake for their animals want to have a say in how this animal is disposed of and keep the proceeds for themselves. To counter these arguments, the holder of the herd, that is to say the person to whom the animals are entrusted, points out his inputs for the entire herd (such as herding or hiring a herdsman) in defending his right to dispose of the products and retain all or part of the proceeds. This is a fit-for-a-textbook example of multiple rights in the same animal. Differentiation by production inputs, and the rights derived from such inputs, is one aspect of multiple property rights, inequality between people another. A cow that belongs to a young man still under the authority of his father is not the property of one person; it belongs to someone who belongs to someone. A transaction involving this cow would probably be impossible without the consent of two or more people on the side of the giver or the seller. The Fulbe examples in this book illustrate a great variety of forms of rights by more than one person in the same animal. Pelican’s chapter about the Grasslands of Cameroon focuses as well on the level of the household and notes differences in the practice of selling milk – a prerogative of the women – between Fulbe belonging to the distinct sub-ethnicities of Allu and Jaafun. While Allu do not mind their women moving about and selling milk, the Jaafun strive for more respectability in Islamic terms by restricting these movements. In northern Ghana, as Tonah points out, there is an additional level of complexity. Women may sell milk and keep the proceeds of these sales for themselves. They may even buy livestock for themselves which are then their individual property, since the expenses for the food requirements of the household need to be met by the husband. The household herds are composite. They typically comprise animals belonging to the Pullo (sing. of Fulbe) head of the house and of animals belonging to farmers of other ethnic groups who have entrusted cattle to the Fulbe. The usufruct rights (milk) and one in three calves belong to the Fulbe herders. In the case of these entrusted cattle one can clearly speak of multiple rights in the same animal. The original owner has the right to take his animal back and to dispose of it as he likes, but as long as he does not do so, parts of the productivity of the animal are appropriated by the herder in the form of calves and by the wife of the herder in the form of milk. The wife can thereby convert the products of an animal in which her husband has temporary and only partial rights into animals belonging fully and individually to herself, by buying livestock from the proceeds of the milk of these animals. Tonah also shows different ways in which rights in land and rights in animals are converted in each other. One way is that immigrant Fulbe make straight payments in the form of livestock to representatives of local ethnic groups for the right to farm. Another is by interwoven interests: having entrusted their cattle to Fulbe, the non-Fulbe farmers have an interest in safeguarding the Fulbe’s rights to pasture, and even feel responsible for ‘their’ Fulbe to the extent of making sure that the latter have enough land to farm.

Introduction  9 The most complex forms of loans and multiple rights by allocation and preinheritance appear to exist, however, in the eastern half of Africa. In this volume, Schlee attempts to illustrate this, using the examples of the Rendille, Gabra, Karimojong, Turkana, Barabaig, Samburu, Kipsigis and Pokot. He discusses different systems of bridewealth, stock-friendship and loans. One of the effects of these is to let livestock circulate, and to give poorer members a chance to rebuild their herds, in accordance with a basically egalitarian ideology. In this context it is worth comparing African pastoralists with those of the Eurasian steppes and the Middle East. The latter were much less egalitarian, had various stratified segmentary systems, and developed a more complex socio-political organization – and in the Eurasian steppes sometimes even statehood. At the same time, multiple rights in stock were less conspicuous in their societies. Nominal rights of ownership were somewhat undeveloped, and the animals gifted to other people became their indisputable property. Private ownership and ultimate rights in stock were predominant and exercised by individuals or individual families. These rights were accompanied by what could be considered as usufruct rights associated with different forms of mutual aid, reciprocity and sharing; the latter in particular with regard to pastoralist products. Al-‘Umari wrote about the Tatars of the Golden Horde in the fourteenth century: When an animal belonging to one of them begins to weaken, for example, a horse, or cow, or sheep, he will kill it and together with other members of his household he will eat a part of it, and (part) give to his neighbors, and when one of their sheep, or cows, or horses weakens, then they will kill it and give (part of it) to those who had given to them. For this reason in their houses (never) is there a shortage of meet [sic]. (quoted in Tizenghauzen 1884: 23) Much later, observers noticed similar customs among the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other nomads of the Eurasian steppes. In the pastoralist societies of the Eurasian steppes, each member of the family had undisputed usufruct rights in family stock, but ultimately it was controlled by and at the disposal of the head of the family. As a rule, sons were given a share of the family herd to start their own households upon their marriage. The absence of fixed rules with regard to the number of animals left the matter partly to the father’s discretion. Quite common were the stem families in which the youngest married son lived with his parents until their death and subsequently inherited the majority of their property, including stock. This was a millennia old tradition. Cases where brothers continued to maintain the same household and became joint stockowners after the death of their father were much rarer. However, these families were usually unstable, and sooner or later broke up within the span of one generation (Khazanov 1994: 126ff.). A similar situation existed in the Middle East. Even the Bible (Genesis 13.6–11) relates how Abraham and Lot separated their herds.

10   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee Nevertheless, the relatively egalitarian character of African pastoralist social organization compared to the Eurasian is hardly sufficient to explain the dissimilarities in their property rights in animals. Although prerevolutionary reindeer pastoralists, whether Chukchi, Dolgan or Nentsy, or indeed some other pastoralist society, were egalitarian, reindeer were always considered the private property of individual pastoralists or families (Ingold 1980: 185ff.). Multiple or shared rights in animals were non-existent in their form of pastoralism. As pointed out by Gray, amongst the Chukchi of the eastern extreme of the Siberian Tundra, in the pre-Soviet time large herds were mostly owned by rich individuals who employed shepherds, and even exchange and market orientation already existed to some extent. Mutual aid among kin and close neighbours was common, but the giving or gifting of deer did not result in multiple rights in these animals; ownership of an animal passed in its entirety from one owner to another. Ventsel describes a similar situation among the Dolgan in the prerevolutionary period. Another case of tundra pastoralism is the Nentsy of the Yamal peninsula, described by Stammler (this volume). Stammler comes to quite different conclusions about the Nentsy from those of Gray, since (apart from the ubiquitous effects of collectivization and de-collectivization in the Russian North) rights of different people in the same animal exist among the Nentsy. Sceptics might object to his apparent tendency to pay more attention to mutual assistance among pastoralists and claim that neither his material nor his conclusions essentially contradict those of Gray and other scholars of reindeer pastoralists. Earlier ethnographies suggest that reindeer were privately owned by the Nentsy, but the very cohesiveness of their pastoralist society and economy was connected to widespread sharing, reciprocity, and other forms of mutual aid. This is evident also from Ventsel’s contribution about the Dolgan. Various manifestations of generalized reciprocity amongst the Nentsy had already been described by Brodnev (1959: 76–77) half a century ago, referring to the pre-collectivization period: Public opinion looked upon a refusal to help someone when they were in need of such as a very grave misdemeanor, like theft or the violation of exogamy. A person’s reputation first and foremost depended on whether or not he fulfilled his obligations of mutual aid. Amongst the common law of the Nentsy the obligation of mutual aid played an important part … No payment could be demanded for aid given, but at the same time the person receiving aid could not refuse the same or other services to the person who was giving him aid. It is also worth noting that for reasons that deserve special research the rules of animal inheritance (e.g. ultimogeniture and the right of any son to be entitled to a part of his father’s herd upon his marriage and the setting up of his own household) that existed among some reindeer groups such as the Nentsy have a greater resemblance to the inheritance practices of the Eurasian steppe nomads than those of African pastoralists.

Introduction  11 Sharing animals, or rather lending them to relatives, was quite common among the Dolgan and other peoples of the Far North; however, this practice reflected various patterns of reciprocity, and in most cases was far from obligatory. Even among South Siberian hunters (the Tozhu), who kept some domesticated reindeer for riding, as beasts of burden, and for milking, the animals were considered the private property of individual families. Turning to the Tozhu, we have left the tundra, crossed the forest belt and reached its southern fringe. In the Republic of Tyva we find the Tozhu, and not far away from them in the Altai, the Tofa. Donahoe (this volume) describes these two linguistically closely related peoples as contrasting in their relationships to animals and people. The Tofa have lost their herding skills and no longer even look after the riding deer they use for hunting; their spirit of sharing is not pronounced. The Tozhu, on the other hand, have preserved all of these skills and values. The Tozhu may represent the more complex and more interesting case in man-animal relations8 and in animal-related man-man relations,9 and we therefore focus on them here. Again we find man-animal relations penetrating ideas about property. True ownership has to be morally supported by competence in handling the animals and by dedication to them (the Tozhu concept of ivizhi). These ideas are widespread among pastoralists. Love of camels is a praiseworthy quality among the Rendille of Kenya. A man was once described to Schlee as loving camels to such a degree that he could not stop looking at them while they browsed, enjoying every mouthful of shrub they ingested. The special term olum is used to refer to a neglectful herdsman who constantly loses animals. Once, after a transfer to a new region, when Schlee’s riding camels absconded to where they had been before, he was (wrongly) suspected of hobbling them too much instead of letting them roam about freely to graze. The moral undertone of the accusation did not go unnoticed. All this corresponds perfectly with Donahoe’s observations about the Tofa penning their riding deer and the Tozhu getting up before daybreak to lead them to richer pastures. The Rendille certainly share the Tozhu ethic, and accused Schlee of being what a Tozhu would call a Tofa. Although our African examples have already been discussed earlier in this introduction, a few more words about good herdsmanship among the Rendille may be in place here, because Rendille values in this field resonate with what Donahoe found out about ivizhi among the Tozhu. The prototypical male role among the Rendille is that of a herdsman. The answer to the question of what a woman has given birth to, a boy or a girl, is ersim (a herdsman) in the former case and weyli beet (a child for the people)10 in the latter. Being a proper camel man, however, does not mean that camels belong to you. It simply means that you belong to the camels. The Rendille have quite elaborate and formalistic notions about property in animals (Schlee, this volume), and here close personal association with camels does not blur   8. This is shorthand for the relationships between human beings and other animals.   9. This applies to relationships between hunters, who were mostly men. Women do not figure in Donahoe’s account. 10. In other words, to be taken away by another clan for marriage.

12   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee the distinction between user, holder and owner. Still, it is the quality of being a proper herdsman that is most likely to make your possessions grow if you have a herd or stand to inherit one; hired herders with this attitude and these skills are paid either in breeding stock or money with which they can purchase breeding stock of their own. It is the path to ownership and in a sense legitimizes wealth.11 Tofa and Tozhu, like many other taiga dwellers, are not specialized pastoralists. Hunting also plays a major role for them. Donahoe therefore additionally describes their notions of rights in wild animals. These rights confirm that property (a relationship between humans regulating access to things, including animals) should be seen in the context of man-animal relations. Furthermore, the domain that Westerners might call the ‘supernatural’ and others merely regard as the spiritual aspect of nature also plays a role here. From a Tozhu perspective, three types of actors need to be distinguished when discussing property relations involving humans and non-humans: people, animals and spirit animals. Human-human relations regarding claims to animals, that is to say property in the analytical sense, are regulated through land rights. Tozhu are territorial hunters. Hunting rights are not exclusive, but ownership of a territory has to be respected. Hunting on the territory of another group means sharing the prey with them. Another aspect of ‘ownership’ in animals is a notion that animals own themselves. Tozhu believe that the prey gives itself to the hunter, thus establishing an interspecific ‘social’ relationship. The third type of actor to be considered are spirit animals. Donahoe cites a story in which a maral deer spirit helps an exhausted hunter and his lame reindeer mount. He invigorates both and gives the hunter a mountain goat to eat. Hence a spirit animal enters into a social relationship with a human being and a domestic deer by giving them a wild animal, an act that implies ownership of that same animal. From this perspective, property is a relationship that involves human and non-human entities. The Tozhu are not alone in such views. There is a whole literature on der Herr der Tiere (Lord/Master of the animals)12 in older German anthropology. In the parlance of ‘embedding’ it may be difficult to decide which relationship is embedded in which. Donahoe states that ‘the hunter’s rights to take a wild animal, i.e., his property rights to wild animals, are embedded in his social relationship with the cher eezi’ [Herr der Tiere]. Donahoe’s discussion of Tozhu hunters cum reindeer keepers blurs the distinction between wild and domestic animals to some extent. At least as far as notions of property are concerned, this dichotomy is by no means as fundamental as it is commonly perceived to be. Property, including emic notions thereof, come into man-animal relations in many ways, including the hunting context. Let us list some forms of property that emerge from Donahoe’s account. 11. On the other hand, poverty is not automatically attributed to a lack of herding qualities. As the proverb about livestock resembling the shade in the morning and the evening shows, the Rendille have a fatalistic ethic and accept misfortune as a fact of life (Schlee, this volume). As described in that chapter, the very real possibility of sudden livestock losses even gives rise to elaborate arrangements of exchange and an ethic of redistribution. In the pre-communist period this attitude was also characteristic of the nomads of the Eurasian steppes. 12. Zerries (1954) or Hofstetter (1980) can serve as entry points to this literature.

Introduction  13 First Type: Table I.1 First type of forms of property

Participants in the property relationship

people–people

Object

game animals

Instrument of allocation

divisions of land

The common notion of property, generally accepted in the social sciences, that property is a relationship between people about denying or allowing each other the use of things, is relevant here. In this context, wild animals take the place of ‘things’. Tozhu hunters are territorial. Local groups exclude other hunters from full rights in hunted animals by referring to certain hunting grounds as their own. Divisions of land are thus used to define rights in animals. Exclusion from full rights implies allocation of partial rights. Read as a positive rule (about what people should do, not about what they are forbidden to do) one can also summarize Donahoe’s findings on this form of property as: ‘If you hunt on the territory of another group, you have to share your prey with them’. Second Type: Table I.2 Second type of forms of property

Participants in the relationship

animals and people

Subject and object

animals as autonomous agents who decide their own fate

Tuvan hunters believe that game animals give themselves to the hunter, establishing a social relationship in the wider sense, in which the domain of the social can comprise more than one species, for example humans and non-humans. This is a widespread idea. The Yukaghir at the other end of Siberia (north-east) report instances of both domestic reindeer and game animals offering themselves to hungry people. Fur animals (the example is squirrels) come closer to the hunter they ‘love’ and elude the unloved one.13 In an ancient Indian text a giant elephant precipitates itself from a mountain in order to feed a group of hungry and exhausted men (Jatakamala no. 30, cited by Hofstetter 1980: 43, note 1). Examples of such stories from all over the world and different periods of time, reflecting the deeply felt beliefs of some and the entertainment needs of others, could easily be multiplied. In this perception, animals own themselves. They are autonomous agents who make decisions as to whom they will give themselves. 13. Hofstetter (1980: 41) citing Meuli (1946: 226), where the ethnographic sources can be found (re-edited 1975).

14   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee Third Type: Table I.3 Third type of forms of property

Participants in the property relationship

spirit animals and people

object

game animals

Donahoe cites a story about an animal spirit, a maral deer identified by the thousand gold branches of its antlers as no ordinary deer. This maral makes a fat mountain goat drop dead at the feet of an exhausted hunter. Here the spirit animal is the owner of the game and has the power to give or withhold game animals. The goat as property is transferred from the spirit to a man. Turning our back to the forest and moving into the steppe, we leave the domain of relationships that are heavily influenced by beliefs typically held by hunters. Kazakhs, more than Mongols, are long-standing pastoralists and perhaps the model example of Eurasian steppe nomads. Their ideas of property were fully developed along pastoralist lines and were not influenced by hunter ideologies. Still, as Finke’s chapter demonstrates, the Kazakh in western Mongolia share with many Africans the problem of rival claims on animals where animals already allotted to one son remain under the ultimate ownership of the father. In Africa, conflicts arise when the son wants to marry and the father considers doing the same, desiring to add a junior wife to the mother of his adult children. Who is going to use these animals as bridewealth or cover the ceremonial expenses? Polygyny of gerontocrats does not seem to be prevalent among Mongolian Kazakhs. Conflicts there seem to arise over the ordinary sale of animals. What Finke reports about obligatory gifts and kin obligations is reminiscent of Africa. The state frequently figures as an absentee owner. In herds composed of both state-owned and private animals, young animals tend to be ascribed to the private part of the herd. Finke’s statistics on surviving young per female in individual and public ownership from the final years of the socialist period clearly indicates this tendency. This resonates with a saying of the Somali and Rendille: a cow of someone who is not around gives birth to a male calf. Pastoralists prefer, of course, female calves because of their reproductive potential. But absentee owners, be they rich Somali or the Kazakh state, tend to be cheated (Shongolo and Schlee 2007: 82). The state is also the cause of other transfers. Due to a quota system, animals in excess of the number allowed to be owned are left in the care of relatives. The state also infringes on ownership in other ways and shapes the components of what makes up the ‘bundle of rights’ that constitute effective property. Finke highlights the importance of ‘export bans and other state-imposed handicaps on the sale of livestock products’. In this general context of ‘multiple rights in animals’ we can only note that the market, and how it is regulated or manipulated, is a vital factor in shaping property rights. Livestock markets deserve more comprehensive treatment under separate cover. A start has been made.14 14. On livestock markets in West Africa, see Waldie (1994); Diallo (2004a, 2004b); Schlee (2004), and, of course, the classic article by Abner Cohen (1965). On north-east Africa, see Raikes (1981); Shaabani et al. (1991, 1992a, 1992b); Little (1996).

Introduction  15 The discussion of Finke’s findings about the Kazakh state as a livestock owner has led us to the theme of the role of the state in the context of property rights in animals. Generally, states tend to interfere in property rights. Taxation is an example which refers to many kinds of property, dairy farm milk quotas in the European Union, destocking measures in African drylands and quarantine regulations are examples which more specifically affect the livestock economy. Quarantine regulations often do not have the intention or the effect of limiting the spread of diseases, but, like custom duties and restrictions on exports and imports, they may be instruments by which groups of producers which are well connected to the state (like commercial ranchers) may obstruct the access of less powerful competitors (like pastoralists) to the market and thus facilitate their own marketing strategies (Schlee 1990a, 1990b; Schlee and Shongolo 2012). Be that as it may, what all these examples share is that they show the ways in which states affect and limit property rights in livestock. Where there is an advance of state control – there are also regions in Africa where the state retreats – the state’s potential to interfere with the property rights of pastoralists is also on the increase. Due to their socialist past, however, it was in the post-socialist countries of the Eurasian continent and not in Africa that state intervention in property relations took on the more remarkable forms and dimensions. It is therefore to the postsocialist countries that we devote the following pages. Geographically, this leads us back to some of the regions discussed above. We now focus on the effects of the socialist state. It could be argued that the changes induced by socialism were negligible from the animal perspective, once they remained where they had always been and continued to be controlled by the same pastoralists. In truth, however, this change must have been quite significant even for animals, since the quality of care for those animals directly or indirectly owned by the state was in a constant state of decline. The authors of this volume have provided sufficient examples to prove the point. Even the communist rulers admitted this downturn, attempting to combat it with stick and carrot measures. Their efforts were in vain. Individually owned animals had always enjoyed more care than those that were collectively or state owned. Besides, the animals were negatively affected by changing herding techniques that implied monospecific pasturing and composition of herds, as well as by the narrow specialization within appointed groups of shepherds and their loss of the entire complex of pastoralist skills. Be that as it may, from the human perspective the change was immense. In the Soviet Union, the role of the state in property rights and relations was almost always direct, destructive, and extremely detrimental to pastoralists and their traditional way of life. This was because collectivization in the late 1920s and early 1930s, coupled with forced sedentarization, had alienated them from ownership in stock and every other means of production. Well-to-do and hard-working pastoralists, whether in the Eurasian steppes and Central Asia or in Siberia and the Far North, similar to peasants in any other part of the country, were at best dispossessed, and at worst deported or even exterminated.15 15. A plethora of data from all parts of the former Soviet Union leaves little doubt that the majority of peasants, including pastoralists, did not join the collective and state farms voluntarily. Later, however, some of them and their offspring began to claim the opposite, since the fate of those

16   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee Pastoralists and their stock were herded into newly-created collective farms (kolkhozes) and were ordered to work together. At the same time they were denied any real decision making role. Officially, the kolkhozniks held all property, including stock, in communal ownership. In practice, however, the state controlled everything and everybody. It was the state that appointed directors and managers of kolkhozes, who were then placed under its all-pervasive, strict supervision and obliged to meet its every demand. Initiative from below was discouraged. Up to the mid-1950s, the collective farms were overexploited by the state, which set excessive production quotas and in one way or another appropriated most of the produce, and were frequently unable to provide their members with as much as a subsistence livelihood. In the late 1950s, a further step in the alienation of immediate producers from the means of production was taken, albeit in theory more than in practice. Many of the kolkhozes were transformed into state farms (sovkhozes), where former pastoralists were obliged to work as state employees. The living standards of sovkhozniks even improved, especially in comparison with the kolkhozniks of the pre-war period. But low productivity remained a constant worry for these farms, and, as a result, the country experienced a permanent shortage of meat and dairy products. Whether in Chukotka, in Yakutia (Sakha), in Kazakhstan, or elsewhere, in the late-Soviet period the state was forced to provide sovkhozes and kolkhozes with a variety of subsidies. Since they were not based on sound economic considerations and neglected to take the cost of production into account, they were unable to contribute to solving the main problem. To a large extent, pastoralism ceased to be a family business and its prestige began to wane. The lack of personal responsibility and stimuli made the work of shepherds dull and uninspiring. As a consequence, a chronic workforce shortage became the norm in herdsman husbandry (Khazanov and Shapiro 2005). It comes as no surprise that several contemporary Russian and Western scholars characterize the kolkhoz and sovkhoz system as a peculiar form of state feudalism, in which the immediate producers were denied a voice in economic decision making and were also divorced from property rights on key resources, and thus lacked stimuli for hard work. In the 1970s, in the best sovkhozes of Kalmykia, a semi-desert region in the lower Volga reaches, a herd of eight hundred sheep had to be tended by eight shepherds, even when stock was transferred from one pasture to another by truck and supplied with water tanks (Khazanov, field notes). Before collectivization,

who resisted was known to them all too well. Doublespeak became the order of the day in the Soviet Union. To claim that one’s father or grandfather had contributed to the establishment of the kolkhoz system was beneficial; to admit the opposite was a grave mistake. This situation continued to the end of the Soviet Union and even later, either because old traditions die hard or because people had very little information about what actually happened approximately sixty years ago, occasionally confusing the state of affairs in the 1970s with that of the early 1930s. Sometimes this misled Western anthropologists, who tended to rely too heavily on official and individual oral histories, without critical analysis. Krupnik (2000: 52) is right in observing that sad memories are often overlooked against the background of post-Soviet nostalgia, even by the native people themselves. Besides, oral histories of collectivization recorded by other anthropologists reveal policies of large-scale repression (e.g. King 2003: 394–95).

Introduction  17 one Kalmyk shepherd on horseback assisted only by his juvenile son managed quite successfully to tend the same number of animals. Various types of cheating and embezzlement, such as illegal appropriation or usage of collectively and state-owned stock and its produce, both by immediate producers and managers, were common and widespread. In addition, some animals were kept in private possession illegally. Originally, kolkhozniks and sovkhozniks were allowed to keep only a few animals in their individual (personal), but by no means private, ownership. The state periodically made efforts to reduce this number and restrict methods of actual disposal of individually owned animals, while the pastoralists for their part endeavoured to increase the number of their animals, even though it was against the law. In the early 1970s, Khazanov asked his Turkmen friend and informant how he had managed to lead a well-to-do life in the capital of the republic on the meagre salary of a state employee. He explained that he owned a herd of camel, which he had inherited from his father in one of the distant kolkhozes in Western Turkmenistan. Officially camels belonged to the kolkhoz, since absentee ownership was forbidden. However, the chair of this kolkhoz was his uncle (FB) and simultaneously his stepfather (at that time, levirate was still not uncommon in Turkmenistan), and he took good care of the herd of his nephew. Whenever he needed money he simply asked if he could sell one of his camels, a request that was always met. It is quite legitimate to ask whether his property in stock could be characterized as personal or private. To answer this satisfactorily would mean entering the discussion on the shadow (informal) economy in the Soviet Union, which is beyond the scope of this volume. Stammler claims that among the Nentsy of the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district the share of personally owned deer never fell below 30 per cent. This figure is high for the Soviet Union and was quite an exception; however, although hard data is unavailable, it seems that the number of illegally owned animals increased during the last few decades of the kolkhoz-sovkhoz system. Ventsel also noticed that the Dolgan retained more reindeer in individual ownership than was permitted by the state. The Chukchi of the eastern extreme of the Siberian Tundra (Gray, this volume) are the most prominent negative instance. Multiple or shared rights in animals are nonexistent in their form of pastoralism. Property rights in Chukotka reindeer may well be blurred as a result of collectivization, de-collectivization and re-collectivization in a different form, and because former reindeer herders have become more sedentarized and lost control of or interest in the deer. However, this is clearly not what we mean when we speak of multiple forms of property in livestock in Africa, where different people hold different but clearly-defined rights in the same animal. The Chukchi fit perfectly into Ingold’s classification of pastoralists into milch pastoralists and carnivorous pastoralists as the pure representatives of the ‘carnivorous’ side.16 Chukchi reindeer are nowadays primarily ‘kept’17 for sale and slaughter, a characteristic they share with Rendille smallstock in Kenya – and like these, they are not the object of multiple forms of property in the same animal. 16. This is not surprising since Ingold himself took them as an example. 17. They are ‘kept’ inasmuch as this extremely extensive form of husbandry can in any way be referred to as ‘keeping’.

18   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee Contrary to once popular theories about the archaic nature of pastoralism,18 specialized pastoralism is a fairly recent phenomenon and specialized tundra reindeer pastoralism19 the most recent of all.20 Still, Chukchi pastoralism was fully developed in pre-Soviet times. Large herds were mostly owned by rich individuals who employed herders, and exchange and a market orientation already existed to some extent. In Soviet times, the state replaced the rich man as the owner; and the production, having been a family activity, was reorganized along professional lines. Pure subsistence pastoralism, of a kind often constructed as ‘traditional’, cannot be located in known Chukchi history. Even in the Chukchi case, however, one reindeer is not the same as another in the sense that a dollar is a dollar. Notions of property (as we have seen in relations between people) are influenced by relations between people and deer. If someone is allotted a castrated male deer for traction, packing or riding, or if it is common knowledge and has been tolerated for some time that he trained the animal for this purpose, then this animal is his for all practical purposes, irrespective of whether he himself or his father or the state is the formal owner. Following Soviet usage and Verdery (2003), Gray calls this relationship ‘personal property’ rather than ‘private property’. Collectivization in other communist countries was equally unsuccessful. The first attempt at collectivization in Mongolia, undertaken in the 1930s using the Soviet model, met with rebellion and had to be abandoned. The second collectivization, in the 1950s, was conducted in a more thoughtful way; since then, however, the pastoralist branch of the national economy in Mongolia has stagnated (Bawden 1989: 290ff.). In China, collectivization, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were disastrous for the Inner Asian pastoralists. However, the government reversed its policy in the 1980s. The communes were dismantled and stock was distributed among individual families through a contractual system of ‘household responsibility’. Production for the market is now encouraged. Still, the state retains a high degree of control over the pastoralist production and, implicitly, over the animals (Benson and Svanberg 1998: 144–45; Sneath 2000: 70ff., 129ff.). Beach (in this volume) describes a specific instance of this control. He has studied a group of Evenki living on the southern fringe of the taiga where it reaches the northernmost tip of China. Their co-ethnics are widespread in Siberia, but these Evenki have been exposed to socialist policies of the Chinese type and are also closer to the consumer market for antlers. For this reason they offer some interesting particularities in comparison to the Soviet/post-Soviet examples. In abolishing private property, these deer were expropriated by the state and compensation paid. The animals were, however, left in the care of their previous owners, who continued to enjoy the products of the deer, prominent among them milk. On the carnivor-milch pastoralist scale, these southern Evenki represent the 18. For a critical discussion of these theories, see Vajda (1968); Schlee (1991, 2005); Khazanov (1994: 111ff.). 19. Keeping domesticated reindeer has existed for a long time as an ancillary activity. Large-scale reindeer herding for the purpose of meat production is a recent phenomenon. 20. For the Komi case at the other end of the tundra in the European Arctic, see Habeck (2005: 63–68).

Introduction  19 opposite of the Chukchi, living in close association with very tame deer and milking them. However, the ‘owner’, namely the state, claimed first 40 per cent, and later 30 per cent, of another product, the antlers of which were used to produce a sexual potency medicine. The large demand for the latter in China drew antlers21 from far and wide. What is the difference between state ‘ownership’ which in practice extends to only one of several animal products and to just 30 per cent of that product, and a 30 per cent tax on the production of antlers? Much of what ‘ownership’ is about seems to consist of how people talk about it. Another way in which the state plays into property relationships is by handling ethnicity as an administrative category. Only Evenkis can become tenants of a stateowned reindeer enterprise. Being the spouse of an Evenki or living like an Evenki does not suffice. As is evident from his article, the Chinese government still largely subsidizes the reindeer herding of its small Evenki minority group. Although this policy is laced with strong ideological considerations, at the same time it allows the government strict economic and social control over the herders. As the antler business gradually gained in significance for the state, intentionally or unintentionally, it made the Evenki society more stratified. The contract holders with the Antler Company benefited most, although they themselves did not necessarily perform the actual herding work. However, the contract of a holder who did not produce enough could be revoked. Whether this peculiar form of multiple rights in reindeer could be characterized as ‘dual ownership’ by the state and immediate producers, or as an owner (state)-holder (herder) relationship is essentially the domain of terminology. Herders who are not even permitted to slaughter their deer can hardly be called their owners. On the other hand, to speak of state ‘ownership’ is equally problematic. We already posed the question above as to whether the difference between a claim to a part of a certain animal product by the state as an owner and a state tax on that product is not simply a matter of terminology. The postcommunist situation is transitional, still quite fluid, and in some respects contradictory. Besides, it is different in different countries. Mongolia experienced its own variety of ‘shock therapy’. All livestock enterprises of the communist period were rapidly dismantled in the early 1990s, and the stock distributed for the most part among the immediate producers (Müller 1995; Schmidt 1995), although the state retains some measure of control over their property, particularly when it comes to selling livestock products. In all pastoralist regions of the Russian Federation, as well as in all countries of post-Soviet Central Asia, denationalization and privatization of stock and other assets resulted in the emergence of a variety of ownership and production units. Some of them were similar to Soviet-type enterprises, albeit on a smaller scale, while others, more advanced on the path of privatization, turned out to be of an ephemeral nature. It became obvious that, at least in the initial stages of privatization, specialization in pastoralism without state subsidies and other assistance was unprofitable in the 21. Similar efficiency is attributed to rhinoceros horns and dinosaur bones. There is no doubt that these beliefs harm natural heritage and the paleobiological record. The antlers of domestic deer are a fairly simple alternative. It would be interesting to find out the extent to which the introduction of Viagra has affected the market for these animal products.

20   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee ex-Soviet Union. It is also remarkable that privatization of stock almost always put ordinary pastoralists at the losing end, since it was accompanied by widespread embezzlement amongst managers and local administrators. A distinctive feature of this situation was the new word ‘prikhvatization’ (grabization) as coined in the Russian lexicon. This is evident in the Russian North in relation to reindeer herders. It would be wrong to assume that with the breakdown of the Soviet Union the reindeer herders of the Russian North were in a hurry to reverse this situation wherever it occurred. Speaking of the Komi in the European area of Russia, Habeck (2005) explains that it was the sovkhoz organization that enabled reindeer herders to make claims against the state in terms of pensions and services such as heavily subsidized transport. Ownership can be expensive. Various transfers need to be examined carefully before deciding who is gaining at whose expense. An ‘owner’ could operate with permanent losses rather than deriving benefits from its property, even if the owner in question is the state.22 At the same time individuals representing the state may manage to benefit. What state ownership means in practice and who exactly ‘the state’ is can vary from case to case. It also goes without saying that assets not owned by the state might still be under strict state control. Ownership can be attributed to major or minor entities constituting the state, down to the lowest level of administration. At all these levels state representatives or state employees may use state resources for the pursuit of collective interests or for personal enrichment. Favouring one’s family or relatives could be seen as a mix of egotistic and altruistic courses of action. Students of morality (not a central concern of the present volume) may find a broad grey zone where different standards apply. It is true that the number of privately owned animals has increased in the Russian North and that their ownership is far less regulated than during the Soviet period. However, the role of the state or regional administrative bodies in regulating and sometimes appropriating property rights in stock, and especially in pastureland, is still huge. In Chukotka and Sakha (Yakutia), the dissolution of collective and state farms was accompanied by the emergence of a number of so-called ‘municipal’ or similar enterprises controlled, and to a large extent owned – and often embezzled – by local administrations (mainly Russian) inherited from the Soviet period. In the Komi republic, the majority of reindeer herders are still with the former state farms, although for years they have often had to do without their regular wages (Habeck 2005: 5, 49ff., 101ff.). In all these different enterprises, employee property rights in 22. Paradoxical examples of the joys of ownership include land taxation – land tax and agricultural inputs in Romania can be so expensive that Verdery (2004: 156) speaks of land as ‘bad’ rather than ‘good’ in certain cases – laws for the protection of tenants that make it practically impossible to enforce rent payments (this has led to a complete cessation of the construction of rented apartments in Germany), and laws on monument protection that make it impossible for owners of old houses to modify them to the extent that they become suitable for the market. Their only option is to let them fall into decay or to destroy them ‘accidentally’. Protection laws often destroy what they are meant to protect by not providing the necessary incentives for preservation. Where ownership becomes a burden, property (in the sense of assets) will perish.

Introduction  21 reindeer are ill-defined and not infrequently exist merely on paper. It would take a good stretch of the imagination to characterize them as collective or joint rights. Attempts to restore the pre-Soviet practice of family households with privately owned stock operating in kin-based camps, or to create pastoralists’ stock raising enterprises and turn them into small-scale market oriented producers, have failed utterly in Chukotka, Taimyr (Ziker 2003b: 368ff.), amongst the Izhma Komi (Habeck 2005: 120ff.), the Tozhu of South Siberia, and in many other regions. In Chukotka, pastoralism has somewhat recovered only due to the measures undertaken by the former governor, billionaire Roman Abramovich. In 2006, his administration began to pay the still existing state farms USD 38 for each animal surviving at the end of the year. Besides, slaughtering of reindeer was forbidden until 2008 and nowadays strict quotas for slaughtering are imposed by the local administration (L. Baskin, personal communication). This example proves that in some cases an involvement of local authorities in pastoralist economies may be quite beneficial. The prevailing opinion amongst the scholars holds that extracting and mining industries are detrimental to mobile pastoralism, since they damage pastureland, distract migratory routes, and so on. For that reason, in the 1990s, the Russian scholars were very much concerned about the consequences of gas exploration in the Yamal peninsula for the reindeer pastoralism there. However, it has turned out that the Yamal Nentsy have actually benefited from the new development, as the workers in the gas enterprises have been eager to purchase fresh reindeer meat. As the result, the number of reindeer owned by the Nentsy has increased from 380,000 in the years 1951–1991 (average annual figure) to 560,000 in 2006 (L. Baskin, personal communication; cf. Habeck 2005: 229–33). However, the other side of the coin is overgrazing. The situation in another pastoralist region, namely in Central Asia, is even more complicated (Khazanov et al. 1997; Khazanov et al. 1999; Khazanov and Shapiro 1999–2001; Khazanov and Shapiro 2005; Kerven 2003). An ongoing process of change can be witnessed there, often without clear direction or predictable outcome. With regard to reforms in agriculture in general, and in its pastoralist sector in particular, there is a great difference between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which have undergone the most dramatic reforms in the region, and on the other hand, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where state-controlled enterprises still predominate (Gleason 1997). While in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan almost all stock is now privately owned, the leaderships of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are still unwilling to relinquish their control over the livestock sectors. In Uzbekistan, former sovkhozes and kolkhozes were converted into new cooperatives or shirkats. However, this conversion is not much more than smoke and mirrors. In legal terms, the livestock shirkats are supposed to operate as entrepreneurial farms independent of state planning, requisitioning, and the like. But things look a little different in practice, as the state still controls, even dictates, the purchasing price for the most important animal husbandry products. Besides, shirkat shepherd members have even less freedom to determine their affairs than during the Soviet era, while their managers have become more independent of state control. Shepherds are not paid in cash; sheep leased to them are whisked away at will; and in order to provide their animals with optimal

22   Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee conditions, such as good pastures or fodder, they have to bribe the managers (Zanca 1999). Although the number of privately owned animals has increased, the right of their disposal meets with so many formal and informal constraints that their ownership can hardly be characterized as a capitalist form of private property. In the same fold, sovkhozes in Turkmenistan were converted into farmers’ associations (diyhan birlishik), in most cases administered (and often mismanaged) by the former Soviet administrations, while the state still controls prices to the detriment of the immediate producers. Animals are leased to shepherds who are obliged to meet certain production quotas. However, despite a presidential decree in December 1995, they are no longer provided with input supplies and services. Nevertheless, the annual produce of the herd has to be shared between the leaseholder and the association. In principle, this leads to an increase in the number of privately owned animals (Ataev 1999: 87–88), but, in 1999, it was announced that shepherds would have to sell their animal output back to the associations at a fixed price (Lunch 2003: 171ff.). Even more than in Uzbekistan this policy makes a mockery of the very idea of capitalist private property. In addition to these numerous problems, it has turned out that almost everywhere in the ex-communist world many people have lost the skills, knowledge, experience, interest and stamina that are all indispensable to pastoralist specialization. It is no wonder that in many countries pastoralism has lost its attraction and many pastoralists are now turning to other occupations. In the 1990s and early 2000s, in Yakutia (Sakha), many people preferred to be unemployed than to take the tough job of reindeer herding. During the last fifteen years, more than one million people in Kazakhstan, including pastoralists, have moved from rural areas to towns and cities. Even in Mongolia, 40 to 45 per cent of the entire population of the country now live in the capital, Ulaan-Baatar (personal communication, Joerg Janzen). Pastoralism in postcommunist Eurasia has lost the prestige it enjoyed for centuries and even millennia, and it can well be asked if it will ever be restored. Be that as it may, private ownership was legalized in all postcommunist countries, albeit to various degrees. This again brings to the fore the problem of multiple rights in stock, not only between the state and state-dependent enterprises on the one hand, and individuals and individual families on the other, but also between individuals and individual families. In this regard, the situation remains unstable, and it is too early to conclude whether we are witnessing a return to precommunist traditions or an emergence of different norms and practices. In addition, these practices even differ in different regions of the Russian Federation, not to mention other countries. It can as a rule be observed that animals held in private ownership belong to individual owners and/or to nuclear or extended families, but not to kin-groups. In the case of family ownership, the rights of its members in animals, including inheritance rights, are not clearly defined by law, and are frequently regulated by specific individual situations or by a custom that goes back to the period prior to collectivization. However, it seems that the old pre-socialist pastoralist practice of reciprocity is reemerging in some regions of the postcommunist world, along with the practice of

Introduction  23 taking care of animals of absentee owners with varying degrees of usufruct rights. Although they have different origins and acquire different forms, these practices are occasionally linked to the need for people involved in different economic activities to rely on informal and/or kin-based ties, as in Sakha (Yakutia) or Turkmenistan (Lunch 2003: 182–83; Takakura 2003: 131ff.), in the context of a decline in the importance of social relations officially regulated by the state. These practices, however, are described among a limited number of pastoralists groups23 only, and it remains to be seen whether they reflect (re)established norms, or are merely of a transitional and temporary order.

23. In Kazakhstan, rich and successful stockowners privately complain that kinship obligations are a burden to them (Khazanov, field notes).

Part I Tundra and Taiga

Chapter 1

‘I should have some deer, but I don’t remember how many’: Confused Ownership of Reindeer in Chukotka, Russia Patty A. Gray

Introduction As the title of this chapter implies, I seek to highlight the perspective of individual reindeer herders with regard to issues of ownership of the reindeer in their midst. If multiple, overlapping claims to reindeer are to be found in Chukotka, they are less likely to occur among the herders themselves than between the herders and the state. In the former Soviet Union as well as in post-Soviet Russia, reindeer herders in Chukotka have competed with state agencies for ownership and control of individual reindeer, and have come out the losers. Russia’s privatization programme of the early 1990s was surrounded by neoliberal rhetoric implying that private property rights for individuals would be secured, thus stimulating entrepreneurship and individual economic security all over the country (Wedel 1998). In Chukotka, the dissolution of the Soviet state brought a period of reorganization of state reindeer farms and denationalization of their property, a process that was accompanied by economic collapse. What began in the 1980s as a gradual decline in the stability of domestic reindeer herds in Chukotka, due to a variety of anthropogenic and ecological causes, accelerated into a collapse that saw the regional headcounts drop dramatically within just a few years. By the early 2000s, that collapse seemed to have been arrested, and data from the Chukotka department of agriculture painted what seemed to be a clear picture: all of the reindeer in the region were owned by a small number of municipal enterprises. Ownership appeared to be neither collective nor multiple; the reindeer herders were not listed as having any property interest in the deer, but were shown as employees of the enterprises that owned them. However, this neat and tidy picture obscured the complexities and confusions that have characterized the reorganization of reindeer herding in the region since 1991. In the subsequent chaotic decade, ownership became complicated and tangled, and most of the herders I spoke to expressed a sense of confusion and powerlessness with regard to their reindeer. In this chapter I demonstrate that post-Soviet privatization of reindeer herding in Chukotka, rather than securing the herders’ rights to ownership of the deer they

28   Patty A. Gray had been herding since long before the Soviet Union was created, actually served to alienate them even further from the deer they considered not only to be their property – their wealth on the hoof – but also their cultural legacy.

Pre-Revolutionary Reindeer Pastoralism I begin with a historical snapshot of reindeer herding in Chukotka on the eve of Soviet collectivization, in order to provide a better understanding of the changes that occurred during and after the Soviet period. Although there were other indigenous groups herding reindeer in Chukotka, my focus is on the Chukchi. The practice of keeping large herds of reindeer for subsistence purposes developed (apparently quite rapidly) among the Chukchi in the early eighteenth century (Krupnik 1993: 173–74) and was still in force two hundred years later.1 The deer in these herds were owned by individuals living in semi-nomadic camps composed of a few families, typically oriented around a single herd of about one thousand head. According to Krupnik (1993: 94), the most important social unit would have been a ‘group of neighbouring herding camps’, since it was this group that cooperatively determined pasturing territories and migration routes. The average size of this extended group would have been 120–180 people distributed among five to twelve camps (ibid. 95). Generally, a single wealthy herder owned most of the deer in the herd associated with one particular camp, while a few head in the herd might be owned by hired herders who work for him in the hope of earning enough deer to eventually start their own herds (Bogoras 1904–9: 83). The reindeer were considered to be the herder’s wealth, while the size of his herd was a measure of his prestige and social status (Krupnik 1993: 171). Each camp community was associated with a territory over which it had long-term use rights by common agreement with associated and neighbouring camps. For a group of the size indicated above – 120 to 180 people – the size of the territory would average 8,000–15,000 square kilometres, with a herd density of 30–90 reindeer per 100 square kilometre of pasture (Krupnik 1993: 97). A group territory would consist of certain standard elements: summer pasture (including spots for fishing on lakes and rivers), winter pasture, and calving and slaughtering grounds. These territories were used communally by members of a single camp (which could consist of several individual owners), and cooperatively with other neighbouring camps. Territorial boundaries could be flexibly altered by agreement among neighbours, and thus change from year to year depending on the condition of the pasture (which could vary in extremes of climate) (Krupnik 1993: 93, 96). According to Krupnik, the long-term stability of the pastoral land tenure system in Chukotka consisted in this very flexibility within and between groups to allow for shifts in patterns of pasture use (ibid. 96). Migration routes in Chukotka varied depending on the distance between the edge of the taiga and the Arctic sea coast. In western Chukotka, the focus of this chapter, annual migration routes averaged   1. For a discussion of the general development of reindeer pastoralism in Northern Eurasia, see Khazanov (1994: 111–14). Most of the research for this chapter was conducted in 2000 and 2001 with the support from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany.

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   29

Map 1.1 Russia showing Chukotka. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

200–400 km, although Krupnik points out a ‘highly noticeable disparity in pastoral migration’ in that ‘wealthier families usually migrated much farther than did poorer ones’ (ibid.). Although one herder could accumulate substantially more deer than others, and they were unequivocally understood to be his exclusive property, this did not result in significant social stratification (Krupnik 1993: 170). The community nevertheless remained to some extent egalitarian, and mutual aid among kin and close neighbours was common. Although later, during collectivization, Soviet agents would characterize wealthier reindeer herders as ‘kulaks’ (thus likening them to rich peasants who exploited the poor) and persecute them as enemies of the people (Dikov 1989: 215), the Chukchis I spoke to about this insisted that these herders were wealthier and more successful simply because they had worked harder and were more skilful, not because they had exploited other herders, and that everyone in the local community respected them as such. Reindeer herding among the Chukchi on the eve of Soviet collectivization (characterized as the ‘tundra type’) was always quite different from that found among the Evenki (characterized as the ‘taiga type’) in that the reindeer of the former were not milked, but accumulated as ‘wealth on the hoof’ and slaughtered for meat in the case of surplus. Milking requires a greater degree of tameness, and is generally associated with a small herd size. Since Chukchi herding practices involved large herds pastured extensively, the deer might better be described as only semi-domesticated. A few deer from the herd, usually castrated males rather than calf-producing females, would have been sufficiently tamed to pull a sled or carry a pack. Although Chukchis did not harvest reindeer antlers as a rule, Bogoras noted that a hungry herder might chop off

30   Patty A. Gray pieces of the velvet for a snack (Bogoras 1904–9: 84). Reindeer were used as sources of meat for food, skins for shelter and clothing, and bone and antlers for tools and implements – all products of the slain deer. In this system, the live deer did not lend itself to multiple, overlapping claims on a single animal, such as rights to milk versus rights to harvest antlers versus rights to use for transport. Tim Ingold (1980) discusses at length the issue of single-stranded (and exclusive) versus multiple rights in animals and herds of animals, and ties the distinction directly to the differences between what he terms ‘carnivorous pastoralism’ and ‘milch pastoralism’ respectively (ibid. 172). According to Ingold, this contrast ‘underlies practically every aspect in which the pastoral economies of the tundra appear to diverge from those of the grassland and semi-desert’ (ibid. 176). Judging from the available data, among the Chukchi, whose pastoralism is clearly classifiable as ‘carnivorous’, ownership was not multiple – any given deer belonged wholly to a single individual. Deer could be gifted, bartered, inherited, or earned through labour, and there may have been socially prescribed expectations for the receipt of such deer, but it seems nevertheless that ownership of the animal would pass in its entirety from one person to another. Nor does the data indicate collective ownership of deer in Chukotka. Although there was collective pasturing of a herd with multiple owners, each animal in the herd would have had an earmark indicating its owner (Bogoras 1904–9: 84), a practice that has survived up to the present. Here there seems to be a subtle nuance, depending on whether it is the individual deer or the whole herd that is being considered. A kin-based camp may very well have thought of the ‘herd’ as its collective property, and at the same time regarded the ‘individual deer’ within the herd as individual property.

Collectivization of Reindeer Herding in the Soviet Period The Soviet state produced undeniably strong effects on the pastoralists under its sway in the course of the twentieth century. To a greater or lesser degree, I would argue that this very long-armed state effectively undid ‘traditional’ reindeer pastoral systems and transformed them into a remarkably uniform model, regardless of the original variables of culture, ecology, geography and the type of animals involved (Gray 2003). Indeed, Soviet reindeer herding gained a reputation abroad as a model to be emulated, one that was geared primarily towards the goal of meat production. It is perhaps because the form of reindeer herding practised in Chukotka already resembled a system that seemed conducive to high levels of productivity – large herds with sufficient deer annually available for slaughter – that Soviet managers focused their attention on Chukotka as a key site for implementing meat-producing management practices carefully worked out by newly trained ‘experts’ in specially created institutes. These practices stipulated that each herd should be tended day and night by two pairs of herders working 12-hour shifts in rotation. Whereas Chukchi reindeer herding originally bore a resemblance to a family business (and indeed, it was more than a subsistence activity, since trade in reindeer products was highly developed – cf. Bogoras 1904–9: 95–96), it was now patterned after the urban factory work brigade.

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   31 Property relations became a matter of state policy as well as ideology. In the early stages of collectivization, reindeer owners were obliged to bring their herds together and manage them cooperatively under state supervision. The reindeer remained nominally the property of the herders, but this does not mean that ownership patterns remained undisturbed. The ideological project of the Bolshevik revolution should not be forgotten, namely to depose wealthy exploiters and elevate exploited workers. The Chukchi system, whereby a successful, wealthy herder employed younger, inexperienced and comparatively ‘poor’ herders as hired hands, appeared to Soviet agents as a distinct case of bourgeois exploitation. Thus, they felt justified in dispossessing these ‘kulaks’ of their deer and distributing them more equitably to ‘poor’ herders as ‘their’ property. However, the ultimate goal of the Soviet state was to render as much as possible into the property of the state, particularly the means of production (cf. Verdery 2003: 51). Consequently, voluntary cooperatives (kolhozy) were replaced by state farms (sovkhozy), where reindeer became the property of the state and herders were compelled to work as mere state employees, tending state-owned herds and earning a monthly salary. Although these enterprises were devoted to meat production, they were not economically viable, and became entirely dependent on state subsidies for survival (Dikov 1989: 397). This property picture is not as totalizing as it might seem at first. Even in staterun enterprises, individual herders were allowed to own a certain number of reindeer, which were pastured collectively with the state-owned herd. Over the years, the state set more and more restrictions on the number of deer that could be privately owned by a herder. In the ritual recitation of heroic statistics so typical of Soviet sources, reducing the portion of privately owned deer was portrayed as one of the system’s laudable goals. By the 1960s, private ownership of reindeer in Chukotka had dropped to about 5 per cent of the region’s total reindeer headcount (Dikov 1989: 348; Leont’ev n.d. 96), and stayed at that level through to the end of the Soviet period. Almost all of the reindeer herders I spoke to in Chukotka mentioned that they owned one or more deer. The latter were frequently won in a socialist competition on the state farm or earned as a reward. Herders said they knew their own deer by sight and could pick them out of the herd. These deer, which were given nicknames, were often castrated males that the owner had tamed and trained to pull a sled; however, productive males and calf-producing females were also owned. Calves could be kept to increase the stock of personal deer or could be gifted to a friend or relative, or passed on as an inheritance. A clear distinction was made between deer trained for transport, namely for pulling a sled or carrying a pack (ezdovye or priagovye), and productive deer bred to increase the herd (proizvodstvennye). In some cases, a sufficient number of trained transport deer were accumulated by a brigade to warrant tending them separately in a small herd kept closer to camp than the main herd. The small number of personal deer meant that they were not an important economic resource, and in fact their presence could easily go unnoticed by a casual observer. However, the more I questioned herders about their own deer, the more it became apparent that herders valued these deer as something closely associated with themselves. Chukchi families often showed me photo albums where there was

32   Patty A. Gray typically a photograph of a reindeer standing apart from the herd, close to humans; invariably I would hear the comment, ‘Oh, that’s so-and-so’s deer’, and sometimes there would be an ensuing story about the deer’s character and conduct. I was also told that a deceased person’s favourite deer would be sacrificed at his or her funeral to provide transport into the spiritual world. Moreover, all types of privately owned deer, whether transport or productive deer, were highly valued as personal property to which the state farm had no claim. In my conversations with herders about privately owned deer, the slippage in terms used to refer to the latter resulted in some confusion on my part, a confusion often shared by other ethnographers working in the Soviet North. In some cases, the term ‘personal deer’ (lichnye oleni) was used, while ‘private deer’ (chastnye oleni) was used in others (where ‘chastnye’ is the same word used in the phrase for ‘private property’: chastnaia sobstvennost’). Both terms appear in the Soviet sources that discuss collectivization of reindeer herding in Chukotka, and are used inconsistently. Sometimes the discussion focuses on deer held for personal use by members of collective farms, and sometimes on those held by herders outside of the collective farm system altogether. Chastnyi tends to be used to refer to the latter only, but lichnyi could be used to refer to both, or be combined with the word sobstvennost’ (property) (cf. Dikov 1989: 249, 275, 348; Leont’ev n.d. 96). While my evidence is so far anecdotal, I would venture to say that I most often heard Chukotkan herders use the term ‘private deer’ when referring to deer they had acquired since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reorganization of the state farms, while ‘personal deer’ more frequently denoted deer held in Soviet times. It is important here, however, to consider that Western neoliberal notions of property do not correspond perfectly with the property notions of these reindeer herders (cf. Hann 1998b), creating what feels like ambiguity where perhaps there is no local perception of such. Even when the discussion was clearly focused on the Soviet period, a ‘personal deer’ might denote a deer that was privately owned, or a state-owned deer that a herder had been allowed to train, and eventually came to think of as his own. One herder said that his father had allowed him to train a few of his privately owned deer, which then became his personal deer, albeit remaining the property of his father. Thus, it appears that a ‘personal deer’ was not necessarily one’s own property, while a ‘private deer’ most certainly was. Verdery (2003: 50) offers some insight with her discussion of four types of property recognized in socialist contexts: (1) state property, (2) cooperative property, (3) personal property, and (4) private property. The socialist state viewed private property ‘as a residue of the bourgeois order’ and as ‘slated for eventual elimination’ (Verdery 2003: 51). Personal property, on the other hand, was encouraged as a sign that the standard of living was being raised. However, personal property should not constitute the means of production – such property should ideally be state owned or at least cooperatively owned. One problem with applying this framework to ‘personal deer’ and ‘private deer’ is that, by some accounts, Soviet era ‘personal deer’ could technically be classed as the means of production when they were proizvodstvennye as opposed to castrated transport deer. However, this is where Soviet reindeer property relations become truly ‘fuzzy’, to use Verdery’s own term

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   33 (1999). After all, even ‘private deer’ were pastured collectively with state-owned deer, and their productive capacity could be exploited to the benefit of the state farm when needed. Stories abound of state farm records being doctored to show losses equally shared by both private and state-owned deer, even when herders knew that their own deer had not been lost. By the same token, there are just as many tales of subversion involving herders fibbing in their own favour when it came to reporting deer losses. Hence the entire category of personal/private deer could be seen as a case of multiple, overlapping property, whose ambiguous status was continually negotiated by herders and state managers.

Post-Soviet Reorganization(s) of Reindeer Herding The collapse of the Soviet Union brought radical changes to reindeer herding in Chukotka, as well as throughout the Russian North. In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin mandated that all state enterprises – including reindeer-herding enterprises – had to reorganize themselves and reregister in a new legal form. While this meant that the enterprises would no longer be state owned, it did not mean in practice that they became fully privatized, which is why some prefer to call this process ‘denationalization’ rather than ‘privatization’ (cf. Wegren 1998 and Van Atta 1993 for fuller explanations of this process). In Chukotka, this initial period of reorganization was surrounded by a great deal of excitement among indigenous residents, judging by the recollections of herders and reports in regional newspapers. At the time, there were vague expectations that reindeer herding would once again become what it had been prior to collectivization, that is, an enterprise owned and managed by indigenous Chukotkans themselves. Reindeer, they said, rightfully belonged to the reindeer herders, and it was high time that they got their property back. Reindeer enterprises had several options to reorganize. It should be noted that while all state farm members were given a vote on how their enterprise should be reorganized, for practical purposes this process was controlled and directed by upper management, that is, by people not directly involved in reindeer herding. Most state farms took the option of reregistering as a joint stock company, while essentially retaining the same form and function. With this option, employees received shares (pai) in the enterprise and could ‘cash out’ if they chose, collecting their share in cash or in kind. Most of the Russians working as professionals in state farm support services cashed out in this way and left Chukotka altogether, while most indigenous reindeer herders chose to remain in the tundra with the herds. In some cases, Russians ‘privatized’ state farm equipment, such as tractors or trucks, for other profit-making purposes. In a few cases, even deer were ‘privatized’ by Russians, who then immediately slaughtered them and sold or traded the meat. The end result was that numerous enterprises were depleted of their functioning equipment as well as of their key management personnel, and thereafter struggled to survive. These enterprises operated in essentially the same way they had in the past, that is, the herders were employees of an enterprise under a manager, who in most cases was a Russian outsider (although indigenous Chukotkans did occasionally become managers of reorganized enterprises).

34   Patty A. Gray The herds now consisted mostly of deer owned by the enterprises, but included personal deer privately owned by individual herders. In the Soviet period, careful accounting was carried out on herd dynamics, and the status of privately owned deer was continually tracked on paper (Kerttula 2000). In the 1990s, as herds were merged and herders moved around the tundra or migrated out in search of more stable employment, these vigilant accounting practices faltered. If a herder left the tundra to take a job in the village, it did not mean that he gave up ownership of his personal deer; yet it did mean that he became utterly dependent on others to tend these deer and to account honestly for their fate. This arrangement was not unprecedented; even Bogoras described coastal fishermen who owned reindeer kept by tundra relatives, which they would visit merely from time to time (Bogoras 1904–9: 71–72). However, since the ensuing economic crisis brought an almost total breakdown in infrastructure, including transportation, post-Soviet villagebound herders had few opportunities to visit the herd and personally monitor the condition of their own deer. If the owner received a report that his deer had been eaten by wolves, it might well have been true. On the other hand, it could in fact have been an enterprise deer that was eaten, and the herder’s deer merely translated on paper into an enterprise deer. Although family earmarks still exist, I got the sense that marking was not being systematically practised, especially when owners were not physically present to ensure the marking of new calves. Another option in Russia’s privatization plan was to break up herding into smaller, independently run operations. In Chukotka, only a handful of herders went this route by taking their shares out of the state farm in the form of reindeer and striking out on their own. Their herds became 100 per cent privately owned, with property rights often shared by a kin-based herder collective. The results were for the most part disastrous for these herding operations; within a few years they had failed, almost without exception. These were precisely the cases where the reindeer were once again owned and managed by indigenous Chukotkans, descendants of preSoviet reindeer herders. Because the state had taken control of reindeer herding from the herders themselves for so long, the current generation had grown up with skills suitable only to tending deer in the tundra, but virtually no skills or resources for the transportation and marketing of large quantities of reindeer meat in a globalized economy. In some cases smaller enterprises rejoined the larger enterprise from which they had splintered. In most cases, however, the reindeer headcount simply dwindled until the herd was no longer viable, forcing these small, family enterprises to go bankrupt and dissolve. Reindeer herding in Chukotka had experienced a gradual decline throughout the 1980s. After the initial period of post-Soviet reorganization, however, a mixture of economic, ecological, political and social factors precipitated a collapse. Reindeer headcounts fell dramatically throughout the region. In larger enterprises where there might have been up to twelve separate herds (tended by twelve individual herding brigades), shrinking herds were merged and herders laid off. More herders abandoned the tundra to seek non-herding jobs in the villages, or even beyond in the district and regional centres. The overall deer headcount in Chukotka dropped from 540,000 in 1980 to 85,000 in 2000 (Gray 2000).

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   35

Map 1.2 Chukotka showing location of Kaiettyn. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

As confusing and chaotic as the situation was during the initial period of reorganization mandated by President Yeltsin, the situation became even more complicated in the late 1990s. Faced with the imminent collapse of reindeer herding in Chukotka, the regional department of agriculture was hard pressed to provide assistance, both to prevent further degradation of the reindeer herds as well as to provide social support for remaining reindeer herders, who for years had received virtually no cash salary whatsoever (as they had been accustomed to in the past). The plan devised to save reindeer herding – an approach that seems to have been taken up in several other regions in Siberia around the same time – was to put partial ownership and control back into the hands of the government, this time in the form of the municipal (i.e. district-level) administration. In Chukotka, it was known as ‘municipalization’ (munitsipalizatsiia). The execution of this complex process appears to have been somewhat devious and not entirely legal, the full details of which are beyond the scope of this chapter (see Gray 2001). Although department of agriculture officials and regional administrators presented this to the public as a voluntary process recognized by the reindeer herders themselves as a step to improve the lot of Chukotkan reindeer herding (rhetoric reminiscent of the period of collectivization), there were many reports of herders having been tricked or strong-armed into signing over their enterprises to the control of the municipal authorities. The outcome was that the municipal (district)

36   Patty A. Gray administrations in all eight districts of Chukotka claimed to own a 51 per cent share of all reindeer herding enterprises, with 49 per cent held collectively by the herders (in some cases enterprises were registered as 100 per cent municipal property). The district held what officials called the ‘kontrol’nyi paket’ or controlling share, which gave the municipal entity the right to impose management decisions on the enterprises. This was indeed an unprecedented form of multiple and collective property. Each district now acted as a kind of reindeer-herding mega enterprise, with branches scattered throughout the tundra within its administrative borders. Across the board, the first decision by the municipal administrations was to appoint a director to each enterprise that met with the administration’s approval (in certain cases a compliant director was kept on). The few small herding enterprises that had refused to sign over were simply left out in the cold – cut off from access to support in the form of subsidies, credits, and even basic access to transportation and communication (controlled by the district administrations) – and were mostly dissolved.

Confusion about Reindeer Ownership – The Case of Kaiettyn In order to illustrate the effects of this recent reorganization on reindeer herders and their property claims, I turn to the case of a former state farm in the western Chukotka district of Bilibin, based in the village of Omolon. The Omolon state farm had fifteen reindeer herds in its Soviet-era heyday, tended by as many individual brigades of herders. Table 1.1 (below) tracks the fate of each brigade, the key social and economic unit in the tundra. During the initial phase of reorganization in the early 1990s, the Omolon state farm became a ‘limited liability partnership’ with the name TOO ‘Omolon’ (tovarishchestvo ogranichenoi otvetsvennosti). At this time, all employees were given shares (pai) from the state farm’s assets, and many herders told me they received reindeer as their share, having been assigned a specified number of deer on paper. One herder commented to me that people would ask each other, ‘What’s your share?’ meaning, ‘How many deer do you have?’ These deer, newly acquired as private property, held a different kind of potential to the personal deer maintained in tiny quantities by herders during the Soviet period – these deer now represented quantities that could create a viable independent herd, if family members combined their shares. And that is precisely what some of the Omolon herders opted to do. Three brigades were liquidated and six remained within TOO ‘Omolon’, but four brigades (Nos. 10, 12, 13 and 14 – see Table 1.1) chose to split off in 1992. They took their reindeer shares and formed four small, independent (essentially family-run) reindeer-herding enterprises, officially registered as the common form of fermerskoe khoziaistvo or ‘farming enterprise’. These enterprises now ostensibly owned everything in their possession as private property. They remained on the same territory they had used as brigades of the state farm, but now leased this land directly from the district, and were free to use its pastures as they saw fit. Their herds were made up primarily of privately owned but collectively held deer, with each herder having a known share of deer. Most of these would have been productive deer, with a few used as sled or pack-trained deer, the latter being considered personal deer.

Brigade No. 2

Brigade No. 3

Brigade No. 4

Brigade No. 5

Brigade No. 6

Brigade No. 7

Brigade No. 8

Brigade No. 9

Brigade No. 10

Brigade No. 11

Brigade No. 12

Brigade No. 13

Brigade No. 14

Brigade No. 15





























TOO ‘Omolon’

f/kh ‘Kadar’

obshchina ‘Kaiettyn’

obshchina ‘Kaiettyn’

obshchina ‘Kaiettyn’

obshchina ‘Kaiettyn’

TOO ‘Omolon’

–

–

–

TOO ‘Omolon’

–

TOO ‘Omolon’

TOO ‘Omolon’

OAO ‘Omolon’

f/kh ‘Kadar’

OAO ‘Ilguveem’

f/kh ‘Nembonda’

OAO ‘Omolon’

OAO ‘Ilguveem’

OAO ‘Omolon’

–

–

–

OAO ‘Omolon’

–

OAO ‘Omolon’

NOTE: f/kh = fermerskoe khoziaistvo (farming enterprise); TOO = tovarishchestvo ogranichenoi otvetsvennosti (limited liability partnership); OAO = otkrytoe aktsionernoe obshchestvo (open stock society). Table compiled by Patty A. Gray on the basis of data supplied by the Chukotka Regional Department of Agriculture as well as her own interviews of Kaiettyn obshchina members.

TOO ‘Omolon’

f/kh ‘Kadar’

f/kh ‘Oloi’

f/kh ‘Nembonda’

TOO ‘Omolon’

f/kh ‘Pananto-Kaiettyn’

TOO ‘Omolon’

LIQUIDATED

LIQUIDATED

LIQUIDATED

TOO ‘Omolon’

LIQUIDATED

TOO ‘Omolon’

TOO ‘Omolon’

OAO ‘Omolon’

OAO ‘Omolon’

TOO ‘Omolon’

Brigade No. 1



TOO ‘Omolon’

Second reorganization (‘municipalization’)

  Soviet First reorganization (‘privatization’) Mid-1990s Period

Table 1.1 State Farm ‘Omolon’ in Bilibinskii District, Chukotka

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   37

38   Patty A. Gray Three of these brigades (Nos. 10, 12 and 13) along with one other (No. 11) were situated within contiguous territories on the eastern edge of the state farm’s territory, far from the central village and its services. Consequently, a makeshift resupply base was built during the Soviet period in a place centrally located in relation to these four brigades – a few wooden houses, a trading post, a bath house, and a medical station. This base went by the name of ‘Kaiettyn’. Brigade Nos. 10, 12 and 13 were among those that broke away from the state farm, while Brigade No. 11 remained part of TOO ‘Omolon’. As the infrastructure broke down in the wake of the first reorganization, all four of these former state farm brigades felt abandoned by the central village of Omolon, which still nominally administered their social services. Thus, in 1993, the four brigades – three of them independent, one still legally part of the main enterprise – banded together to form Chukotka’s first obshchina, a communal territorial formation allowed for in Russian federal legislation since the early 1990s (Fondahl et al. 2001; Gray 2001). The obshchina was named ‘Kaiettyn’ after the tiny base at its centre. The obshchina functioned as a means of local self-government for the residents within the territory of these four brigades; in essence, the organizers of the obshchina were trying to elevate the base to the status of an officially recognized village, one that would be entitled to the full range of social services stipulated by administration policy. However, by the time I interviewed Kaiettyn residents in 2000, several years after the creation of their obshchina, most of them were not even aware of its existence, or only vaguely remembered the fact that it had been formed. In their minds, the village of Omolon and the enterprise TOO ‘Omolon’ retained the most prominent roles in terms of the administrative structures they perceived around them. Moreover, the obshchina did not participate in the economic management of the enterprises. Brigade No. 11 was still being managed by TOO ‘Omolon’, based in the village of Omolon, while Brigade Nos. 10, 12 and 13 were on their own, and struggling in the context of new, supposedly market relations. In an effort to gain stability, and recognizing their own limitations, these three independent family enterprises pooled their resources and jointly hired an outside director. They chose a Russian who had been the economist of the former state farm at Omolon, and expected him to manage their finances and help them transport and market their reindeer meat in the district capital. However, in a scenario that became all too familiar across Chukotka, the Russian director embezzled enterprise funds and fled to Moscow within a couple of years. This left the three enterprises in truly dire straits. In the late 1990s, the Chukotkan regional department of agriculture began to implement its plan for municipalization of all reindeer enterprises in Chukotka. In Bilibinskii District, five new municipal enterprises were created on the basis of existing privatized enterprises (including TOO ‘Omolon’), with each given the label ‘open stock society’ (otkrytoe aktsionernoe obshchestvo or OAO). Of the twenty-six various small reindeer-herding enterprises that had sprung up in this district after the first reorganization in the post-Soviet period, seventeen were liquidated, three remained in existence (at least on paper), and the rest were absorbed into the new OAOs. One of these new OAOs was located on the territory of the obshchina Kaiettyn, and was called ‘Ilguveem’ after a river that flowed through this area. OAO

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   39

Map 1.3 Detail of brigades at Kaiettyn. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

‘Ilguveem’ was formed on the basis of two of the four independent enterprises, Brigade Nos. 10 and 13. The remaining reindeer of these two enterprises were driven together to form one herd, which now grazed on the territory of the former Brigade No. 10. Fewer people were needed to tend this consolidated herd of deer (the official ratio set for Omolon tundra was 1 herder per 360 deer). Surplus personnel were relegated either to the status of hunter-fishers, who lived separately with their families in camps along river banks, or to that of ordinary workers stationed at the base Kaiettyn (which served as the headquarters of the enterprise). The man appointed by the district to become director of this newly formed enterprise was a Russian who had been a professional wage-earning hunter in the former state farm based in Omolon. When I interviewed him, he explained that his enterprise had inherited all property rights associated with the former enterprises based on Brigade Nos. 10 and 13. He said he was completely unaware of the existence of the obshchina that supposedly united these two brigades with Brigade Nos. 11 and 12, a fact that was clearly unimportant to him. This new director, now as an agent of Bilibinskii District, saw himself as taking on responsibility for supplying the material

40   Patty A. Gray needs of all those residents at the Kaiettyn base, and clearly expected the latter to be his employees. Although the few residents who disliked the new director and refused to work for him were not ostracized by the base, their future did seem uncertain. All in all, the picture had become hauntingly reminiscent of what had prevailed in the Soviet period, when the state farm dominated the lives of rural residents. What of the property issues surrounding the remaining deer of these four brigades on the territory of Kaiettyn? Here is where the confusion becomes apparent. Everyone involved expressed varying degrees of uncertainty about these issues, from the regional department of agriculture officials to the heads of enterprises and all the way down to individual herders and workers living at the base. A review of three key periods may serve to clarify matters. 1. Late Soviet Era to 1991 There was a state farm based in the village of Omolon, which managed fifteen herds of deer. Fifteen reindeer herder brigades and their families tended the herds, and although the majority of the deer were owned by the state farm, each brigade member was likely to own a few head of deer, some of which were carefully trained and considered their ‘personal deer’. 2. Reorganization, 1991–1998 Throughout this process, both people and deer stayed together as units, whatever legal organizational form they took. However, property in deer may have begun to look different to herders, depending on whether they stayed with the main reindeer enterprises or broke off on their own. Those who stuck with the main reindeer enterprise based in Omolon would have remained in a position similar to that in the early Soviet period – their shares of deer were pastured collectively in a large enterprise herd, and a small number of animals in the herd were considered their personal deer. Those who branched out to form independent enterprises could now consider the whole herd – what remained of it – their private property, held communally with their business partners (who were in almost all cases relatives). A few individual deer, more tame than the others, would be used as always for transport, and would be considered the personal deer of those who trained them. In fact, in the case of the former Brigade No. 12, the enterprise split even further, as individual family members took their shares – as few as a hundred head of deer – and went off to graze them separately. Because they were so small, these groups were ignored and effectively fell off the monitoring scope of the department of agriculture. 3. Municipalization, 1998–2001 In the case of the new municipal enterprise OAO ‘Ilguveem’, we see two small independent enterprises (Brigade Nos. 10 and 13) being taken over by the district and reorganized into one large municipal enterprise, with the district now claiming a 51 per cent property share. Many questions remain as to the ownership status of their deer. Does the district now own a 51 per cent share of each deer, or 51 per cent of the total number of deer? Or does the 51 per cent include other assets, such

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   41 as transport vehicles and buildings? I asked these questions, but even department of agriculture officials could not provide me with straight answers. The director of the enterprise was unable to tell me what percentage of either herd was privately owned by the herders, whom he considered as his employees. He seemed to treat the entire herd as ‘his’ property, or at least the property of ‘his’ enterprise, although he was aware of the fact that most current and former herders probably thought they held shares of privately owned deer. Although this herd had previously consisted on paper of 100 per cent privately owned deer collectively managed by two independent family enterprises, it is not known whether the merger with the district was a genuine expression of the herders’ will. Only a small number of people who had originally worked in the enterprises were now working directly with the herd in the tundra. The remaining deer owners were scattered in locations far away from the herd – some living in retirement at the base, some working in jobs at the base that were not related to herding, and others living in separate remote camps, engaged in hunting and fishing either as employees of the new enterprise or as disgruntled independents. These people no longer had any direct connection with the herd or with the deer they owned. How could they actualize their property rights over these animals? How could they monitor the condition of their deer – or even know whether the deer were alive or dead? Their confusion as to whether or not they still had any deer and if so, how many, as well as their lack of direct control, seemed to work to the new director’s advantage. He was hired to manage a district-controlled reindeer-herding enterprise, for the purpose of which he needed a stable herd. He would not be able to do his job successfully if herders could easily take their own deer and split them off from the herd. During my time at the Kaiettyn base, I conducted a house-to-house survey regarding property issues. One of the questions concerned the status of the deer that respondents owned as their personal property. In some cases people seemed almost bemused by the question, as if barely able to remember that they owned some deer. The answers I received are summarized in Table 1.2 below. The responses also revealed something of the nature of what personal deer ownership had been like among these people. One base resident talked about how in winter the herd would be driven close to the base and people would be able to catch their tame deer out of the herd, keep them tethered close to the base, and hitch them up to sleds for work around the base or for trips into the main village of Omolon for supplies. People valued these deer highly – one base resident said, ‘Without deer, we’d have to go on foot – where could we go?’ Yet at the same time I sensed their distance – their alienation – from the deer as their property, especially when it came to the productive, non-transport deer. One young woman, who lived with her family at a remote riverside hunting and fishing camp, lamented the absence of deer, saying she had nothing from which to sew clothing or make a new dwelling (and here she pointed out the shabby condition of her family’s canvas tent). The only people maintaining a close relationship with the personal (transport) deer were the herders – brigade members – who were formally employed by OAO ‘Ilguveem’ and worked in the tundra with the herd.

Status

Deer were joined with OAO ‘Ilguveem’ – not sure how many left. Was her share, ‘my own herd’ – does not know if she still has them or not. Considers she has no right to them because she no longer works for OAO ‘Ilguveem’.

Kostya Base Retired herder 290 Transport (20) Brigade No. 10 Productive (270)

Mira Base / Unemployed 48 Transport (1) Brigade No. 10 tundra camp Productive (47)

Table compiled by Patty A. Gray on the basis of her own interviews of Kaiettyn obshchina members.

Sergei Base / Worker 69 Transport (19) Brigade No. 10 Transport deer held in common with tundra camp Productive (50) father. Had taken deer and formed own enterprise. Later joined them with Brigade No. 10. Not sure how many are left – ‘maybe wolves ate them’.

Transport deer gift from mother’s brother – also share from state farm. Current status unclear.

Worker for enterprise / 6 Productive Not specified former herder

Nikolai Base Retired herder Does not remember Transport and Brigade No. 13 productive

Tolik Base

Received as work bonus when he was a herder – he sold them for cash.

Location of deer



Number of deer once owned Type of deer

Divided between three siblings, but deer were lost when brigade fell apart.

Employment

Varya Base Nurse 43 Not specified Brigade No. 13

Residence

Given to son but thinks wild deer took many away.

Owner

Daria Base Retried ‘tent worker’ Not sure Not specified Brigade No.11

 

Table 1.2 Status of deer owned by residents of Kaiettyn

42   Patty A. Gray

Confused Ownership of Reindeer   43

Conclusion Overall, I encountered a sense of fatalism among reindeer herders and their families at Kaiettyn – many seemed to have given up any hope of reconnecting with their deer. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an initial surge of self-confidence directed towards indigenous self-determination, accompanied by the hope that the tundra dwellers would become more fully masters not only of their personal deer, but of entire herds that had long ago been wrested from indigenous control. However, this initial optimistic mood turned into a phase of defeatism and depression among former reindeer herders. Some were angry, but few showed any sign of willingness to fight with the new local boss. He had their deer, and there was not much they could see themselves doing about it. They rarely if ever saw the deer they considered their own property and had to trust others – usually relatives who still worked with the herd – to tend their deer. Once proud of the deer they owned and had trained to pull sledges for transportation and sport, they now felt disempowered and alienated from their own property, more so than in the Soviet period, to the extent that many could not even remember how many deer belonged to them in the collective herd, and had no hope of ever being able to exert their rights of ownership over these deer. Although some families were ready to strike out on their own to live in small, kin-based camps, supporting themselves by bartering fish and game meat, they considered it impossible without their deer. However, they saw no way either to untangle their own deer from the herd and claim them physically or to actualize and monitor their rights to these deer as absentee owners. Thus, what had once been a complex system of fuzzy, multiple property has been streamlined into a single, unambiguous strand that the herders have no grasp on.

Chapter 2

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks in a Post-Socialist Arctic Community: The Dolgan in Sakha Aimar Ventsel

This chapter deals with the social networks and cooperation surrounding domestic reindeer in my field site in Anabarskii district on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the north-westernmost district of the Republic of Sakha in Eastern Siberia.1 Most of my time during field research was spent in the village of Uurung Khaia, one of the two ‘agricultural settlements’ in the district. A Dolgan settlement with a population of 1,200, Uurung Khaia is located in the tundra zone, some forty kilometres south of the coast. The Dolgan are a Turkic-speaking indigenous minority of about 6,500 who, with the exception of this village, live in and south of the Taimyr Peninsula in Krasnoiarskii Krai. The Dolgan are traditionally engaged in reindeer herding, the hunting of wild reindeer, and fishing. In Soviet times, the Republic of Sakha was known as the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Russian Federative Socialist Republic. In 1990, the region declared itself sovereign and was renamed the Republic of Sakha. The Republic of Sakha remains subject to the Russian Federation, and is the second largest administrative unit in Russia (3 million square kilometres). Despite the vastness of the territory, the population is only around one million. The titular nationality, Sakha, is the second largest ethnic group (c.40 per cent) after the Russians (c.50 per cent). Approximately 2.5 per cent (20,000) of the population belong to the so-called ‘Small-Numbered Peoples’ of Siberia and the Russian Far East (malochislennye narody) (Tichotsky 2000: Ch. 2), who are indigenous peoples numbering fewer than 50,000 (Sirina 1999). The majority of these indigenous groups live in small remote villages and are engaged in reindeer herding, hunting and fishing, occupations that are officially referred to as the ‘traditional economy’ (traditsionnaia ekonomika).

 1. Research contributing to this chapter was undertaken as my Ph.D. fieldwork at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany.

46  Aimar Ventsel

Historical Overview In the pre-Soviet period the Anabarskii district was part of a larger region where, in addition to domestic reindeer herding, wild reindeer and arctic fox were hunted. Reindeer herds were generally larger in the tundra zone, while people in the taiga (boreal forest) kept fewer animals and concentrated on hunting (Gurvich 1949: 7–8; 1977: 18; Vasilevich 1969: 52). As a rule, extended family-based groups migrated to the tundra alone in the winter, and in the summer joined other groups to make up larger units. These joint groups then chose several elders from among themselves to lead migrations and resolve conflicts (Popov 1934: 126, 134; 1935: 184). Reindeer in pre-Soviet times were held in private ownership, although opinions differ as to whether they were owned by families or individuals (Dolgikh and Levin 1951; Popov 1935). According to Popov, a renowned Soviet ethnographer, the eastern Dolgan, that is those living in present-day Sakha and eastern Krasnoiarskii Krai, were more trade oriented than the western Dolgan. Eastern groups had a stronger sense of individual and family property and limited sharing among relatives to the fourth generation, whereas among the western Dolgan even distant relatives were allowed to take tools and reindeer without asking (Popov 1934: 131). However, people had the obligation to help each other, and among kin it was not seen as economic exchange but rather as sharing property with relatives. According to early ethnographic accounts, the Dolgan practised a custom known as ‘haimu’, from the Russian word ‘vzaim’ (borrowing), whereby tools, food and animals were given as gifts, but the giver expected a similar present should he himself be in need. Another mode of sharing was the practice of yllyy (‘borrowing’ in Sakha). In this case, the giver expected an immediate return or one at a concrete point in the future (Popov 1934: 128–29). Soviet ethnography has a tradition of interpreting reciprocal relations as a sign of exploitation. Hence sharing among the Dolgan and the Evenki was viewed as a relationship where the wealthy attempted to render their less prosperous relatives dependent upon them (Dolgikh 1963; Gurvich 1977; Popov 1934; Vasilevich 1969). Yet, the extent to which sharing can be interpreted as exploitation remained unclear. Older people told me stories of pre-revolutionary times when wealthy relatives frequently helped poorer people by giving them reindeer and food. Similar cases in the pre-Soviet and early Soviet periods have been documented by Anderson (2000: 137). In these cases, people were not obliged to return animals or tools. Scholars have also observed more formal and more commercial relations among the indigenous peoples of East Siberia. Polish-British ethnographer Czaplicka wrote that Tungus (an early term for Evenki) ‘princes’ (kniaz) and ‘elders’ (stariki) lent reindeer to poorer siblings when the latter had difficulty in paying taxes. However, when the number of reindeer people returned exceeded what they had borrowed, the leaders kept the surplus (Czaplicka [1916] 1999: 166–67). Popov also documented cases of people with enormous reindeer herds giving some of their animals to someone else to be looked after over the summer or to hired herders. This ‘hired’ labour received two to four reindeer for their labour (Popov 1935: 199–200). However, whether herders were allowed to use reindeer for their own consumption has not yet been clarified. Here I support Anderson (2000: 138), who argues that it is a ‘great failure of the state ethnographic record that it is now impossible to distinguish

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    47 between different modes of alliance and exchange’ when reading works of early Soviet scholars. In the case of hiring herders, the question of whether it was seen as a wage job by the people themselves is still unanswered. Neither is there proof that lending and borrowing was a conscious strategy to establish a circle of dependents. On comparing older ethnographic material with the data I collected it could also be argued that sharing property with kin was instead a strategy to create a network of ‘delayed return’ (Woodburn 1982). Soviet ethnographers either neglected or failed to recognize the fact that services in indigenous communities were valued in equal measure. Examining different forms of sharing and distribution as a complex structure of reciprocity reveals that such practices exist not only in Siberia but also in other regions of the Arctic (cf. Bodenhorn 2000). The life of pre-collectivization nomads was to a great extent economically unstable. Owners of huge reindeer herds could lose their herds overnight during a snow storm or by a wolf attack. Those who relied on hunting were (and still are) at the mercy of the migration of wild reindeer and changes in the furbearing animal population. In addition, owners of smaller reindeer herds were in constant danger of losing their herds to the huge wave of wild reindeer migration, since domestic animals have a tendency to run away and join their wild relatives. Mutual assistance among the people living in the tundra was needed in order to cope with this insecurity. One strategy in these circumstances was to establish reciprocal networks as a risk absorber. The so-called ‘law of the tundra’ has survived to the present day and implies an obligation to help people in need, in other words to share food and shelter with others in the tundra (see Ziker 2002: Ch. 6). Of course, there were limitations to the extent to which property and services should be shared. Following Popov (1934), I suggest that unlimited support and sharing was restricted in the Anabar region to the fourth generation. Haimu can be interpreted as an expression of such interdependence – that is to say people had the right to expect support on the basis of assistance they themselves had provided sometime in the past. Yllyy was practised with people who were less close, and who did not entertain as trusting a relationship with the giver as close relatives did. I also doubt that it is possible to draw a strict line between help and wage labour. Ssorin-Chaikov (2000) demonstrates how barter and reciprocity overlap among the Evenkis. Similarly I interpret helping and hiring or working for someone else as a multiple complex of social relations. According to my older informants, being a herder (pastukh in Russian) in the pre-Soviet period in Anabar meant having a good personal relationship between the herd owner and the wage labourer. In his recollection, one old man, Fedor Stepanovitch Tuprin, emphasized how his father, who had worked for one of the wealthiest reindeer owners in the region, had recounted that the whole reindeer camp was ‘like one family’. People felt responsible for the well-being of the animals that constituted an important basis of their livelihood. During my fieldwork I observed that according to unwritten law, everyone in the reindeer brigade camp, whether a visitor or a permanent worker, has an obligation to participate in daily work, especially duties related to the reindeer (gathering the animals in the morning, driving them to another place, slaughtering). This more or less ‘egalitarian’ sharing of tasks is described by Beach (1993) for the Saami, where everyone participates in herding and counting, independent of how many animals

48  Aimar Ventsel they owned. Another observation I made was that anyone who participates in daily work has a right to satisfaction of their primary needs, namely food, shelter and clothing. I argue that what Soviet ethnography interpreted as ‘exploitation’ is, in the case of Anabar, a combination of wage labour and social habitus. The collectivization of reindeer herding, fishing and hunting in Sakha got under way after the resolution of the fifth Congress of the Russian Communist (Bolshevik) Party, the VKP(b), in 1927. The task confronting the Yakutian (Sakha) Communists was ambitious: they had to fight with ‘the multi-levelness (mnogoukladnost’) of agriculture, [and] elements of patriarchal-feudal, in some regions kinship relationships’ (Safronov 2000: 247). The process was relatively slow, and it was only in the 1940s that the indigenous population and their reindeer were successfully established in collective farms (kolkhozy), which by the 1960s had been turned into state farms (sovkhozy). In Anabarskii district, as in most cases in Sakha, collectivization began with so-called comradeships (tovarishchevsto) in the early 1930s. United by these comradeships, reindeer herders then herded their animals together but maintained their ownership rights to the reindeer. Officially, the goal of these early Soviet enterprises was to break people’s dependence on rich traders and reindeer herders (Tuisku 1999: 72). One of my informants, whose father was involved in establishing comradeships, explained how collectivization was implemented step by step: ‘At the beginning, before the state farms, we had “brotherhoods” (bratstvo). The collective farms were established on this basis. Then they were joined into state farms. They varied in size, some small, others large. The “brotherhood” was established because the old people did not understand the Soviet idea (stariki ne poniali sovietskuiu ideiu)’. In the 1940s, four collective farms were established from comradeships in the Anabarskii district. With the development of state enterprises the native peoples of Anabarskii district were also ‘civilized’; in the 1940s, the two villages of Saaskylaakh and Uurung Khaia were established in the district, where apart from the administration there were also schools, hospitals, libraries and kindergartens. This was part of the process known as ‘mastering of the North’ (osvoenie Severa) (Fedorova 1999: 53). With the development of air transport and radio/television from the 1950s to the 1970s, Anabarskii district was increasingly tied to state structures. In the 1950s, several small settlements in the district were closed and people moved to the villages of Saaskylaakh and Uurung Khaia. The collective farms were incorporated into two large farms based in the two villages. In the wave of uniting, or sovkhozization, of small collective farms into large state farms all over the Soviet Union, two collective farms were united in 1961 into one state farm called ‘Anabarskii’, which covered the entire district. The district centre, the village of Saaskylakh, remained the centre of the new state farm, while Uurung Khaia was reduced to a subdivision. In 1983, the ‘Anabarskii’ state farm was divided into two farms. The ‘Anabarskii’ state farm remained in Saaskylakh, whereas the new state farm, known as ‘Severnyi’, was located in Uurung Khaia (Neustroeva 1995: 4). In Soviet times, reindeer herding, hunting and fishing management was subordinated to the local ministry of agriculture and became an element of socialist agriculture. In the aftermath of centralization, these became separate occupations,

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    49 and special hunting, reindeer and fishing brigades were introduced in the collective and state farm structures. Reindeer, hunting and fishing brigades received centrally distributed territories (uchastok) and were only allowed to pasture their herds, fish and hunt within these borders. By creating a village-based infrastructure, the native people were sedentarized in the Anabarskii district. It was a slow process. According to my informants, sedentarization was completed by the end of the 1980s, when the native population lived in the villages and only went to the tundra to ‘work’ or to hunt and fish for their own needs. By moving people from the tundra to the village, the Soviet state created a new family model. Most hunters and reindeer herders in Siberia worked in tundra or taiga brigades in month-long shifts, while their families remained in the villages and visited them occasionally in the summer or saw husbands or fathers when they returned to the village for a break. This type of reindeer herding was called ‘industrial nomadism’ (proizvodstvennoe kochevanie) as distinct from the former ‘nomadism as a way of life’ (bytovoe kochevanie). Only a few women remained in the tundra or taiga as so-called ‘tent workers’ (chumrabotnitsa), which was the paid job of feeding the men and sewing or mending their clothes (Vitebsky and Wolfe 2001: 84). Contrary to many other regions in Siberia, the shift to the new reindeer herding model was not crowned with success in the Anabarskii district. It meant that many reindeer herders had to take their wives with them to the tundra as tent workers, a situation that has been classified as ‘industrial nomadism which maintained features of “nomadism as a way of life”’ (Syrovatskii 2000: 229), and social life in the reindeer brigades remained largely family based. The reindeer stock in the district increased under the socialist agricultural policy. There were 9,950 reindeer registered there in 1941, whereas the human population did not exceed 1,500. In 1945, the number of domestic reindeer had already risen to 12,515. This figure again nearly doubled in the next decade and a half, and in 1961, the newly established ‘Anabarskii’ state farm was the proud owner of 21,700 reindeer. The figure reached its peak in 1991, when 24,800 reindeer were registered in the district. As my informants explained, the actual reindeer figure was even higher because the official figures referred to the stock size after the huge autumn slaughter (zaboi), when several thousand animals were slaughtered annually. In Anabarskii district, domestic reindeer were divided into twelve to fifteen brigades containing 1,500–2,000 head each. Between five and eight reindeer herders (pastukhi), one hunter, one veterinarian and four or five tent workers worked in each brigade. According to my informants a reindeer brigade consisted primarily of relatives. This was to change in the 1960s. When state farm management began to distribute workers to the brigades with little or no regard for kin affiliation, the so-called ‘family brigades’ disappeared. Nevertheless, even after the establishment of state farms, the concentration of close relatives in brigades remained high. According to older state farm enrolment lists and people’s recollections, it was not unusual for two or three brothers and their sons or a father with two or three sons to work in the same brigade. Reindeer herding, as an element of socialist agriculture, had a plan to fulfil. The decisive feature (pokazatel – index) in evaluating the quality of the brigade was

50  Aimar Ventsel its ‘economic output’ (delovoi vykhod); in other words, how many calves in relation to female animals were born and survived in a particular year. The brigades had an obligation to keep 90 per cent of female animals and 75 per cent of calves according to the figures for the autumn head count. This counting (corral) was organized by the state farm administration twice a year. If a brigade managed to keep an even greater number of animals alive, the plan was considered to have been overfulfilled. It should be added for clarification that it is almost impossible to keep all adult animals and newborn calves alive; animals get sick or lost, they die in snowstorms (especially calves) or are killed by wolves. The natives of Uurung Khaia are still proud of the fact that the first person to receive the title of Hero of Socialist Labour in the Soviet Union for reindeer herding, Il’ia Spiridonov, came from their village. Il’ia Spiridonov worked for eighteen years as a brigadier of the reindeer brigade. For many years he maintained the number of reindeer over the obligatory 90 per cent and ‘gave the state 21,600 reindeer in this way’ (Neustroeva 1995). Reindeer herders are allowed to kill a certain number of the brigade’s reindeer for their own needs. These animals are called ‘limit reindeer’ (limitnye oleni), and the price of each one slaughtered is deducted from the wage of the herder who slaughtered it. Brigadiers keep an account of how many limit reindeer are consumed and later hand over the record to the chief veterinarian of the state farm. With the shift to Soviet ‘scientifically’ planned reindeer husbandry, both the nature and organization of reindeer herding changed. Up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of privately owned reindeer was limited to between fifty and a hundred head in one herd. My informants stated that although reindeer herders, and hunters in particular, secretly kept back more animals, the situation was not comparable to that on the Yamal peninsula during the Soviet era, where Nenets herders illegally retained vast numbers of reindeer (see Stammler and Ventsel 2003). Having only a small quantity of private animals meant that reindeer herders and hunters had to tame and use state reindeer to move around in the tundra and between tundra bases and the settlement. On the other hand, they were allowed to use state animals for labour, and wild reindeer for meat were plentiful. Hence, it was not really necessary to keep private animals in large numbers. According to my informants, the ‘snowmobile revolution’ (Pelto and MullerWille 1987), when people in the Arctic started to use the snowmobiles that would radically alter their movement patterns, gradually reached the Anabarskii district at the end of the 1980s, albeit very few tundra dwellers were in possession of snowmobiles. According to Jana and Otto Turza, who visited Anabarskii district in 1995, hunters had their own transport reindeer even then. However, this was no longer the case in 2000 (Turza and Turza 1996/1997: 31). Complete ‘mechanization’ (Liely 1979) was not achieved until 1996 when the last families gave up reindeer sledges as a means of transport for long distances. However, reindeer transport is still used for short trips in the tundra. Despite the fact that the snowmobile only ‘took over’ slowly, its position after 1996 has never been questioned, even though fuel is scarce and people have very little money to buy it. The main means of transport in the tundra is still the snowmobile, and both herders and hunters are extremely reluctant to switch back to using reindeer sledges for long trips. According to my

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    51 observations they preferred to pay double or triple the price for fuel than go back to using reindeer sledges for long distances. Other modes of ‘mechanization’ introduced in Soviet times were either allterrain motor vehicles or light aircraft – in Anabar primarily helicopters (Liely 1979: 409) – all of which were used to transport supplies and the reindeer herders themselves. In addition, the tundra brigades were centrally supplied with firewood and timber to build sledges, balokhs,2 and hunting bases. The timber was transported to the tundra by tractor or all-terrain vehicle. Demographic change accompanied sedentarization and the establishment of villages. Whereas the population in the district increased, mostly due to Russian and Sakha incomers, the number of professional hunters and reindeer herders, popularly known as tundroviki, decreased in the 1960s and remained stable for decades. In 2000, the population of the Anabarskii district was approximately four thousand, a figure that included only about four hundred tundroviki. The majority of the population had their principal occupation and home in the village.

‘Reindeer Policy’ of the Republic of Sakha and its Reflection in the Anabarskii District Since the establishment of the Republic of Sakha in 1991, the number of domestic reindeer in the republic has constantly declined. Whereas 361,600 domestic reindeer were registered in the territory of the Yakut ASSR in 1990, by 2004 the figure had dropped to only 135,000 animals in the Republic of Sakha. Although the old Soviet-style agriculture had collapsed in Sakha in the early 1990s, and new private, collective enterprises appeared to be competing with the remaining state farms (see below), reindeer herding is to a great extent still centralized. All animals, irrespective of the owner, are carefully counted at least twice a year, which explains why the Sakha statistics are more trustworthy than in other regions. Reindeer herding is still the least privatized branch of the agriculture in the Republic of Sakha (Tichotsky 2000: 216). According to a 2002 report for the President of the Republic, 52.7 per cent of the reindeer belong to (former) state farms, 27.4 per cent belong to obshchiny, 18.8 per cent are privately owned, 0.5 per cent are peasant holdings (krestianskoe khoziaistvo), and 0.6 per cent are in the possession of the supplementary family households (podsobnoe khoziaistvo). According to the reindeer-herding law, all domestic reindeer in the territory of the Republic of Sakha are considered ‘national treasure’ (natsional’noe dostoinstvo) and the government of Sakha has the legal right to count them, to set minimum prices for reindeer products, and to control the trade in antlers-in-velvet (panty). Despite these regulations, the reindeer-herding products remain the property of the reindeer owners (Ob-Olenevodstve 1997: Art. 5, § 1 and 2). This law legalizing the involvement of the state in reindeer herding and set down in concrete terms is somewhat contradictory. The officials interpret it to mean that privately owned deer could be slaughtered at the will of the owner, but that state   2. Light cabins constructed on reindeer sledges and used in the Anabarskii district instead of tents.

52  Aimar Ventsel and communal reindeer (for example of the obshchina) remain under the supervision of the government, which passes on responsibility for supervising the condition of the herds to local administrations (personal communication with state officials). Furthermore, large-scale slaughtering requires the permission of the government. Since 2000, all reindeer herders and female tent workers in Sakha, independent of their employers, receive a state-guaranteed monthly salary from the Ministry of Finance (Ob-Oplate 2000). The aim of this ‘reindeer policy’ is to keep people working in reindeer enterprises and increase the number of animals.3 In this sense, the overall policy of the Republic of Sakha was to keep reindeer alive but not to slaughter them and sell the produce. The fact that reindeer herding, hunting and fishing – traditional indigenous occupations – are marginal activities that engage a few thousand professionals is one reason for the policy. Their existence is seen in cultural and social dimensions rather than in economic terms. Reindeer herding in Sakha is regarded as the cultural domain of indigenous minorities. Moreover, quite a large number of people living in remote villages are engaged in this branch or indirectly linked to it (for example fur processing), and the total collapse of reindeer herding could bring about an escalation of unemployment and social problems in the settlements. The first president of the Republic of Sakha expressed a similar interpretation to that of the officials (Nikolaev 1994). In this context, therefore, it is no surprise that only two of the approximately twelve new enterprises in Anabarskii district are engaged in reindeer herding. Others, as mentioned above, prefer hunting wild reindeer and arctic fox, and seasonal fishing. Because they are not state subsidized, these activities involve risks, although hard work and good luck bring these enterprises some profit. With regard to reindeer herding, the only stable income is the state wage and so-called ‘matochnaia dotatsiia’, which is a minor, monthly subsidy of a few roubles paid by the Ministry of Agriculture for each female reindeer. Although a regular income, these payments are unable to keep up with the astronomical prices of post-Soviet times, forcing reindeer brigade members to rely on fishing, hunting, selling their produce or bartering with entrepreneurs (so-called kommersanty), who appear in the village in late winter (February or March). Entrepreneurs sell groceries in large quantities, and reindeer herders buy them in advance to last four or five months. People frequently run into debt buying groceries and commodity items such as VCRs, televisions and furniture for their apartments in the village, as well as snowmobiles, all of which have to be paid for later with meat, hides and fish. The number of domestic reindeer in the Anabarskii district follows the general trend of the republic and continues to decrease. Whereas 16,213 domestic reindeer were registered in the district in January 2000 (compared to 24,800 in 1991), one year later the number had dropped to 12,669. It is difficult to explain a reduction of more than 10,000 head within ten years. General opinion attributes it primarily   3. The state guarantees reindeer herders a wage when they work at least three days per month. Ironically, the same specialists who fought hard to introduce this wage are now against it. They argue that equal pay fails to motivate reindeer herders to increase the ‘quality’ of their work. Hence these scholars now suggest the introduction of a diversified salary that links wages to concrete results (i.e. growth or reduction of herd size) (see Syrovatskii 2000).

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    53 to the overuse of pastures and the declining morale of the herdsmen. This topic will not be discussed here. Despite this general decline, the number of private reindeer has increased. The former Soviet restrictions on privately owned animals in the brigade herd were dropped in the 1990s. Due to the shortage of fuel, shorter trips in reindeer camps are made exclusively with reindeer sledges. Another reason for hunters or villagers to own reindeer is to have access to meat when wild reindeer are scarce (usually in the spring). During my fieldwork, approximately 25 per cent of the reindeer in each brigade were privately owned. Most of the private reindeer belonged to the reindeer herders, but a considerable number of animals were owned by people not working in the reindeer brigade. Basically, all indigenous adult inhabitants of the village of Uurung Khaia owned some reindeer. Whereas in most cases ordinary village inhabitants owned up to five animals, hunters and their children each had ten to twenty. Reindeer herders themselves owned twenty to sixty animals, with the average being thirty to forty.

Post-Socialist Setting: New Enterprises In this section I shall outline the changes that occurred after the demise of statecontrolled agriculture. The collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by the reorganization of political and economic structures in the Republic of Sakha. In agricultural districts the transition process meant first of all that the subsidies for state and collective farms were reduced. In central districts populated by the ethnic Sakha, this meant the establishment of peasant farms and the decline of state farms (Bychkova Jordan et al. 1998; Crate 2003). In northern reindeer-herding districts, privatization was slower, and reindeer herding is still the branch of Sakha agriculture that is least privatized. Former state farms were either reformed or handed over to district ownership, continuing to exist as MUPs (municipal unitarian enterprises – munitsipalnoe unitarnoe predpriiatie). In many cases only the name of the enterprise was changed, whereas structure, functioning and subordination to the state in large agricultural enterprises basically remained the same (Tichotsky 2000: 209–14). In 1996, the ‘Severnyi’ state farm in the village of Uurung Khaia was reformed to become the Il’ia Spiridonov MUP (MUP imeni Il’ia Spiridonova), although people still use the expression ‘state farm’ in talking about the enterprise. The state reindeer were handed over to district ownership, and responsibility for management of herds was given to MUPs. The management of the enterprise still resided in the old office building of the state farm. The structure of the reformed state farm consists of hunting, reindeer herding, fishing, and technical brigades, as had been the case with the state farm, and the enterprise continues to be accountable to the Ministry of Agriculture. In contrast to the state farm, the MUP is directly subordinated to the district administration. In the case of important decisions, such as leasing reindeer to private enterprises, the director of the MUP has to consult the head of the district administration. These alterations do not greatly affect the life of the average reindeer herder but they do demand new management and accountancy methods from the enterprise’s leading officials. The enterprise has direct contracts with diamond-mining enterprises to market meat and fish in exchange for money, groceries, transport and fuel. It also receives subsidies from the Ministry of Agriculture and the local district

54  Aimar Ventsel administration. The MUP management attempt to maintain Soviet-style obligations– rights relationships with their workers as far as possible. Where feasible, the enterprise supplies brigades with fuel, ammunition, groceries and clothes – the result of barter deals with industrial enterprises. Furthermore, all private reindeer are vaccinated along with the enterprise reindeer in the head count corrals. MUP pays for its workers’ health insurance and pension schemes. Contrary to the Soviet policy whereby brigade members were appointed by the management, reindeer herders are now allowed to choose the brigade they want to work in. This policy is a direct outcome of a shortage of reindeer herders. The state reindeer-herder wage motivated some men to join reindeer brigades but many prefer to remain unemployed in the village than to take up the physically strenuous job in the tundra brigades. All reindeer brigades in Anabar have vacancies for workers. Consequently people began to move between brigades, and the concentration of close relatives in reindeer brigades increased. Many of my informants told me that one reason for joining a new brigade was to work with relatives. During the Soviet era, reindeer brigades had a target to reach. MUP brigades have a similar plan to those of the brigades in that period, in that reindeer herders are obliged to maintain 90 per cent of adult animals and 75 per cent of calves, based on the number of the last head count. Prices for lost and slaughtered animals are deducted from the wages of the herders, whereas maintaining and increasing the number of animals means extra income in the form of female animal subsidies paid by the state. For their part, reindeer herders have the right to use enterprise reindeer for food and labour. Hardly any of the herders have enough draft or mounted animals for migration and other tasks. The obligation to tame thirty animals, laid down in their working contracts, is occasionally ignored since not everyone is capable of taming this number of reindeer. However, each herder has several reindeer in the brigade that he considers ‘his own’. They are subject to the same regulations as the ‘real’ private animals, meaning that others are only allowed to use these animals with the permission of the ‘owner’. It is worth noting here that a person’s reputation depends on his ability (i.e. skills) to tame reindeer. The MUP is not the only new actor in the agriculture of the Anabarskii district. The Republic of Sakha pioneered a new type of indigenous institution – the so-called obshchina (obshchiny in the plural) – which are clan-based holdings or communities. On 23 December 1992, the government of Sakha passed a law of kin-based pastoral communal holdings (kochevaia rodovaia obshchina). The obshchina is an institution for the reorganization of the social and economic activities of indigenous people. The aim of the obshchina is to ‘revitalise, preserve and develop the way of life, culture and language of the less numerous peoples of the North’ (O-kochevoi 1992: Art. 1, § 1). In fact, the obshchiny I visited were not established with the intention of going ‘back to the roots’ but of benefiting from entitlement to state credits and tax exemption for the first five years. Those who want to establish an obshchina have to leave the state farm or its successor institution. They then receive their share (pai) of the property of the collective enterprise to use as an investment in the obshchina. From the beginning of the obshchina movement, both Russian and Western scholars saw it as the only alternative to large collective state agricultural enterprises (cf. Belianskaia 1995; Fondahl 1995; Osherenko 1995a; Novikova 1997; Sirina

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    55 1999; Boiiakova 2001; Fondahl et al. 2001; Fondahl 2003). The obshchiny in the Anabarskii district were created on the basis of the former state farm brigades, as a rule with a former senior, state farm official, such as a livestock expert (zootekhnik) or veterinarian, in the position of enterprise director. Only one obshchina in the district is engaged in reindeer herding in addition to hunting and fishing, while the rest are exclusively hunting and fishing enterprises. This obshchina has two brigades: a reindeer brigade and a hunting brigade. Both are composed of former state farm brigades. Only close relatives remained in the brigade, the others left. Hence the brigadier of the herding brigade is an old, respected socialist-era herder, whose sons and other male relatives work in the unit. The obshchina does not own the reindeer herd it works with but leases it from MUP. The norms of the leasing contract are similar to those of MUP reindeer brigades, namely to keep 75 per cent of calves and 90 per cent of adult animals alive. Any surplus the enterprise manages to keep alive can be used for its own purposes. Similar to MUP reindeer brigades, workers of the obshchina reindeer brigade receive the state reindeer-herder salary, except the money is paid via the district administration and not some enterprise bookkeeper. As far as I understood, ‘leasing’ in the case of the obshchina does not mean that they have to pay a certain amount every month. In fact, both members of the obshchina and the director of the MUP told me that they lease the herd ‘for free’, whereas the MUP receives its share of the female animal subsidies and has the right to charge the obshchina for lost or slaughtered animals. The question is why MUP bought into a deal that economically is not different from their own reindeer brigades? The only answer I can find is that by leasing reindeer to non-MUP enterprises, MUP saves supply costs for herders, since the obshchina has to find its own sources for fuel and groceries. Another factor not to be underestimated is certainly the pressure from the district administration. As the head of administration told me, the herders of leased herds are more motivated to increase the number of animals and therefore the district administration supports the idea of the establishment of new private and cooperative enterprises. And indeed, herders of the obshchina informed me with great enthusiasm that ‘now we work for ourselves’. Similar to their obligations toward the enterprise, herders of the obshchina also have similar rights to reindeer as herders of the MUP. Herders are allowed to use reindeer labour and slaughter animals for food. Each man has ‘his’ draft animals, which are exclusively his possession and which may only be used with his permission. MUPs and obshchiny are not the only new ‘actors’ in privatization. Other forms of property that shape the ‘agricultural landscape’ in the Anabarskii district are subsidiary enterprises of MUP (dochernoe predpriiatie), small-scale enterprises (maloe prepriiatie) and family enterprises (semeinoe khoziaistvo). A subsidiary enterprise is an autonomous MUP unit. The Erel enterprise I visited succeeded the former state farm self-sufficient (khozraschet) brigade that was established during the economic reforms in the late 1980s. Similar to khozraschet or economically independent brigades of the 1980s (cf. Vitebsky 1989), the subsidiary enterprise has its own budget within the MUP system and is allowed to keep its surplus income. Erel is also free to decide how to market its produce, but has to buy its equipment since it only receives fuel from the mother enterprise. Erel’s director has to report to MUP on Erel’s activity,

56  Aimar Ventsel but MUP administration does not interfere in Erel’s business. Three brothers who have already worked together on the state farm form the core of the enterprise. At the end of the 1990s, the brothers decided to establish their own enterprise and invited the former director of the state farm to join them as the director of the subsidiary enterprise. Erel does not own its reindeer but leases a herd from MUP under the same conditions as the obshchina. For herders this means that they are also entitled to the labour of MUP reindeer, but compensation for lost or eaten animals is deducted from their wages. And, similar to other enterprises, Erel’s main income is various state subsidies and trade in wild reindeer meat. To my surprise, despite the fact that the herders are brothers, the same strict rules for the use of reindeer labour exist in the Erel enterprise. The herders have their own animals and expect that the respective brothers ask when they need substitute animals. So, even within one family, property rights in reindeer are highly individualized. Although the members of various hunting enterprises with different legal statuses own reindeer individually, the hunting enterprise as such has no herds. The private animals of the hunters are kept in reindeer enterprise herds, and are mostly untamed deer used either for social purposes or in rare cases for food. The small-scale hunting enterprise Elden is subordinate to the Ministry of Small-Scale Entrepreneurship, which means access to better credits than those afforded to enterprises subordinate to the Ministry of the Agriculture. Officially Elden is a private enterprise, whose main occupation is hunting wild reindeer and arctic fox, and fishing. Since many of the Elden members were once reindeer herders, they own a substantial number of private reindeer. However, I never saw these hunters using animal labour, as only snowmobiles or trucks are used in the tundra and the village. Reindeer were distributed among neighbouring brigades where hunters have relatives. Similar to other enterprises, Elden was established on the basis of the former state farm brigade and thus most of its members have long experience of working together. In the context of this paper the following points are important. Elden has its own hunting territory, which is one of the regions wild reindeer pass through on their annual migration. Since the main income of the enterprise comes from hunting, hunters do not welcome large-scale hunting by other people on their lands. The official land-use rights in the region are fuzzy, and few enterprises have territories fixed on paper. Elden is one of the few exceptions, as most hunting enterprises have only their base in the tundra registered in official documents (see Ventsel 2005). Elden also has considerable access to highly valued resources such as fuel and ammunition. The enterprise sells most of its produce to the Alrosa diamond company. This is a lucrative deal because the company not only buys meat and fish but, as part of their social programmes, also helps members of the enterprise to improve their living standards by donating groceries, financing the building of apartment houses, and last but not least, building an underground ice chamber for the enterprise.4

  4. The Alrosa diamond company has its own social programmes, the goal being to invest part of its income in the social and economic spheres of the districts where the diamond mines are located (see Duncan 1994; Tichotsky 2000).

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    57 The second hunting enterprise I became familiar with is registered as a family enterprise (semeinoe khoziaistvo). It is located in a log cabin used to house a state farm hunting brigade that contains only members of one family. In 1998, the brigade was registered as a family enterprise and continues with the father as director, his four sons as hunters, and their spouses as chumrabotnitsa. The legal position of family enterprises is ambiguous, and is based on the initiative of the President of the Republic of Sakha to ‘strengthen families’. Although there is no law on family enterprise, a family registered as an enterprise is entitled to state support, for instance in the form of limited credits. As the father told me: ‘There is no law [on the family enterprise]. So we don’t know … We’re not permitted to have a bank account. But we try, maybe it will get better.’ Hunters receive credit from the district to buy rifles and other equipment; everything else depends on how much meat they are able to sell. Since meat is not available in great quantities, they sell their produce to village institutions such as school and airport canteens that want to buy meat in small amounts. This family enterprise also has territory they consider their hunting grounds and are quite restrictive with regard to its use by other people. All members of the family own reindeer and are the only hunters to use them occasionally. I saw reindeer sledges at their base and the father told me that when reindeer herds are close enough, hunters either borrow reindeer from the herders or use their own private animals for shortdistance trips. In concluding this section I would like to emphasize that all new enterprises in the northern districts are engaged in similar activities – reindeer herding and hunting – and their altered status merely regulates their access to subsidies, credits and marketing structures. Access and control over resources (both in and outside of the tundra) has switched from one organization (state farm) to many enterprises of different shapes. The concentration of relatives and long-time colleagues in new institutions, and the increasing independence of enterprises, increases also the importance of informal relations, monitoring access to resources and relations between enterprises.

Private Reindeer and Social Relations In this section I focus on how various giving, gifting and borrowing operations around private reindeer are embedded in a wider network of reciprocity. All private reindeer in the district are kept in reindeer brigades and each reindeer herd contains up to 25 per cent of private animals. Almost every indigenous person in the Anabarskii district, independent of gender or age, owns some reindeer. Since all domestic reindeer in the district are counted regularly and changes made in the household records (podkhoziaistvennaia kniga), the district has first-rate statistics on the distribution of animals. According to household records, most people own five to ten animals, some own fewer and about a hundred people have twenty to sixty head. Those in the last category are male, and former or current tundroviki. Reindeer herders own more deer than others, and because many hunters had worked as herders in the past, many of them own more than thirty head. Tundroviki, especially herders, are the only group to use reindeer as working animals. According to local

58  Aimar Ventsel opinion, substantial numbers of private animals are proof among the tundroviki of skills at keeping and taming animals. I mentioned above that reindeer herders also use enterprise reindeer, but primarily they try to tame their own private animals as soon as these are big and strong enough. However, a single family requires up to hundred tame animals at different times and for different tasks, so that state animals are indispensable. The old Dolgan custom whereby all children receive reindeer from their parents on becoming teenagers has survived in the Anabarskii district. According to this tradition, parents give their sons and daughters several animals when the young people establish their own families. Animals that have not been distributed go to the youngest son, since it is believed that the latter should take care of the parents when they are too old to work, and should even offer them a home (cf. Popov 1934, 1935). As I mentioned earlier, although villagers and herders slaughter their animals in times of need, private reindeer are seldom killed for food. Given their small numbers, privately owned reindeer are of minimal economic significance. However, as I will discuss in the next sections, their social significance is all the greater. Reciprocity: Networks, Gifting and Supporting During my fieldwork I noticed that reciprocity in Anabar is not generally seen as an economic activity. The fact that money is not involved in the exchange network is characteristic of reciprocity in Anabar, where the whole process is interpreted as showing respect to, or support of, ‘countrymen/fellows’ (zemliaki), the people with whom one has grown up. Numerous scientists have pointed out the relation between creating social networks and giving animals away as gifts (Baxter 1975; Ingold 1980; Khazanov 1994). Quoting Gluckman, it can be said that ‘all relationships are established over gifts’ (Gluckman 1965: 176). Gift giving is, as a rule, voluntary and a sign that the donor values the personal relationship (Cheal 1996: 89). The most valued gift in Anabar, according to general opinion, is a live reindeer. Among the Dolgan, reindeer are donated only on special occasions, a custom already mentioned for pre-Soviet times (Shirokogoroff 1929: 35–36). Giving someone a white bull, a rarity among the grey and dark reindeer,5 is a sign of tremendous respect. One of my informants, a souvenir maker whose speciality is carving small figurines from mammoth tusks, showed me a picture of one of these white bulls. When he joined the army, his relatives gave him the bull and sent him the picture of the animal. With this gesture, his relatives wanted to celebrate the beginning of a decisive period in his life. White bulls are also presented as a gift to celebrate the birth of a child, marriage, the return from the army, or other events that in local understanding mean a radical change in a person’s life.

  5. A white reindeer bull was considered sacred among the reindeer Evenki (Shirokogoroff 1999: 198) and to judge by my fieldwork observations this is still the case with the Khanty, Even and forest Nentsy. White is indeed a rare colour, and white reindeer possess particularly fine qualities as working, breeding and meat animals (Podkorytov 1995: 41).

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    59 Another occasion for giving a reindeer as a gift is when someone visits a reindeer brigade they have not visited for a long time. In celebration, good friends give him one of the best reindeer they possess, a tradition already observed by Popov in the 1930s (Popov 1934: 30). When the people from the fifth Uurung Khaia brigade visited the third brigade of the same MUP on their way to their home camp, a big party was given in their honour. The reindeer herders stopped at our camp to spend the night and pick up the four reindeer they had left at one time with our brigade. On leaving the camp the next morning, they had twelve reindeer on the line instead of four. Each member of the third brigade had given them one animal, and even the 18-year-old son of a pastukh had given away one of his. (When I asked why they gave their reindeer away, the eldest son of one reindeer herder said: ‘They are our relatives. And they had not visited us for a long time.’) The reindeer were taken away, but in many cases, especially when someone lives permanently in the village, they leave the reindeer in the herd it had originally been in, or as the main livestock expert of Uurung Khaia explained to me: ‘You usually leave the reindeer where it is given to you. I have my reindeer in four brigades.’ Sneath (1993) shows how kinship-based networks covering the rural and urban areas were established in post-socialist Mongolia, the goal of which was to guarantee security to people in times of transition. Similar to the Dolgan network, these networks are more powerful and better provisioned than ‘atomised individual households’ (ibid. 205). They use old pre-socialist ideas of reciprocity and kinship, combining them with socialist and post-socialist structures. Siberianists tend to follow one of two mutually exclusive approaches. They assume either (a) that the old traditional way of life continued to exist more or less unchanged in collective and state farm structure (Egorov 1990; Fondahl 1995) or (b) that the traditional way of life was destroyed by the collective and state farm (Krupnik and Vakhtin 2002). Following this, Anderson and Ziker show how Evenki, Nganassan and Dolgan traditional social mechanisms are combined with socialist-era values and postsocialist quasi-capitalist reality to monitor the use of common pool resources where the state had failed to do so satisfactorily (Anderson 1998a; Ziker 2002). In the post-Soviet Arctic community in the Anabarskii district, which used to be adequately supplied and provided with free social services during the Soviet period, access to various commodities and resources has taken an uneven course. Cash income is unstable for most people, and even access to goods can be a problem. While Soviet reindeer herders received most of the necessary supplies from the state farm management, they have recently been obliged to buy supplies from village shops or travelling merchants. This is not easy to manage since the tundroviki spend months in the tundra. When in the tundra, reindeer herders need access to the hunting grounds controlled by hunters in order to kill wild reindeer for meat and pay their debts. On the other hand, most villagers have no resources to buy meat from the tundroviki. Dolgan from Uurung Khaia are convinced that relatives should help and respect each other. To obtain access to unequally distributed resources, people are forced to establish alternative networks, and the social relations tied to extended kinship are most effective in this situation. Sneath asks whether the unit of reciprocity is

60  Aimar Ventsel an individual or a family household (Sneath 1993: 196). The Dolgan in Uurung Khaia understood members of kinship as part of the family who support each other, from taking care of each other’s children when parents are in the tundra to sharing food and commodities. In this sense, extended kinship in Uurung Khaia is a large household, a ‘sharing network’ that monitors the ‘flow of food, children and services’ (Bodenhorn 1993: 177). The movement of private reindeer reflects the social relations these networks entail. It was no coincidence that the young man who received the gift of a white reindeer bull frequently visits the reindeer brigade where the donor works. He goes to the tundra for the hunting season and stays at relatives. Moreover, he is also given the mammoth tusks he requires for his work as a souvenir carver, and his father has the family reindeer in the same herd. Neither is it a coincidence that the third and fifth brigades contain closely related herders whose children go to school together. When herders are in the tundra, other relatives keep an eye on their house and take care of their schoolgoing children. Gifting reindeer is a sign of respect but also of the economic ties that connected people, and of the trust relationship in the informal network. Cooperation among Tundroviki The collapse of Soviet agriculture was accompanied by changes in reindeer herding, especially in methods of reindeer husbandry. A new feature of post-socialist reindeer herding has been the increased independence of brigades from MUP management as a result of the latter’s reduced power to control these ‘working units’. On the one hand, the technical possibilities of reaching the tundra brigades are diminished because all-terrain vehicles are broken down, fuel for snowmobiles is scarce, and helicopters are too expensive to rent. On the other hand, the management has fewer economic tools to motivate brigades to obedience. Since wages are low and irregular, a significant share of the herders’ income comes from trade in fish and wild reindeer meat – the fruits of their ‘private activity’. While the migration routes of the reindeer brigades in the Soviet era were directed by the ecologist from the ‘centre’ (not from the capital of Yakutsk, but from ecologists in Moscow and Bratsk), in post-Soviet times brigades have planned their routes alone. During the Soviet era, state officials planning annual migration routes took the capacity of pastures into account and the shortest possible distance between the last pastures and the slaughtering site. Central planning of this kind vanished after the collapse of socialist agriculture. Migration routes leading to various hunting and fishing grounds and passing trading spots increasingly began to reflect the interests of the brigade members, demonstrating the MUP management’s loss of control over the tundra workers. For extra income, reindeer herders have to hunt for wild reindeer, while the best hunting grounds are occupied by hunting enterprises. Permission to enter the territory of the hunters is negotiated through kinship ties. In this way, a network uniting different enterprises and categories of people on the basis of extended kinship is established. The Uurung Khaia third brigade goes to the north twice a year, where wild reindeer herds cross the river and are hunted. On one of these occasions, we entered the territory of a family enterprise I described above. On the whole, hunters are not

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    61 enthusiastic about reindeer brigades entering their territories because, as one friend explained to me, ‘a brigade herd can drive wild reindeer away’. Hence permission to hunt was given to the herders only after negotiations.6 When I asked the head of the hunter’s family, Spiridon Ivanovich, why the third brigade was allowed to hunt in the region, the old man explained to me that his relatives constitute more than half of the brigade: ‘I know them, and I know they will cause no trouble’. When I asked in the reindeer brigade about the deal, the brigadier said: ‘Sure, we agreed about the hunting on their [hunters’] territory. And Spiridon Ivanovich’s reindeer are in our brigade anyway!’ He suggested I ask Onufri Nikolaevich, the oldest reindeer herder in the third brigade. Onufri told me: ‘Spiridon gave his animals to me to watch them. He is my brother, we grew up together!’ His short comment encouraged me to look more closely at how private reindeer are embedded in social and economic relations in the Anabar tundra. As mentioned above, almost every adult native inhabitant of the Anabarskii district owns some reindeer, which are kept in the same reindeer brigades as MUP animals. Most inhabitants of the district have no intention of becoming tundra dwellers and visit the tundra only in the hunting or fishing seasons. It is impossible to keep reindeer in the vicinity of the villages or hunting bases, as reindeer have to keep on the move in search of new pastures. This is the reason all reindeer are kept in tundra brigades. Each private animal is not only listed in the respective brigade but a particular brigade herder who has ‘brought the reindeer in’ is obliged to ‘keep an eye’ on the animal. In this situation, the particular reindeer herder not only has an obligation towards but also a right in the animals. I found out that Onufri has a right to use Spiridon’s tame reindeer when he needs working animals. Conversely, he is personally responsible for the well-being of his ‘brother’s’ reindeer. When one of Spiridon’s animals gets sick or is injured, Onufri tries to cure it, just as he does with his own animals. When a reindeer dies, he has to keep the hide and return it to the owner, an old Dolgan custom from the pre-revolution period (Popov 1935: 199). As I have discussed elsewhere (Ventsel 2005) the dismantling and diminishing of state institutions in the Anabarskii district in the post-socialist times has increased the importance of informal structures in all social fields. The core of such informal structures is extended family networks that are able to link different social and economic groups and organize the distribution of resources. Alongside concentration of close relatives and friends in enterprises, the cooperation between these institutions is also strongly negotiated via kin connections. By cooperating with hunters, reindeer herders are able to hunt for the meat they need, and on occasion use the hunters’ transport to bring supplies to the tundra. Besides access to hunting grounds and transport, the network facilitated the circulation of goods   6. Informal land ownership is not the focus of this paper. It is based on the ‘knowledge of lands’ discussed in more detail by Anderson (1998a, 2000). Suffice it to say that the institution of ‘masters’ (khoziain) is a combination of the Soviet-period and pre-revolution land use mechanisms and norms of the Dolgan and the Evenki (see Popov 1934; Dolgikh and Levin 1951; Anderson 2000; Ventsel 2005). Land use negotiations take place informally and have no concrete structure or ritual. On the other hand, a wide range of sanctions affecting those who violate the land use regime do exist (Ventsel 2005: Ch. 8).

62  Aimar Ventsel in herder-hunter cooperation. Depending on the season, herders or hunters have fuel to share. Timber is particularly valuable. Herders frequently move to the coast of the Arctic Ocean to collect driftwood whereas many hunting enterprises receive construction wood from their business partners. Hides of wild reindeer are valued by herders as building material for balokhs, while the dark fur of domestic reindeer is greatly cherished by the whole population of the district as the best material with which to make clothes and fur boots (unty). Herders are willing to share any surplus ammunition they have with their relatives in the hunting brigades. It is natural for people who gave each other gifts of animals or take care of them to enter multiple reciprocal relationships. Looking after someone else’s animals is at the same time an investment in social relations. Although usufruct rights in kin people’s reindeer are important, taking care of an animal as a form of social relationship with the owner is infinitely more important. Access to necessary resources counts for more than the economic importance of the private reindeer. This access is allowed to people who are trusted and respected and, in the case of the Anabarskii district, this trust and respect is shown in the ‘circulation’ of reindeer. Tundra Village Cooperation The kin-based network of hunters and herders I began to discuss in previous sections is also extended in another direction, linking tundra brigades with the village people. The collapse of the socialist economy brought with it insecurity and instability in all fields of human life. Tundroviki are cut off from supply sources (merchants, shops) for most of the year. Growing insecurity means that property (e.g. flats) left vacant in the village need to be guarded. To plan their trips to the village, tundroviki need someone to inform them via portable radio about the movements of irregular transport and the arrivals of merchants. To transport their meat from the tundra to pay their debts, they need large vehicles. Villagers who depend on the meat and fish that come from the tundra in leaner post-Soviet times need access to these resources. Tundroviki have to be prepared to share their meat with villagers, and during the hunting season to give them shelter and transport to the hunting grounds. These mutual interests are the driving force in mobilizing people into networks. Private reindeer play a symbolic role in these networks and mark the trusting relationship between individuals. Villagers who have their private reindeer in MUP herds are usually either relatives of the reindeer herders or their close friends. I remember that a chief livestock expert, Grigorii Tuprin, came to visit the third brigade. He arrived with a fully loaded snowmobile sledge and stayed with a herder called Egor. I helped to unload the sledge and we carried sacks of flour and macaroni, bottles of vodka, cigarettes and sweets into Egor’s balokh. Later on Grigorii told me that his parents had died when he was a child and that Egor’s parents had looked after him, and that he and Egor had grown up together. Egor and Grigorii have considered themselves brothers ever since. Grigorii’s reindeer were given to the third brigade, and whenever he visited the brigade, he brought Egor ‘gifts’ of groceries from the village shop. Egor shared his meat and fish with Grigorii, and hosted him during the fishing and wild reindeer hunting seasons. It was no surprise that Grigorii had numerous reindeer

Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks    63 under Egor’s supervision, but none of them were tamed or trained. As the official explained, sometimes when meat is scarce in the spring and wild animals to hunt are rare, he visits the third brigade on a working trip to slaughter an animal for food. He keeps reindeer as security for unexpected lean periods, and as having reindeer costs him nothing, he does not bother to deal with this topic for the rest of the year. The old man is convinced that his animals are in good condition under the supervision of his ‘brother’, and that Egor will carefully count and take care of the new calves, which in turn will increase Grigorii’s smallstock. The same trust relationship exists on Egor’s side. While Egor works in the tundra, Grigorii looks after his house, an indispensable favour in a village with a high crime rate. Grigorii not only sends groceries and other goods to the tundra on request and when possible, but informs Egor via radio when cheap commodities have arrived in village shops. Egor’s family, not unlike every other family in the village, periodically needs to renew its stock of supplies. It is a common strategy in the village to buy groceries in vast amounts when they are available, even when there are plenty of them in the household already: they might not be so cheap or available next season. In going about such operations, Egor contacts his ‘brother’ and asks him to buy cheap sugar, butter, flour or some other commodity available at the shops. In the winter time, when Egor sends his wife and children back to the village, Grigorii visits them every day to help chop wood, carry in ice to melt for drinking water, and so forth. As a sign of gratitude for these favours, Egor gives Grigorii numerous sacks of fish in the autumn. Every time Egor travels to the village, he brings a few reindeer carcasses with him, leaving at least one in front of Grigorii’s door. Grigorii’s wife, herself a veterinarian, said she never has to worry about where to get beautiful, dark reindeer fur to make winter boots. All she has to do is call Egor’s spouse via radio, who will then send some to the village at the first opportunity. In short, the feeling of closeness between brothers not only involves private reindeer but other types of support, all of which links their families together in one reciprocal network. After the collapse of the state farm and the socialist economy in the 1990s, the Anabar population shifted to the ‘subsistence economy’ and began to depend on hunting and fishing (cf. Ziker 2003a for same processes in Taimyr). The hunting seasons are vital for the entire district population, and although some people have jobs, most families depend on access to hunting grounds. The spring reindeer hunt in February and March and the goose hunt in May are the periods when villagers rely heavily on their tundra relatives. Almost the entire male population of the village drives to the tundra in May, leaving the village still and half empty for weeks. They take whatever food and ammunition they have with them, but as a rule it is the tundroviki who host their kin from the village by feeding them, and sharing shelter and fuel. After spending long periods in the tundra, the village men return home with snowmobiles heavily laden with meat. The meat is stored in underground ice chambers and consumed over months. Visitors from the village are sometimes also honoured with the gift of a reindeer. I witnessed the arrival of a retired, greatly respected old man and his sons at the reindeer camp for a wild reindeer hunting season in the spring of 2001. He rarely

64  Aimar Ventsel came to the tundra and was greeted by the whole brigade with enormous respect. The very next morning every man gifted him with a good reindeer buck. It turned out that this gift was not only a sign of respect towards the old man but also symbolized economic cooperation between herders and the old man’s family. One of the old man’s sons is a truck owner, and numerous herders used the opportunity to discuss the possibility of using the truck to transport their meat out of the tundra. Needless to say the old man left the reindeer in the brigade when he departed after the hunt. Again, animals were mere symbols of social relations and confirmed the cooperation of people in the Arctic community.

Conclusion In the anthropological sense, property relations are also social relations (Hann 1998a: 5). It is impossible to divide use and monitoring of resources in other social fields of the human life, such as showing respect and trust in gifts or taking care of other people’s property. As has been demonstrated in this chapter, in the Anabarskii district usufruct and property rights linked to domestic reindeer form only part of a wider complex of social relations, whose aim is to redistribute and allow access to resources. The increase in the number of private reindeer in post-Soviet times has not proved sufficient to provide a secure living, and other sources are needed to guarantee the satisfaction of people’s basic needs. The enduring symbolic value of reindeer, however, is evident in the deep personal relationships between people as mediated through reindeer. In the Dolgan community, a reindeer is a valuable gift whose significance is not only attached to the giver of the reindeer but also to the person who takes care of it. ‘Bringing’ one’s deer into the brigade herd is seen as a service that reflects a trust relationship between the people concerned. This service includes sharing meat, fish, transport, wood, the care of the children with ‘their own’ people, and providing relatives and friends with access to hunting grounds and accommodation. The notion of being part of a family and old traditional ideas of sharing property with kinsmen are instrumentalized at a time of economic transition, and subsequently developed into a network, whereby a reindeer exists in many cases as a symbol of social relations.

Chapter 3

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community: Multiple Reindeer Property among West Siberian Pastoralists Florian Stammler

Introduction This chapter analyses property and entitlements in reindeer among Nenets1 pastoralists, a Samoedian-speaking group that migrates annually with large herds of reindeer in the tundra for distances of between 100 and 1,200 km. In the Yamal-Nenets autonomous okrug (district, hereafter YNAO) in Russia’s west Siberian North, there are more than half a million domestic reindeer (rangifer tarandus), accounting for approximately half of all such deer in Russia and a third of the world’s domestic reindeer. In spite of pressure on pastures by industrial companies that are extracting oil and gas from huge deposits, the number of domestic reindeer in the YNAO increased by seventy thousand in the 1990s according to the regional bureau of statistics.2 As well as the thirteen thousand Nentsy and Khanty, some Komi also engage in nomadic reindeer herding in the Yamal okrug. The exceptional performance of Yamal reindeer herding and the nomadic Nentsy after the demise of the Soviet Union is in sharp contrast to most of Russia’s northern regions, where reindeer herding collapsed or at least decreased. In   1. I use the ethnonym for the group according to the Russian language, where ‘Nenets’ is both the adjective and the singular of the noun, and ‘Nentsy’ is used as the plural for several members of this ethnic group, thus one Nenets, Nenets reindeer herding, but many Nentsy. This chapter is based mostly on fieldwork carried out from 2000–2001, part of which was published in chapter five of Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market (Stammler 2005b). Funding from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is acknowledged. While the principles and theoretical arguments were still valid as of 2012, some institutional settings have changed, such as the greater importance of obshchiny today (Stammler 2005a). Part of these changes were considered thanks to Stammler’s research in the framework of the Finnish Academy ORHELIA project, funding decision 251111. The author thanks Günther Schlee for his skilfull reindeer drawings.   2. There were 665,000 domestic reindeer as of 2011, according to the YNAO Department for Agriculture. Both herders and officials admit that the official figures are below the real figures, since reindeer herders tend to underreport their herd sizes.

66  Florian Stammler this chapter I investigate how the property relations and entitlements around reindeer contribute to explaining this constellation. From Soviet times we know that even in official statistics the share of personally owned reindeer in the YNAO was unexpectedly high. Official statistics showed 1965 with the lowest percentage, when 29.7 per cent of all domestic reindeer were considered personally owned. By 1993, two years after the end of the Soviet Union, the figure had increased to 54.7 per cent (Podkorytov 1995: 6). This high figure materialized despite a general sovietization model that aimed at collectivization of reindeer herding, and identified rich reindeer herders as ‘kulaks’, to be liquidated as a class (Shapalin 1965). With this historical heritage it could be argued that their private property in reindeer gave the Nentsy the crucial basis for a good starting position to engage in the developing reindeer economy in post-Soviet Russia. However, I will go beyond this neoliberalist assumption and explore the ways in which the market economy supplements rather than replaces the domestic sphere of exchange. Looking behind the official statistics on private property, I will examine the multiple entitlements reindeer nomads in this region have in their animals, and show how they constitute or perpetuate relations of mutual assistance described for the Nentsy decades ago (Brodnev 1950: 95–100). Entitlements to animals and their relation to owners and users are visually expressed by the practice of marking reindeer with two different marks, the earmark and the furmark.3 Does the type of ownership change the character of a reindeer or a herd in the eyes of the herders? Do they treat their own animals differently to those of others? Are property rights for animals sold on the market different to those used for subsistence? What constitutes a private animal in the end, and how are entitlements passed down through generations? What is the position of animals for Nenets society and identity? In answering these questions, I will explore how multiple entitlements within this community contribute to discovering under what conditions a nomadic reindeer economy can successfully develop in an evolving global market.

Property in Animals and its Social Significance Property has evoked some interest in the ethnographic record on reindeer-herding societies, but many authors deal first and foremost with the question of land rights (Brodnev 1959; Anderson 1998b; Golovnev and Osherenko 1999) in pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet times. Others establish a distinction between reindeer owned and worked by individuals and those of collectives or the state (Brodnev 1950; Paine 1971; Beach 1993). However, they do not undertake a detailed analysis that distinguishes the use and ownership of the animals, and links entitlements to the social structure of the herder community.4 What is needed is an investigation of the variety of property relations within categories such as private, collective and   3. Figures 3.1, 3.2, and 3.4 to 3.7: information: F. Stammler; drawings: G. Schlee.   4. E.g. Golovnev and Osherenko (1999); Khomich (1995) for the Nentsy; Beach (1993) and Paine (1994) for the Saami; and Anderson (1998b) for the Evenki. Tim Ingold (1980), with whom I deal in the course of the chapter, is an exception.

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    67

Figure 3.1 Furmarks determine, among other, the right to lasso reindeer and use them for transport. This furmark belongs to Petr Njudimovich Vanuito.

state ownership. I see property in this context as the complex set of relations among people with respect to objects, things, animals or even incorporeal objects. The right I have to use an animal, albeit owned by someone else, is part of the property regime in relation to this animal, as is the duty to care for it. Other than property, I see ownership as the relation between a person and an object, and as mostly related to possession. Therefore, use rights are not usually an element of ownership. Research on African pastoralists has shown that besides actual ownership, the social and religious meaning of animals is also expressed in property relations. Authors explain different herding or production strategies as related to the social fabric of the pastoralist community (Evans-Pritchard 1956: 199–208, 250–65; Ring 1990: 193f.; Baxter 1975; Bassi 1990). Comaroff and Comaroff even talk of animals as the ‘supreme form of property’ (1991: 45). These analyses show multiple combinations of owners, users and entitlements. Reindeer pastoralism, however, is only starting to be incorporated to comparative research with other pastoralist settings (e.g. Stammler and Takakura (eds) 2010, Gertel and Le Heron 2011). Tim Ingold’s book from 1980 remains the only work that explicitly engages with property in reindeer and compares it to other mobile animal herders. He takes as his starting point that three modes of production in reindeer economies, namely hunting, herding and ranching, have different sets of property rights, all of which determine the social relations of the units of production within the community. For Ingold, tundra reindeer herders are ‘carnivorous pastoralists’ who keep the animals for meat production, as opposed to ‘milch pastoralists’ who extract resources from the live animal (1980: 24–25). Ingold claims that in carnivorous pastoralism, which according to the definition is practised by the Nentsy and other tundra reindeer pastoralists, reindeer ‘do not pass between households in reciprocal transactions of

68  Florian Stammler a long term nature, nor are they the foci of multiple property interests’ (ibid. 187). Instead, ‘every herd in a carnivorous pastoral economy … is the exclusive property of the household’ (ibid. 185). Bearing in mind that reindeer herders constantly seek to accumulate deer (ibid. 201, 207), they appear as individualist, rational maximizers, unwilling to share products or to cooperate in production. This is reminiscent of Barth’s characterization of the Basseri sheep and goat herders in Iran, where he argued that their nomadic camps exist in ‘social isolation’ from each other (1964: 47), interacting only with the market in the towns, but not between themselves. My analysis begins at the opposite end. I will explore how mechanisms of use sharing and of cooperation in herding animals contribute to the success of the Yamal Nentsy in preserving and even increasing their herds in the evolving post-Soviet market economy. I question whether it is right to state that reindeer have the ‘social significance of smallstock’, such as sheep and goats in Africa and Asia, as Ingold suggests (1980: 188). What distinguishes the husbandry of reindeer from that of other animals is that the reindeer is the only pastoral animal in this economy, and herders cannot practise species diversification within their herds. This difference is well known and has been stressed by Khazanov (1994: 41) as decisive. Hence, reindeer cannot but have the social significance of both small and large stock, and herders assign broader niches of significance to their pastoral animals, as well as diversifying into non-pastoral species in a multiple human-animal economy (Stammler 2010: 235 f.). Therefore I suggest that we imagine the social significance of animals for their owners and users along a continuum that lies between two extremes: a maximum embeddedness of animals in the respective society, on the one hand, such as cattle among the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1956), the Tswana (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991) or the Boran (Bassi 1990), and a minor social significance of animals, on the other, such as among the Basseri (Barth 1964). My analysis will investigate where the social significance of animals among the Yamal Nentsy lies between these two extreme positions, and how they ‘reinforce a web of social relations’ (Hann 1998a: 36).

The Categorization of Reindeer Property in the Yamal-Nenets AO The easiest way for a social scientist to study property regimes is to begin with official figures. Not only might they be interesting for numbers of deer and ratio of ownership types but they also reveal to the researcher how reindeer property is perceived by the state. It is obvious that these official categories do not represent the complex realities we are dealing with here, namely multiple forms of property. An official set of possible variables exists to gather figures on property for reindeer herding in Russia. It is applied to all regions and controlled by the Russian committee for statistics (Goskomstat). Three general types of property in reindeer currently exist on paper: 1. Reindeer in agricultural enterprises (mostly sovkhozy, i.e. state owned enterprises, and their successors) – in other words state-controlled enterprises. Even when they are not legally under state control, as in the case of joint stock or limited liability companies, they still appear in this

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    69 category but are referred to as ‘new formations’ (novye formirovaniia).5 Herders speak of ‘state reindeer’ (gosudarstvennye oleni) when referring to the herds of these enterprises, since even ‘new’ enterprises still depend to a great extent on decisions and subsidies from the regional state (okrug). 2. Reindeer in peasant-farming enterprises. With the privatization campaign in 1992, it was thought that the basic unit of private agriculture was to become a krest’ianskoe fermerskoe khoziaistvo (KFKh). However, in the YNAO only four enterprises of this kind were registered in the statistics as of 2001, with officially 250 head of reindeer out of half a million reindeer in the okrug. Instead, obshiny (kinship based communities) have become the dominant juridical formation for herding cooperation besides the sovkhozy, yet the reindeer in these are personally owned by the herders (see below, and Stammler 2005a). 3. Reindeer of the population on the territory of local councils. The third type of ownership refers to all herds and deer that are not registered with former state farms (sovkhozy) or farming enterprises, that is to say, everything that is not covered by type one or two. In Yamal, this category encompasses various property regimes, all of which have in common that the herd and the deer are owned and managed without the involvement of the regional state (okrug) or former state farms. This last type can be sub-divided as follows: (a) The biggest share within this category is the herders’ personal stock. After the Soviet Union it accounts for about 70 per cent of all reindeer in the okrug. This is the most important type of ‘personal property’ and the most typical. (b) A very small share of privately owned deer belongs to commercial reindeer-herding enterprises of various legal forms, which are not registered as agricultural enterprises with the regional Department of Agriculture. They are not successors of state farms, but have evolved from private initiatives. In 2001 there were only three enterprises of this type in the okrug, all of which were run by heads of influential Nenets families. These enterprises are mainly engaged in the marketing and processing of reindeer belonging to subtype (a), individually owned private deer, but are known by the local administration to have at least some animals of their own. The latter would then be truly private deer as opposed to personal, for which a category had not yet been introduced in the Russian statistics for 2001. (c) A third subtype of private ownership is the deer of a so-called obshchina, an institution that appears in the official statistics for the first time in 2001. This subtype in Yamal is in an interesting process of consolidation, part of which is closely linked to the discourse on the preservation of Nenets culture, which I investigated elsewhere  5. I have analysed elsewhere the privatization of agricultural companies in the YNAO and compared it to another Siberian region (Stammler and Ventsel 2003).

70  Florian Stammler (Stammler 2005a). An obshchina in Yamal is a union of private reindeer herders who have undertaken to sell and produce jointly. Other than numerous cooperatives, most obshchiny in Yamal do not have their own reindeer. The animals are all owned by individual households. However, obshchiny as institutions do have deer of their own, as seen in their directors’ papers concerning the receipt of subsidies, which at the same time appear in official statistics as the personal property of the respective individual herders, who are in turn members of the obshchina. This fuzzy official ownership pattern had not been clarified until 2012. The situation is different in the Sakha republic, where obshchina reindeer are not private reindeer, and are therefore listed under category 2, peasant-farming enterprises (see Stammler and Ventsel 2003). I want to draw attention to the distinction between private deer and personal deer. Soviet and also Russian statistics do not contain private deer in the literal sense (chastnye), since this type of ownership was forbidden in the Soviet Union. The reference is only to personal (lichnye) reindeer, which Soviet statistics saw as a supplement to state reindeer (podsobnye khoziaistva). Conceptually, personal reindeer had the same position as the private or garden plots in agricultural socialist settings (Hann 1998a: 17; Humphrey 1998: 9; Clarke 2000: 195). Everything produced there belongs to the household, which is designed as a single unit of production. This personal property is distinguished from private property, which is associated with private (usually commercial) enterprises. Similarly, Tuisku (2002: 191) thinks of private reindeer as having been privatized after the Soviet Union, whereas personal deer would then be the animals owned by individuals that were not part of a Soviet enterprise. We see that although contemporary Yamal officially has a three-category regime of ownership in reindeer, the farming enterprise category remains empty and has basically been replaced by obshiny with their fuzzy personal/collective property regime (see above). Jernsletten and Klokov (2002: 35) conceptualize three property regimes of state ownership, public property, and private ownership, but also admit that there is no practical difference between state and public ownership. Several subtypes exist under this umbrella, which are described above as (a), (b) and (c). They illustrate the shortcoming of generalizations in the statistics of the official regime, since multiplicity in rights is not considered. In his analysis on property in reindeer, Ingold (1980) draws exclusively on animals and herders within property category 3(a), namely, individually owned private reindeer (here individual also includes the household as a single unit of production). This view is supported by pre-Soviet sources such as Bogoras (1929) used by Ingold, but also by the Saami case as described by Paine (1994), Beach (1993) and Ingold himself (1976; 1980). Since approximately 70 per cent of the Yamal deer are in this category, Ingold’s findings should apply for most Yamal reindeer herding. However, as I will show in detail, his analysis implying economic and social individualism of the reindeer-herding households is somewhat misleading. His concentration on individually owned private reindeer moreover means the

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    71 exclusion of all state-owned reindeer-herding activities (in the Soviet Union), which covered the majority of reindeer herding worldwide at the time his book was published. One could argue that this is relevant only at some macro level in Moscow or in statistics, but I will show that the category of state-owned reindeer has concrete implications for the tundra.

Rights and Duties of Reindeer Use and Ownership Hann recently stressed that the ‘rights to use and manage are often exercised by parties other than the legal owners’ (2003: 24). The different implications of the earmark and the furmark on reindeer take this into consideration. The sovkhoz setting of mixed reindeer herds or ownership of reindeer by village dwellers is a case in point. In this section, I distinguish between several sets of rights, but also argue for broadening the view on property relations beyond rights. It is undisputed that rights are always accompanied by duties. Reindeer property regime is an example of where people not only have the right but also the duty to make use of reindeer, whether for material or immaterial purposes. I think of duties as an essential element of property relations in mobile pastoralist society. Both entitlements and duties are usually negotiated without a written contract, or they go without saying as verbal communication is often less important than practice on the tundra. A number of properties make the reindeer interesting as a provider of multiuse resources. Let me first discuss what these resources are. Galaty and Johnson (1990) divided the animal body use into ‘terminal’ and ‘renewable’ resources. ‘Terminal’ or non-repeatable resources are mainly meat, but also skin and sinews. Renewable resources for Galaty and Johnson are wool, goat hair (cashmere), and in our case also antlers and the transport capacity of deer. In addition to these material resources, I suggest considering the use of reindeer for cultural purposes – as objects of prestige and sacrifice, or as an identity marker – and finally, the knowledge of reindeer and their environment as entitling people to their use that was stressed by Anderson (1998b; 2000). In this section I will thus attempt to conceptualize ‘material and immaterial forms’ of property (Goody 1998: 201). Reindeer resources, both ‘terminal’ and renewable, material and immaterial, can be used as commodities for markets, or for domestic or subsistence purposes. In the following, similar to Gudeman’s (1998, 2001) two spheres of exchange involving the community and the market, I will use this distinction to facilitate the understanding of a complicated bundle of uses. I will investigate whether there is a tendency among Nentsy to organize this use exclusively or inclusively, and how the rights of reindeer owners differ from those of the user. Use in the Tundra Entitlements to non-commodity use in reindeer are crucial to maintaining the reindeer herders’ mobile lifestyle. With this set of use rights, I refer below to all uses of reindeer that do not result in produce that can be sold on the market or in monetary transactions to the reindeer herders.

72  Florian Stammler Transport One essential property of the reindeer is its use as a means of transport. Reindeer herders migrate up to 1,000 km a year with their entire household. A medium-sized household needs approximately 150 deer (normally castrated bulls) for transport alone. Different property regimes influence the definition of using reindeer as a means of transport. For herders employed by the sovkhoz, migration with reindeer could be regarded as part of their job. Using reindeer for transport would therefore not be considered an entitlement or a right, but belong to a set of duties associated with this wage job, not unlike a factory worker using a machine to produce a commodity. From an ethical point of view, however, the sovkhoz is not merely the owner, but in the eyes of many herders also the ‘master’, the khoziain of the reindeer. I see the difference between the two in the deeper connection of the khoziain to the things he controls as distinct from the owner. The notion of khoziain is less material than that of the owner, and the former has a greater duty to look after the well-being of his subjects. As a khoziain, the sovkhoz performs this duty by paying its employees to move the reindeer. Many of the Nentsy herders in Yamal enjoy the nomadic lifestyle, which is far more than a mere wage job; hence using reindeer as transport is also a right that gives herders the opportunity to practise their lifestyle. One of the distinctive characteristics of Yamal-Nenets nomadism in the twentieth century was the ability of the reindeer herders to preserve it in the annual movements with the entire family (bytovoe kochevanie), despite Soviet opposition to the nomadic way of life in principle. The sovkhozy accepted this as a prerequisite for the continued successful production of meat from large migratory herds of domestic reindeer (see Stammler 2005b, Ch. 4). This also applies to a reindeer owner living in the village. He has the same duties as the khoziain, which for the nomad can turn into an entitlement to use reindeer to practise his way of life. In both cases the owner retains the entitlements of commodity use to his deer, but has to pay the herder in the form of a salary or reindeer. In the latter case the herder again acquires more rights in animals as a result of his work. In early Soviet times, reindeer herders were even rewarded for good herding work with bonuses in the form of private reindeer (Brodnev 1950: 104) – an ideological contradiction, since the declared Soviet goal was to eliminate private property. From all this we see how closely property rights and property duties in reindeer are interrelated. Using animals for transport is a right among private herders, of which there is a growing number in Yamal, since they deliberately choose a mobile way of life and are what I call ‘lifestyle nomads’. Thus in the ethnographic case described below, Mishene and Timofei ask their more wealthy relatives Tokcha and Anatolii for the right to use their reindeer for transport. This use right is accompanied by a duty, which is imposed by a system of mutual assistance: Mishene and Timofei herd Tokcha’s and Anatolii’s reindeer and train some of them for transport. They therefore have the right to use them. In this setting, the use of deer for transport has the more obvious social facet of building up long-term relationships within the tundra community.

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    73 This is an example of what Galaty and Johnson (1990: 18) mean when they talk about the use of domestic animals for both social and economic purposes. Social ties become more intense when the herder or apprentice lives in a chum (tipi-like nomadic tent) with the herd owner, a Nenets practice that counteracts the ‘social isolation of the household’ as found among the Basseri (Barth 1964) and assumed by Ingold for reindeer herders (1980: 188). The long-term relationships built up by this cooperation between holders of ‘use rights’ and ‘use duties’ becomes even more significant when we consider the historical depth. The instability of Nenets wealth has been described by Golovnev (1995: 51) and makes mutual assistance or aid even more rewarding in terms of delayed reciprocity over generations. Epizootic diseases, inaccessible pastures or other disasters can make a rich herder poor within one season. He might be prompted in such a case to come back to a previously less wealthy colleague or relative, and acquire the entitlements to use reindeer in exchange for the duty of training them. Meat for Aibat The use of meat for domestic or subsistence purposes is a completely different notion to meat as a commodity. This is similar to Ring’s (1990) description of how the Dinka in the Sudan maintain a different relationship to animals acquired through wage labour than to those through bride-price or inheritance. When the northern Nentsy slaughter a reindeer for domestic use, they strangle it, whereas if they are slaughtering it for sale, they stab it in the brain with a knife. No blood is supposed to leave the reindeer and touch the earth in the domestic sphere of the tundra. This is part of the ritual performed at each slaughtering. The deer must be facing east when they are strangled. Strangling is carried out by two people pulling a rope at either side, a process that takes ten to fifteen minutes. During this time a short speech is addressed to the spirit in whose name the reindeer is being slaughtered. The fur is then removed from the front underside of the deer. A hole is cut and the owner drinks some of the deer’s warm blood. This is his exclusive right. The owner, described more precisely in this context as a master (khoziain), then invites all the men in the camp to a shared meal of fresh, warm, raw meat and blood known as aibat. When the men have finished eating, the women and children are invited to their share of aibat.6 Everybody brings their own knife to cut off some meat, which is then eaten on the spot. Each subsistence slaughter is an aibat and has a ritual character. Bogoras also stresses the sacrificial character of slaughtering for the Chuckchi (Bogoras 1904–9). The aibat is an inclusive collective use right in reindeer, although sharing only takes place immediately after the slaughtering. The leftovers are collected by the wife of the owner and stored for future meals. All other parts of the reindeer, such as the fur, inner fat, sinews, stomach, legs, etc., are the exclusive property of the owner. Thus, aibat differs from what Evans-Pritchard (1956: 219) describes for the Nuer koak practice. Although a participating Nenets may eat as much as he can at   6. In big camps with numerous chums, sharing may not take place with all households. In the five-household brigade I stayed in, aibat was not shared with everyone.

74  Florian Stammler aibat, ownership rights to the dead animal are still clearly allocated. It is the owner who gives use rights to others during aibat, and it all takes place in a quiet and orderly fashion. There seems to be no rule, however, about who is entitled to what portion of the carcass. It is more about eating whatever is desired. Sharing aibat is a redistributive practice confined to meat and blood, ensuring a more or less constant supply of vitamins and trace elements in a diet without vegetables. A similar pattern of reciprocal sharing of meat has already been reported for the ancient Tatars of the ‘Golden Horde’ in the fourteenth century, who did the same with sheep or cattle (Khazanov 1994: 154, quoting Tizenghauzen 1884). For the Yamal Nentsy it is worth noting that the practice of slaughtering for aibat in the community sphere of exchange was only carried out with animals that were personally owned; this was the case in Soviet times and is still valid today. A sovkhoz animal is ‘personalized’ before it is used. Domestic slaughtering renders an animal personal property, since sovkhoz animals are not sacrificed in the community sphere. In practice, this transfer of ownership is performed by documenting in the brigade record that the individual herder has bought an animal for consumption. The sovkhoz deducts the equivalent sum from his salary. Property transactions along the same principle also occur in the other direction. Slaughtering by knife places a reindeer outside the community sphere and into the market sphere of exchange, at least in northern Yamal. This happens in autumn, when the sovkhoz and recent commercial enterprises buy live reindeer from herders, who then slaughter them for the market. The herders seem to switch abruptly to the anonymous world of commodity, suddenly treating the animals they had looked after for a year as ‘meat on the hoof’, as property destined for death, and thereby abandoning all other cultural implications linked to the animal and to slaughtering. We gain a very clear notion of how personal property is treated in comparison to the reindeer as a commodity. The situation differs slightly when meat is sold for money, albeit on an individual basis and in smaller quantities. In this case slaughtering takes places at the campsite itself. Here, the zakon tundry as the unofficial code of conduct is called in Russian for outsiders (Stammler 2005b: 83-91) is powerful enough to call for respectful treatment of the animal. Although the animal is slaughtered with a knife, the owner might still invite other members of the camp to a somewhat reduced aibat, before putting the carcass on his sledge or snowmobile and heading off in the direction of the village. Slaughtering of this kind only occurs in the winter, when camps are not far from the villages. In this setting, the animal enters the market sphere after aibat. Other Domestic Uses Apart from meat, skins, sinews and fat, and its use as transport, the reindeer is used as a form of cultural property to maintain relations within the community sphere. This is the purpose of kalym, a bride-price in the form of reindeer, which is still widely practiced among Yamal Nentsy. However, when a reindeer herder marries a woman from the village, no reindeer are transferred. Kalym is paid as a rule for women from well-known tundra families. The more a bride’s qualities to keep a household are appreciated, the more reindeer will be transferred as kalym – a number I heard frequently was approximately 20 head. On the other hand, many in the

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    75 younger generation seem to be at odds with this form of reindeer property, which is constituent of family alliances. They are concerned about a possible loss of individual independence, as my friend Nikolai told me: I don’t want to ask my father to give kalym to my bride’s parents. Things are different now. Your parents don’t decide who you marry anymore. That’s why I’m afraid my father might complain about my choice of wife, if he has given a lot of reindeer. He might be dissatisfied with her way of working in the chum, or think that she hasn’t brought enough sledges and clothes with her [as a dowry]. No, we organise all this ourselves. It’s less complicated. (Nikolai Annikovich Khorotetto, 25 May 2001) This highlights that the reindeer transferred as kalym to the bride’s family coincide with an almost identical value of goods transferred to the groom’s family in exchange, and the fear of not meeting the requirements of the father are shared by several young men. Roman Andreevich Okotetto indicated a similar fear of his father and thinks kalym is a dangerous practice (Roman, 26 October 2000). The idea of balanced reciprocity still appears to be dominant in the current parent generation. However, the objects of transfer between the two parties are different. Whereas the groom’s family gives live reindeer to the family of the bride, the bride brings along ‘female property’ for her new household, such as sledges with clothes and winter tent covers. This leads Ingold (1980: 195) to classify kalym as ‘indirect dowry’ in the sense of Goody (1998: 208). Unlike indirect dowry, however, among the Nentsy kalym does not go to the daughter, as it should be in Goody’s sense and Ingold claims (1980: 195). In the old Nenets songs I heard, the prestige of the bride was praised according to the number of sledges with goods she brought into her marriage. The long-term character of the alliance between two families becomes apparent on considering that the bride’s family is obliged in principle to provide clothing for their daughter for the rest of their lives. This was probably more common in the 1920s than it is today, but in some households, such as in the case of Tokcha and Anatolii, this can even last longer than a lifetime, as evidenced by grandmothers sewing clothes for their daughters’ children. Hence, kalym is not just about buying off a daughter from her patriclan for ever, but about creating long-term alliances. Evladov ([1929] 1992: 173) found out that women had a lifelong ‘obligation’ to sew clothes in the chum, which was the recipient of kalym. This is precisely the opposite of what Ingold (1980: 196) claimed when he said that the bride is ‘paid off’ and no longer has any economic ties with her kin. I argue that the difference in the items transferred between the families makes the kalym a bride-price, and the endowment of the bride’s kin a dowry. The two families involved are well aware of the reciprocity of these two transactions, although I am not sure that the Nentsy themselves have an understanding of a proper dowry, and would probably term this transaction a ‘gift’. Besides its material significance, the reindeer transfer between families is highly symbolic. Animals, as the ‘supreme form of property’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: 45), are the most vital measure of prestige. The transfer of numerous reindeer

76  Florian Stammler as kalym is an indication of great esteem for the bride and her family, and a reindeer herder with a large live herd enjoys more prestige than a herder who has slaughtered more deer and invested the proceeds in equipment or has a bank account. This is where the material and cultural aspects of the property converge. Commodity Use I see all rights relevant to reindeer production for sale at market encompassed in this category. First and foremost, this is about selling deer meat or cutting and selling young antlers (panty). An entitlement to the latter was crucial for survival during perestroika because young antlers covered with ‘velvet’ fur and not yet matured to bone substance are sold for hard currency on the Chinese, South Korean and Singapore markets. Meat, the ‘classical’ reindeer-herding product and Ingold’s (1980) justification for regarding reindeer herding as ‘carnivorous pastoralism’ rather than ‘milch pastoralism’, is the pertinent commodity on the Russian domestic market. Another product on the domestic market is the fur from the deer’s legs (lapy), which is used for winter shoes. In the case of Yamal deer, Yakutia and Buryatia are the decisive markets for this product in Russia. Entitlement to this use almost always lies with the owners of the respective deer. Those who own the deer get paid for the products, as described by Barth (1964) for the Basseri in Iran. It is important to recall here, however, the dual property regime on the official macro level. The producers of the meat and antlers of statecontrolled reindeer are not the owners. Hence the state gets paid for the produce and the herders get a salary. This is a remnant from the Soviet agricultural industry and is not part of the analysis in Ingold 1980. With regard to state-controlled deer, the head of the enterprise, in agreement with the YNAO department of agriculture, decides how many antlers are to be cut and how many deer slaughtered from statecontrolled herds. One exception to this rule is poorer, former state enterprises in the south of the YNAO among the Khanty, who do not engage in cutting velvet reindeer antlers (panty) due to a lack of helicopter transport. Unofficially, the state looks the other way when herders-employees negotiate panty cutting with private companies and share the ensuing profit, although they do not have official entitlements to this commodity use. Not only are the owner and the user different people in this unique case, but also owner and producer, and owner and profit beneficiary. This distinction is not true for private herders, who have all rights to commodity use in their deer. Although prices are low, the profit for private reindeer owners is sufficient to afford luxury goods such as snowmobiles, radios and imported food. The owner of a large private herd can sell enough panty in one year, with a wet weight of up to 400 kg, for the equivalent of a snowmobile. Thus entitlements to commodity use constitute the most important asset of reindeer herders for trading. We see that, with the exception of panty production in the south west YNAO, material commodity uses are organized exclusively, with the profit going to the individual owner. Sharing or donations do not take place in any of these instances. This is what Barth (1964) described for Basseri sheep and goat breeders, and Ingold (1980) for tundra reindeer herders.

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    77 The other sphere of reindeer commodity use is non-material, where entitlements are more inclusive. The physical ownership of the deer is not decisive for this use, although it does constitute a form of commodity use. This is the case with reindeer as an identity marker. In post-Soviet political discourse, reindeer herding is the most important so-called ‘traditional lifestyle’ of the northern indigenous peoples. Belonging to the group that practises this way of life entitles people to certain state benefits, both from the federal and the okrug administrations. In addition, money from industrial enterprises likewise goes to the regions generally engaged in ‘traditional lifestyle’, so that even the sedentary, who are in no way engaged in reindeer herding, profit from reindeer as an identity marker. Reindeer as an ethnic and a regional identity marker can be conceptualized as a renewable commodity used collectively by the Nentsy as an ethnic group, as well as by the entire regional population, regardless of ethnic origin. This form of use entitlement is independent of ownership and inclusive to a high degree. I argue that cultural property becomes a commodity here, in the sense of ‘keeping-while-selling’ (Eriksen 2004: 271). Sharing the resource does not diminish its value for the individual or group. The process of reindeer becoming an identity marker, not only for the Nentsy but for the entire YNAO, gives an ‘added value’ to all inhabitants, regardless of their ethnic origin or occupation. At the turn of the millenium, for example, the YNAO officially gave itself a state logo (gerb),7 showing a reindeer escorted by two polar bears holding a crown with a gas flame over the reindeer’s head. This illustrates the enormous symbolic power of the reindeer as an inclusive cultural property for the region, despite the reindeerherding economy making less than 1 per cent of the GDP, and 93 per cent of the population not being involved in it. Reindeer integrate the multinational population and contribute to establishing a single regional identity for this population. Nonetheless, rights are accompanied by duties. Just as the population shares the benefit of using the resource reindeer as an identity marker, it also collectively shares the duty of providing a healthy basis of living for this resource. Collective duty takes place on a fairly abstract level, and of course not everyone in the YNAO acts accordingly, be it the industrial workers or the reindeer herders themselves.

Property Regimes Visualized: Reindeer Marks The marking of animals by their owners is widespread in animal husbandry. Farmers in the European Union, for example, are supposed to attach plastic clips to the ears of their cows. In Mongolia, horses and camels are brand-marked (Humphrey 1974), whereas sheep have earmarks (Barth 1964). In Yamal and elsewhere, marking reindeer is about enacting the right to the animals, as well as about placing an animal in a herd. Among the Saami, earmarking in autumn is one of the most important activities of reindeer herding throughout the year (Beach 1993: 61–74), and marks have become the focus of state interest (Beach 1981: 284f.). The most obvious function of these marks is to distinguish the reindeer of various owners from one another. Ingold (1980: 115) explained the general principle of earmark design,   7. Officially adopted by the YNAO duma in the postanovlenie gosudarstvennoi Dumy avtonomnogo okruga ot, 15 December 1999, No. 766.

78  Florian Stammler stating that children add one or more elements to the parental earmark on the left or right ear, or both. He sees the practice of earmarking as ‘a symbolic manifestation of the social relations of pastoralism’ (ibid. 116), but does not elaborate how earmarks express these relations, or what these relations are. To my knowledge a detailed investigation of earmarks is not yet available for herders in the Russian Arctic. Näkkäläjärvi’s (2003) contribution for the Finnish Saami is valuable in emphasizing the communicative aspect of earmarking and even aesthetics. I shall show how Yamal-Nenets earmarks are simpler, more practice-oriented, yet of an immense social depth. In Yamal, there are two visible indications of the right to a certain reindeer: the earmark and the furmark. Both are rooted in the reindeer herder’s history. Their design is transmitted through generations to the present. Earmarks in reindeer herds also demonstrate the ownership structure of the herd, as well as the multiple alliances of households via reindeer transactions. A reindeer bearing a different earmark to the majority of the herd can point to either an exchange within the system of mutual assistance, or personal animals in a sovkhoz herd, or an unintentional mixing of herds. Reindeer marks found their way into industrialized Soviet reindeer herding almost unaltered. When sovkhoz herds were set up from confiscated private animals, many of the old marks were ‘confiscated’ along with them, and went on to serve as a sign of state property. This differs from what Humphrey describes for Mongolia, where socialist enterprises developed their own marks (1974: 476).

Figure 3.2 The history of Khasavomboi Okotetto’s furmark can be traced back at least to the early 1900s (Evladov [1929] 1992; Stammler 2005b: 232f.).

Both earmarks and furmarks are inherited by ultimogeniture, as is the whole household. However, this does not mean that the youngest son inherits all of his father’s deer. Although the youngest son may inherit more deer than his elder brothers, the idea is that every son gets a share of the father’s herd when he marries and sets up his own chum for his wife and children. Earmarks The all important mark on reindeer is the earmark (kha’, nenadumd). Inheritance is a crucial moment in the ‘life’ and ‘reproduction’ of a reindeer mark; a son who moves out to lead an independent life gets his own deer mark, normally designed by the

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    79

Figure 3.3 Earmarks among reindeer herders in Yamal (reproduced from Stammler 2005b: 190). Drawings by Florian Stammler.

80  Florian Stammler father. In most cases, the design clearly illustrates the kin-relatedness of father and son, in so far as the father’s mark is changed only slightly on a certain part of the ear (see Figure 3.3). Earmarks 1–5 and 6–7 show that one ear is marked identically by all members of the same family, whereas the other ear stands for the individual owner. Having one’s own mark means having one’s own property in reindeer, in other words being an independent reindeer herder. Ingold claims that in carnivorous pastoralism animal property is transmitted to children of both sexes (1980: 190). He gives evidence for the Saami, as well as for the Chukchi (quoting Bogoras), where daughters receive animals with their own earmark. Even for the Nentsy, Entsy, Nganasan, Mansi and Khanty, Ingold (1980: 195) cites Riasanovski (1965) that ‘sons receive twice as much as daughters’. My fieldwork data does not support this view, and I have neither heard of nor read about female earmarks, nor about institutionalized inheritance by daughters of fixed shares in the herd. This is in line with Khazanov’s (1994: 170) statement on the Nenets social organization as patrilineal, unlike the Saami, Chukchi or Koriaks. Although I was told that women get reindeer as presents, they do not figure as official owners, hence they do not have their own earmark. The earmark discussion in relation to inheritance is not to be confused with ‘kalym’, the gift of reindeer by the groom to the bride’s father. Although deer are exchanged on behalf of the bride, they do not become her property but that of her father. Hence the earmark sphere remains male. At first glance, earmarks would seem to indicate individual private property. However, the overall mark design is associated with an extended family or clan, to which the individual herder adds one small detail. One mark can also be a sign of the collective property of several herders. This applies when two brothers live together and have one herd, but possibly two households, (i.e. separate families and chums). In many cases one brother might be less well off and unable or unwilling to set up his own herd. A collective mark could therefore be largely the mark of one of the brothers, while the other merely assists him. Or one brother might live in the village and not manage his own deer, and therefore share the mark with another brother. Beyond this level, things become more complicated, since we rarely meet a case of ‘one mark – one herd – one owner’. In the case of the sovkhoz as owner of the deer, each reindeer herding brigade is allocated its own mark, although all the herds are owned by one sovkhoz. It remains therefore a peculiarity of the sovkhoz system that the mark is related to the ‘managers of a herd’ rather than to the owner of the deer. So although the Soviets have taken over the practice of using marks as visualizing property, what is shown by the mark has shifted from indicating ownership to pointing out who manages the herd. In many cases, the mark is cut to a reindeer’s ear once in a lifetime and can only be changed to a limited extent, since cutting a mark in the ear is irreversible. In some instances earmarks reveal the original owner of the animal, for example when the latter was a gift from the first owner to the second. Since many owners know their deer by appearance, they have no need for marks to distinguish them from others and hence leave the mark of the original owner. This indicates that an owner

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    81 can hold reindeer in his herd with different marks, all of which disclose the owner’s alliances with other households. However, first and foremost, earmarks are the sign of a constant and exclusive set of rights that are rarely negotiable. While earmarks are not necessarily linked to the use rights of the deer, they are in some but not all cases linked to the actual herders (managers, e.g. a sovkhoz brigade). The earmark is the clearest mark in terms of ownership. In the majority of cases personal marks on reindeer imply the potential to do with the animals whatever is desired. The owner of an earmark can give his deer for use of service (transport) to anybody he wants, but retains all rights of productive use such as fur, meat or antlers, and usually becomes the owner of the offspring, unless otherwise agreed with the current user. New calves are marked shortly after birth in late spring or early summer, whereas the Saami mark them in the autumn. This process is aptly described by Beach (1993). Unlike the Saami system, Nenets marks in Yamal are less sophisticated (see Figure 3.3) and institutionalized. In Sweden the administration registers each earmark ascribed to its owner. If marks are too similar among the Saami, the use is forbidden and one party is expected to redesign the mark (ibid. 69). Whenever the owner is absent, the floor is open for manipulation. Calves can be marked as having a different owner, or be eaten by wolves (including those in human form, namely competing reindeer herders). In these cases absentee owners no longer have control over their deer, despite them bearing their earmark. As one villager remarked, ‘U chuzhogo cheloveka stado nikogda ne rastet’ (a herd will never grow with a stranger). Thus more and more families are sending at least one member out to the tundra to herd reindeer, instead of giving them to people who are not related to them. Manipulation of calf property is handled differently among the Swedish Saami. If the calf has not been marked while still with the mother, ownership and descent will remain unclear and it has to be auctioned (Beach 1993: 72). This is less dramatic for the Nentsy and Khanty, since their interaction with and control of the herd is more constant than that of the Saami, and most herdsmen know which calves belong to which mothers, even without a mark. If the sovkhoz is the reindeer owner, the issue of manipulable property or ‘manipulable resources’ (Humphrey 1998) becomes even more critical. In the tundra, the sovkhoz as an institution is always far away, and its leaders somewhere in headquarters (kontora). During the Soviet era a corral head count of the sovkhoz herds was conducted during the summer in the presence of the sovkhoz leadership – a rare occurrence these days. The managers of the deer, the brigade members, carry out the earmarking, thereby alienating the latter from the owner, the sovkhoz. The head of the brigade is required to write a report on the offspring of the herd (akt otela). In an unchecked situation, it is not surprising that sovkhoz herds as distinct from private herds show no signs of increasing. Sovkhoz calves can be marked as private or sovkhoz animals slaughtered for food; in some cases the sovkhoz earmark is even altered to private. In instances of this kind, the brigade paperwork claims that the sovkhoz deer died in the course of migration. Some enterprises reintroduced the principle that herders must compensate for lost sovkhoz animals by replacing them with private animals.8 Nevertheless, it is difficult to control whether the brigade is responsible for the loss or ‘nature’ itself.   8. Information from two brigade leaders in the Yar-Sale sovkhoz, as of May 2001 and April 2012.

82  Florian Stammler The sovkhoz situation illustrates that where the owner is not identical to the user (herder, manager) of the animal, multiple entitlements can cause problems. This is always true when the owner is far away in the village. In the case of private herds, the case is frequently solved with an alternative system of protection, such as mutual aid agreements, tundra solidarity, or kinship relations. Earmarking is of crucial significance to the latter. It is a discernible connection of the descendants of a household to the herd, with the earmark as the visible interface between property, kinship and inheritance among West Siberian reindeer herders. Marks on each ear of the reindeer are similar in concept to our system of surnames and first names. In Figure 3.3, the left ear stands for the extended kin group (here: e.g. khudi) and should not be changed, whereas the other ear is reserved for the individual owner. Khazanov (1994: 171) rightly claims that actual kinship within what is called a Nenets clan is more fictive in nature than genealogically traceable. Some of the former ‘clans’ such as Yamal or Makh’ko no longer bear their own family names, which is why earmarks with the same surnames can still differ from one another. Nenets elders told me this was due to the Soviet simplification of clan and family names. Furmarks Contrary to the earmark, the furmark on the deer is temporary. The mark is cut in the fur with a knife, usually in the autumn when reindeer are selected for slaughtering, but also on other occasions in spring. Since reindeer fur changes in spring for the summer and in autumn for the winter, the furmark becomes invisible in less than a year. This temporary nature of the furmark predestines it for temporary property arrangements. It is frequently used in the course of counting in order to mark the deer of a certain owner as having been counted, in contrast to those still waiting to be counted. In herds with mixed ownership, the furmark serves as an additional indication of the owner when, for instance, one particular herder’s share has to be separated from the rest of the herd.

Figure 3.4 Furmarks of reindeer in sovkhoz brigade 2 after counting.

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    83

Figure 3.5 Furmarks of two independent herders, who merged their herds for joint grazing in summer.

Another use of the furmark is to visualize the actual user. A bride’s father can mark the deer received as kalym, and bearing the original earmark of the groom’s family, with his own furmark. However, he also has the right to cut his own earmark in these deer. The furmark is widely used to indicate the transport animal of the herder and actual trainer of the reindeer; in other words it provides the herder with a service. The owner of the earmark in these cases could be the sovkhoz, or a more prosperous relative or friend from whom the animal was borrowed. Here again, the furmark represents a temporary use right. The design of the furmark itself is as constant as that of the earmark. The furmark, which was commonly used as a sign in pre-Soviet times before the indigenous peoples of Siberia adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, was altered slightly by sons of the same father, with the youngest one inheriting the father’s mark. Once alphabetization had been introduced, letters became popular also. Sons can use their initials as a mark of distinction between them. Humphrey (1974: 476) has described a similar influence of the Cyrillic alphabet for horse marks among the Mongols. It follows from this that the furmark is more closely related to the manager of the animal. Entitlements based on the furmark are limited both in time and competence. While the furmark for the most part shows temporary and repeatable rights, such as to mix a herd temporarily or borrow animals from the owner for service purposes, the earmark is a clear mark of ownership and entitles irreversible husbandry decisions to sell, slaughter or give away the animals. Both marks are rooted in kinship networks of reindeer herding communities, but were partly alienated during the Soviet era. They visualize multiple aspects of property relations around reindeer, and a herd is rarely seen with a single earmark or furmark only. It is therefore very difficult for outsiders to sort out the property relations in one herd. Nonetheless, understanding this means to a great extent understanding the social life of a reindeer-herder society. Ingold claims that the existence of marks in reindeer reveals the degree of tameness of the animals and the intensity of the herder’s knowledge. Reindeer herders do not know their animals by appearance, and mark them because they are semi-domesticated (Ingold 1986: 10). The furmark in this case amplifies the earmark, since the latter is smaller and less visible from a distance. However, I argue

84  Florian Stammler

Figure 3.6 Tokcha Khudi’s furmark, inherited from his father Pari.

that the purpose of both marks among the Yamal Nentsy and northern Khanty is not about recognizing their own animal. Due to their system of close herding, which implies twenty-four-hour supervision of the herd in some seasons, they know most of their deer so well that they give many of them names, even to some that are not used for transport. The marks are essential to prove visually their entitlements to the animal vis-à-vis outsiders, who are unable to detect the owner of the animal from its appearance. Marks then become paramount in distinguishing animals when herds are merged during the summer, or mix in winter as a result of snowstorms. A similar purpose for marks has been described by Barth (1964) for the Basseri sheep in Iran.

Collectivity and Cooperation in Various Property Regimes In the following I will look at various property regimes in reindeer herds in statecontrolled and private settings. From this analysis, the similarities and differences between the two systems will become apparent, as will the inadequacy of the ‘state controlled’ category. In the case of a sovkhoz brigade on the Yamal peninsula, the core of the herd belonging to the sovkhoz – usually fifteen hundred to two thousand animals – is accompanied by at least an equal number of personal animals belonging to the herders that work in the sovkhoz. Therefore the majority of reindeer in what are called sovkhoz herds are in most cases privately owned. Common to all property regimes is the cooperation required for the day-to-day work of managing a reindeer herd. The ownership pattern of the herd influences this kind of cooperation, which is crucial to the reinforcement of social relations between people, whether they are kinship relations, friendship, or relations between the herders and the sovkhoz. I suggest that cooperation can only be spoken of when the benefit is mutual to both partners. This is why the topic of reciprocity plays such an important role. Reindeer herding is characterized by countless instances of reciprocity, generalized and balanced, immediate and delayed. Within this framework, the idea of mutual assistance or mutual aid is particularly prominent in studies on the Nentsy and other pastoralists (Brodnev 1950: 92; Evladov [1929] 1992: 168–73; Khazanov 1994: 153–57). The ecological and behavioural needs of reindeer are one important basis of what is referred to as cooperation in reindeer herding. From a natural point of view, a herd can be defined as the number of reindeer that graze together. I want to stress

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    85 this because it deviates from the social definition of the herd as owned or managed by one herder, or owned by one household. It also differs to the herds of the Nuer, referred to by Evans-Pritchard (1956: 258), where animals are dispersed all over the place and the herd is prominent in people’s minds but not as a physical collective. In Yamal, a herd is a highly dynamic entity. Herds are usually bigger in summer than in winter. Bigger herds are more advantageous during the worst mosquito period, when a large number of reindeer is easier to protect from mosquito harassment. On the other hand, there is a limit to the number of deer that can be managed together. Herds of more than three thousand animals are likely to become fragmented again (see Baskin 2000: 25; Ingold 1980: 211), unless strict labour-intensive control is executed. In winter, especially in the forest zone, smaller herds are easier to manage and ecologically more sustainable for the pastures. Hence cooperation in reindeer herding outside the sovkhoz context is most likely to occur in the summer. The composition of owners in one herd is worth noting, bearing in mind the dual nature of official property in reindeer mentioned earlier – private/personal and enterprise owned. I characterize the different combinations of types of property and owners in Table 3.1 as follows: In my analysis of how social relations and cooperation among herders relate to reindeer property, I will refer to this as ownership pattern 1, 2 or 3, as shown above. An equally dynamic entity is the camp, as the unit that manages the herd. It can consist of as many as twelve chums (in the summer), or merely of one single chum, depending on the season, the size of the herd and the number of owners. Only the combination of all three factors allows us to understand the dynamics. The ‘amalgamation in summer, disintegration in winter’ pattern, which is a natural Table 3.1 Composition of ownership within one reindeer herd   No. of Type of Type of earmarks management property

No. of owners

Herd size

Seasonal variation

(1) 1 Individual Private 1 10–3,000 individual individual

Rich herders can live all year round on their own, poor herders only do so in winter

(2) 2–12 Collective Private 2–12 200–2,000 individual individuals

Temporary associations of poorer households (< 300 deer each) join up in summer; poor herders join the richer

(3) 4–9 Collective State and State and 3–8 1,500–8,000 Mixed herds of sovkhoz (brigade) private individuals brigades with personal and individual state-owned reindeer

phenomenon among wild reindeer herds (see Iuzhakov and Mukhachev 2001: 84), is more controlled among domestic herds, indicating how social factors, such as

86  Florian Stammler a property regime, influence herd size. If a summer herd/camp consists of twelve owning households, they are more likely to separate in the winter, whereas a herd/ camp consisting of only one owner will be less inclined to do so because of the labour shortage in the household. This leads to a more detailed unit of analysis – the household. It is the main economic unit of production and the unit engaging in social relations with other households, both within one camp as well as in other camps. Unlike in reindeer-herding settings such as those of the Khanty, the Komi or the European Nentsy, a single Nenets household in Yamal will in most cases live in one chum. The household head is the male person responsible for the herd. He takes husbandry and herding decisions, but will usually agree with his wife and other household members involved in herding. He is also the owner of the earmark. Below the household level is the individual level, where cooperation takes place between individuals of one household (intra-household cooperation) or those of other households. Ownership in ‘Sovkhoz’ Herds as Cooperation between Managers and Owners The most complicated composition of earmarks in one herd is found in so-called statecontrolled herds, owned by the agricultural enterprises or sovkhozy. Since the sovkhoz was a total social institution (Humphrey 1995: 7; Humphrey 1998: 452), social relations within its framework were and still are of utmost importance. The herd of up to five thousand animals grazing together is owned by several people and institutions, as the use patterns of the reindeer are highly diverse (Table 3.1: type 3). These herds are not numerous, and are at the upper limit of manageability. It is impossible for an outsider to distinguish deer ownership, since earmarks abound in most cases. This is a very common pattern in agricultural enterprises in Yamal, with the exception of the northernmost Se-Yakha and Tambei tundra, where sovkhoz herds graze separately from the large private herds. During perestroika, the majority of deer graze in herds with this type of property regime, whereas now more are exclusively private (patterns 1 and 2, table 3.1). This can cause problems since large herds contribute more strongly to pasture degradation, and concrete ownership is frequently subject to manipulation by the herders/employees of the relevant enterprise. The pattern of manipulating the ownership of the herd in the sovkhoz brigades has been admirably described by Konstantinov as ‘hidden privateness’ (2002: 178f.). This is not uncommon in Yamal either. I participated in a slaughtering campaign of sick deer in early autumn, for example, where practically all of them were declared sovkhoz-owned although there was no logical reason why the private deer in the herd should have been less affected by disease. Once again, clarification might be expected by examining the earmarks, which clearly identify the sovkhoz reindeer. However, since there is no conceptual difference between sovkhoz and private earmarks, this is not an easy task. Khanty reindeer herders told me that all sovkhoz brigade earmarks were appropriated from ‘kulaks’ in early Soviet times. Thus, further research on earmarks could reveal the clans from which most of the people stigmatized as kulaks originated. A property regime with mixed multiple ownership has advantages for both the enterprise and the herder in these mixed herds. State structures (sovkhozy and their successors) benefit from the support of reindeer-herding nomads. In the discussion on

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    87 whether to privatize or liquidate state-controlled enterprises, the support of the people is far more crucial than in Soviet times. The herders, on the other hand, enjoy the support of the state for both people and animals. They manipulate sovkhoz resources, as described by Humphrey (1998) and more specifically by Konstantinov (2002), by semi-legally using veterinary services provided for state deer for their personal animals grazing in the same herd. They also benefit from state helicopter transport and receive a fixed salary as a state or quasi-state employee with all the social benefits this entails, such as a pension and health insurance. I therefore suggest exploring the case of large mixed sovkhoz herds as an example of herder-sovkhoz mutually beneficial cooperation. The multiple property regime of the herd reinforces the relationship among the herders themselves and between the herders and the sovkhoz. Despite the development of a private reindeer economy, there still seems to be a common set of interests between herders and the sovkhoz. This matches the statement by almost all herders I know expressing opposition to the complete liquidation of the sovkhoz system. The less clear property relations are within the sovkhoz herds, the more favourable for the reindeer herders. Twenty years after the end of the Soviet Union, sovkhozy have therefore survived, even though other forms such as obshiny and private independent herding have become more important. That the pastures in the region with the highest concentration of domestic reindeer in the world could degrade more rapidly in the long run is a disadvantage that is difficult to control, regardless of the ownership constellation (see Iuzhakov and Mukhachev 2001: 78–80; Stammler 2005b: Ch. 7). Case Study: Mutual Assistance in a Private Camp of Relatives In order to illustrate how closely reindeer ownership is connected to the relations between reindeer-herding relatives and their history, I will present one case in more detail: Tokcha Parivich Khudi’s camp. This consists of four chums and a herd containing at least six earmarks. These represent a tight network between two pairs of brothers and sisters. Tokcha’s sister is married to Anatolii, and Anatolii’s sister to Tokcha. This marriage pattern goes back to both sets of parents, who themselves married partners from each other’s respective family. A vital exchange of reindeer from the groom to the bride’s father (kalym), and of equipment from the spouse’s parents to the new family (dowry) took place, which explains why Tokcha’s herd today contains animals with Anatolii’s father’s earmark (kalym to Tokcha’s father Pari), and vice versa (kalym to Anatolii’s father Tynzik). Tokcha Parivich is the youngest son of his father Pari Khudi and should therefore have inherited his earmark (Figure 3.3, earmark 1), in accordance with Nenets ultimogeniture. However, he decided to create a new earmark (Figure 3.3, earmark 2), as his father’s earmark bore too great a resemblance to the mark of a Yar-Sale sovkhoz brigade. Tokcha’s grandfather’s earmark was given to Tokcha’s youngest uncle, who in turn as per ultimogeniture gave it to his youngest son (Figure 3.3, earmark 3). This earmark is again very similar to that of Tokcha’s distant relative Timofei (Figure 3.3, earmark 4), who lives in the neighbouring chum. Timofei is related to Tokcha via the wife of Tokcha’s grandfather’s brother, who comes from the Nerkagi family and adopted Timofei. Since there were two generations between herself

88  Florian Stammler and Timofei, she was already 99-years-old according to Timofei when I conducted my fieldwork there. The father of her husband Khanzero Khudi, Tokcha’s greatgrandfather, was one of the first Nenets informants for Russian ethnographers from 1926 to 1928 (Evladov [1929] 1992: 43–46). Evladov reports that back in 1926, Khanzero was already a well-established, highly respected old man. Timofei’s earmark is now that of his adoptive father, Neleko Khudi (Figure 3.3, earmark 4), Khanzero’s older son. Neleko and his wife most probably had no children of their own, or the latter had not survived. Many Nentsy adopt children in this situation. Neleko’s brother Iakhachi gave his earmark to his son Gennadii (Figure 3.3, earmark 5). Anatolii Tynzikovich Vanuito Makh’ko’s youngest sister married Timofei’s brother Mikhail, who was not given away for adoption at the time. Because he was the eldest son and only had younger sisters, Anatolii inherited his father’s earmark (Figure 3.3, earmark 6). Again as the only son, he inherited the parent’s household in ultimogeniture, and his mother Edeine was still living with him in 2001. Anatolii also herds the animals of his uncle Konstantin, who lives in the village and has a slightly different earmark (Figure 3.3, earmark 7). The final earmark in this private reindeer herders’ camp is that of Mishene, Tokcha’s oldest brother (Figure 3.3, earmark 8). He had been a fisherman for thirty-five years at the Novyi Port fish factory before he was ‘rationalized away’, along with most of the other fishermen. Since then he has joined his prosperous younger brother Tokcha, receives transport reindeer from him for his household, and helps him out with fishing on the Iuribei River. Tokcha and several others think that kinship relations have gained significance since the Soviet Union collapsed, a fact confirmed by Ziker’s work (1998) among the Dolgan and Nganasan in Taimyr. Tokcha’s own family is an example that kinship links have always been important: ‘We have to build up our own unions. In the past, the sovkhoz did not trust relatives. They deliberately tore brothers apart so they would not engage in ‘left business’ (chtoby ne zanimalis’ levymi delami). Nowadays the situation has improved’ (Tokcha, May 2001). What Tokcha meant by ‘left business’ was the undermining of the sovkhoz system by hiding private reindeer, by not delivering meat to fulfil the Soviet plan, or through some other individualist behaviour. However critical Soviet intervention may have been perceived by the herders, the sovkhozy did not succeed in destroying the social fabric of the tundra. Otherwise there would have been no continuity from the preSoviet to the post-Soviet era in terms of earmarks, or of marriage or migration patterns, as I described for the continuous kinship relations in Tokcha’s camp from the 1920s to the present day. Evladov described Khanzero Khudi as a man rich in reindeer, ‘who was highly respected by all reindeer herders of southern Yamal’ (Evladov [1929] 1992: 44). Four generations later, his great-grandson Tokcha has a similar position in precisely the same area in southern and central Yamal. Evladov’s description of Khanzero’s character as ‘clever and decisive’ back in 1929 equally applies to Tokcha, who I got to know as an enthusiastic reindeer herder, full of energy, highly decisive, clever and spontaneous, and with good leadership qualities. Although a formal ‘Nenets aristocracy’ did not exist in this quite egalitarian society, there are still some families with what could be called ‘leadership properties’, having a long line of descendants who have always enjoyed great respect among

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    89 relatives and neighbours. Golovnev terms this kind of leadership ‘democratic’ (1997: 149), and sees a general trend in the direction of pre-Soviet leadership patterns among the Nentsy (ibid. 163). What his work and mine suggest, however, is the amazing continuity throughout the Soviet Union. As a highly respected Nenets in Se-Yakha explained to me: Of course we [his extended family] were successful reindeer herders before the Soviet Union, and it is no wonder that we have succeeded in running our business within the sovkhoz, as we now do with our private business. The communist party appointed me as the village council leader, and now my reindeer herders have elected me to the same position. (Nikolai Lachevich Okotetto, September 2000) The kinship-relatedness of people is reflected in their property in reindeer, since one part of the earmark design stands for the broader clan/family – for example Khudi, Vanuito or Okotetto – while the other represents the individual. It is not permissible to change the ‘surname’ part of the earmark. This explains why, in Figure 3.3, Anatolii’s (No. 6) and Konstantin’s (No. 7) earmarks are identical on the left ear (Vanuito), and all the Khudi earmarks in the camp are also identical on the left ear: Pari (No. 1), Tokcha (No. 2), Tokcha’s youngest uncle (No. 3), Timofei (No. 4), and Gennadii (No. 5). One exception to the ultimogeniture pattern is that Tokcha did not inherit his father’s mark (Nos. 1 and 2), since the sovkhoz appropriated a very similar mark for one of the brigades. Hence the practice of giving earmarks indicates the impact of sovietization in reindeer herding on Nenets property. The other exception is Mishene’s earmark (No. 8), whose design does not seem to fit into the family pattern. I must admit that I have no explanation for this except that he had not practised reindeer herding for thirty-five years. He could also have taken the earmark of his wife’s father, although marks are not normally inherited by in-laws. A similar meaning attached to earmarks among reindeer herders still prevails among the Swedish Saami, but as Beach (1993) pointed out, more institutionalized and more complicated. The Saami also reserve one ear for the extended family’s earmark, which has remained constant throughout generations, while again the other ear stands for the individual. Since earmarks can be sold there, however, the pattern is less consistent. Thus in a market economy, registered marks become more explicitly attached to exclusive private property.9 The example of kinship, inheritance and marks among my hosts and their ancestors illustrates the significance of the earmark in perpetuating Nenets social relations in the tundra via the visualization of reindeer property. Both marriage and the system of mutual assistance among kinsmen leave their trace in the herd in the form of a combination of earmarks in particular reindeer. One of the purposes of cooperation between herders is to lend, borrow and train transport animals. In Tokcha’s camp, both Mishene and Timofei have insufficient transport deer to carry their households on the long migration routes, and therefore  9. Personal communication with a reindeer herder from the Lainiovuoma Sameby, northern Sweden, 5 November 2003.

90  Florian Stammler borrow them from Tokcha or Anatolii. In the majority of cases they receive young untrained male animals, which they train for Tokcha and use themselves. They can mark these deer with their own furmarks, but the earmark remains the same. Cooperation of this kind is beneficial to both sides, since neither Tokcha nor Anatolii can train as many animals as they would like to, and Mishene and Timofei do not have enough animals to transport their households. Should the situation change and the herds get bigger, Mishene or Timofei will give the trained animals back to Tokcha and Anatolii. This kind of mutual aid is characterized by a delayed balanced reciprocity. Moreover, the two less wealthy herders do an even share of the herding work for the joint herd. The actual number of animals owned has no influence on the amount of herding work done in a common camp with others. This is what led Marxist ethnographers (Brodnev 1950; 1959) to argue that rich herders exploit those who are poorer. This sort of animal transfer also occurs between households not living in the same camp. The reindeer transfer can be a short-term matter of one migration only, or long-term so that sons might eventually return reindeer their fathers had borrowed (see Evladov [1929] 1992: 169). The most common pattern of cooperation takes place in private herds with several owners, visualized by several earmarks (Table 3.1: type 2), and frequently occurs among private herders in central and southern Yamal. Several herders with smaller herds join together, mostly in the summer; the maximum size of such a camp consists of twelve chums. This is a century-old practice (Golovnev 1995: 53). As a rule, herders divide the hard labour of controlling the herd into twenty-four-hour shifts. When the summer is over, they separate and with smaller herds find their own way back to autumn and winter pastures. These associations can also last the whole year for herders with very small herds. Both patterns, known as parma, are the kind of mutual assistance practised by the Nentsy (Khazanov 1994: 155; Brodnev 1950: 95f.). They collectively manage, but individually own the deer. The cooperating partners may or may not be relatives. If a herd is small, say less than 100 head, however, it is common for the owner to join a richer relative, usually a brother or brother-in-law, as described above for Mishene and Tokcha. The owners here make independent decisions about their own deer, although these are normally taken in close cooperation. The share of what is owned in the herd can differ considerably, as in the case of Tokcha Parivich who had 1,500 head, and his brother Mishene Parivich with not much more than 300. This ownership pattern of multiple owners and earmarks also refers to herds of owners who have settled in a village and have the deer herded by relatives or friends. In exchange they provide housing for the herders when they visit the village, assistance in marketing, or supplies of non-pastoral goods. Cooperation between households, however, is not restricted to the reindeer herd. Among poorer households in particular, additional activities, such as hunting geese in May and arctic fox in winter, and ice-fishing in autumn and spring, make inter-household cooperation likely in all seasons. Among the poorer herders in the forest or southern tundra zone, the main source of income would not normally be produce from the herd, but from one of the above-mentioned activities. However, most fishers want to become genuine herders, since being a reindeer herder on long

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    91

Figure 3.7 Furmark of Timofei Khudi, who borrowed one of Tokcha’s bulls for transport.

migration carries more prestige and counts as nenei ilngana, or a real life (Khariuchi 2001: 12). They increase their herd by exchanging animals from the herders for fish. Evladov also reports that in the past, poor households received animals for meat from the more prosperous (Evladov [1929] 1992: 170f.). This was general reciprocity, and there was no formal obligation to return anything; however, if a poor herder had fish or hunted prey to give away, he might exchange them for a reindeer. Intra-Household Cooperation Cooperation also takes place in herds primarily owned by one household (Table 3.1: type 1). Property and ownership in animals is visualized for the most part by the owner’s earmark, and those on animals given to him within the framework of his social networks of delayed exchange (see next section). This pattern of herd ownership prevails among wealthy herders in northernmost arctic Yamal and among poorer herders in winter in the southern tundra zone. Interestingly, it prevails at both the maximum and the minimum extremes of herd size. Some time ago, when there were less reindeer, people used to live together in camps. Now, each chum stands alone to prevent the reindeer from getting mixed up. You cannot keep such large herds together, although it is more fun to live with other people than alone. (Yakov Naberevich Vanuito, a wealthy herder from northernmost Yamal) Yakov’s statement is indicative of a tendency in northern Yamal among private herders to separate as a result of growth in herd sizes. He also expresses his dissatisfaction with this situation, making regular contacts with friends or colleagues more difficult. Moreover, we saw that there is a natural limit to the size of the herd that one herder can manage. As pointed out by Beach et al. (1992: 78), labour is the factor that frequently limits herders and makes cooperation a viable strategy. Somebody like Yakov needs assistance with herding, since his father lives somewhere else and his children are too young to help with the herding. He might recruit a relative or a friend to help him. The best option would be an unmarried youngster

92  Florian Stammler with a desire to gain experience in herding and build up his own household in the future. He would then live in Yakov’s household as an apprentice, benefit from his experience, do half the herding work for him, train his animals for transport, and be entitled to use them himself. The herd would still belong to Yakov but the apprentice would later negotiate with him to obtain a number of deer as a start for his own private herd, the relation Ingold had in mind when he spoke of herding assistants (1980: 190–92). In many cases young people help their fathers out and learn from them the intricate practice of herding. Such is the situation of Nikolai Khorotetto, who was born in 1978, spent three years of his life in Chechnya, fought the first battle in Groznyi as a sniper, where he was injured, and spent one and a half years in various hospitals in St Petersburg. He explained: I could have had so many girls in St Petersburg, and they were certainly pretty, and I liked them. Life was fun there, but eventually I wanted to go back home. My father is old, and my brother, who will inherit the household, is too young to herd independently. I have to help my parents, and I want to learn reindeer herding again, although it’s painful with the bullet in my leg and my injured hand. But I am training, and I’ve found a spouse. But don’t tell my father yet. We have agreed already among ourselves, and I will go and bring her back home next year. Nikolai is learning from his father, and when he brings his new wife home they will live on one side of the chum as a second household. He does the herding work with his father and his brother. They have one earmark in their herd of slightly less than a thousand deer. Upon her marriage, the family of Nikolai’s wife will probably give her winter cover for half a chum (twenty-five furs sewn together) along with other equipment. When the family has completed the work of preparing the new family’s chum and the family herd is big enough, Nikolai will leave his father’s household. He thinks that three hundred animals is a reasonably sized herd to separate. Of these three hundred, he will need one hundred trained transport animals. He will ask his father to help him design an earmark. Common to both Yakov’s and Nikolai’s case is the cooperation within the household. Whether a relative or not, the assistant or apprentice is a member of the household, with the household head as the sole herd owner. The apprentices or junior partners have use rights in the animals that they train for transport. This differs from the situation described above for Tokcha and Mishene, where cooperation takes place between households. Cooperation between Individuals: Delayed Exchange of Reindeer Another form of social relations is linked not to the reindeer herd or the household as a unit of production, but to individuals and animals. Both kinsmen and friends engage in this. Giving reindeer to friends is widespread and a practise I encountered in all of the twenty-eight herding families I visited during my main fieldwork in 2000–2001. This reindeer exchange is less about the risk diversification and

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    93 distribution of the herd to various pastures that we know from African pastoralists (Evans-Pritchard 1956: 258; Ring 1990). In Yamal, this exchange has the nonmaterial purpose of enacting social relations with the other person. When Roman visits his friend Valera, for example, he receives a reindeer from him, and takes it home to his herd. Within two years, Roman gives Valera back one reindeer more than he had previously received, in this case two reindeer. One reindeer is the return of what he had received, and the second is ‘za gostropriemstvo’, for the hospitality he enjoyed. If the deer is not given back within two or three years, but in five or six, one reindeer more has to be handed over, so a total of three. It is important that the quality of the reindeer is roughly the same. If Roman receives a young deer, he has to give a young one back. In the case of females, calves remain in the herd of the ‘receiver’, the one to whom the deer was originally given. This is a long-term exchange, and obligations to give reindeer can even be inherited. Roman is a member of various exchange networks that link relatives and friends. Use and ownership rights are transferred to the receiver completely. This means that Roman as the receiver of the animals can use them as he sees fit, including what has been called their terminal and renewable resources (Galaty and Johnson 1990: 20). He can slaughter them, albeit this rarely happens, cut the fresh velvet antlers (panty), or use them for transport. The reindeer herders themselves see this form of exchange as a gift (podarok), despite its entailing the obligation to give something back. Hence it is still a delayed balanced reciprocity. The social bonds are enacted by a shared subscription to the rule of delayed exchange. The shared set of values with regard to property and exchange in reindeer makes the latter vital for social networks in the tundra community. This exchange in small numbers between individuals was not mentioned as an earlier form of mutual aid by Evladov ([1929] 1992: 168–73), who focused on reindeer transfer for transport and training, for meat, partly as a gift, summer cooperation, and as a bride-price (kalym). These patterns of exchange make reindeer not merely a possession reduced to commodity purposes, which is assumed when Ingold (1980: 187f.) talks about reindeer in the tundra having the social significance of smallstock similar to the Basseri sheep and goats (Barth 1964). It proves that Ingold’s hypothesis that tundra ‘animals do not constitute objects of long-term reciprocal transactions’ (1980: 190) needs to be corrected. Reindeer most certainly pass in long-term transactions between households and enact the system of alliances between them, albeit it is less elaborate than that of the Nuer, the Boran, the Dinka or other African pastoralists. If we were to imagine the Basseri and the Nuer at the extreme poles of ‘social isolation’ and ‘total social integration’, the Nentsy would probably lie between the two. Discussion: Exploitation, Cooperation, Sources of Conflict? The topic of mutual assistance has been controversially discussed both between Marxists and non-Marxists, as well as across ideological boundaries. Ingold talks about cases of herding assistance in a household as ‘an exchange of herding labour for subsistence plus a cut of each year’s calves’ (1980: 191). He thinks of these relationships as utilitarian and short term, and confines them to owner and user living in the same household. Different from that, Nenets cases of cooperation described above have a longer

94  Florian Stammler perspective, no matter if it is between households of relatives (such as Mishene Khudi), between close relatives in the same chum (such as the Khorotettos), or apprentices in the same chum (Yakov’s case). For example, Mishene is older but poorer than his brother Tokcha. Thus Mishene’s son will become Tokcha’s assistant after Mishene retires from active work. The fact that both brothers benefit from the jointly managed reindeer forms a bond between them that is transmitted to the next generation. Whereas Soviet anthropologists (Brodnev 1950; 1959) believed that associations of this kind had an exploitative character, another interpretation sees them as mutual aid (Evladov [1929] 1992; Khazanov 1994: 153ff.). Khazanov claims that the rich Nenets herders joined the poor, because they needed their labour, and not the other way around. I suggest that raising the question of whether the rich depend on the poor, or vice versa, ignores the reciprocity in cooperation. Khazanov’s (1994: 155) interpretation of the Central Asian cooperation known as saun applies to this relationship. Rather than as a relationship that is exploitative in nature, he sees the aim of saun in the fact that ‘they discourage poor households from falling away from nomadic societies, thus helping to prevent the disintegration of the societies in question’. In the Yamal case, it can be said that parma, or mutual assistance, prevents people like Mishene or Timofei from becoming villagers with little or no prospect of doing meaningful work (see Golovnev and Osherenko 1999: 98f.). A more generalized reciprocity is stipulated by the zakon tundry (law of the tundra), implying readiness to assist people in urgent need without demanding something in return. This is true for hospitality in the chum, but even more so for food, when those in need can approach anyone for something to eat – mostly reindeer meat. In this way the tundra community unites. In pre-Soviet times, this pattern was expressed more clearly during periods of recurring spring famine (Evladov [1929] 1992: 170f.), which stopped happening after World War Two. The exploitation argument for relations between richer and poorer households appears to stem from an ideological preoccupation. However, we should avoid presenting an ideal image of continued peaceful cooperation between members of a community in the tundra, all following the zakon tundry that ties people together in their need for survival and longing for prosperity. The existence of law in all human societies – whether codified or customary – includes the implication that it is not adhered to by everyone. I have also seen several cases of and reports about conflict between herders, some of which deal with property in reindeer. Sitting in the chum around the table after a dinner of frozen raw meat and some rice and instant soup, Nikolai’s mother told me that their relative and neighbour increases his herd by stealing animals from other herds. However, this is more subtle than mere animal theft in the classic sense. During snow storms and thick fog, neighbouring reindeer herds get mixed up on occasion, and herders have to lasso them out at a later date when weather conditions have improved. Sometimes Nikolai leaves any animals he has lost in a snow storm for quite some time in the other herds, and the other herders are then obliged to keep them in their herd until they have been collected. These animals grazing in different herds are also a form of non-institutionalized cooperation, counting on the honesty of the tundra community. The said neighbour, however, occasionally simply recuts the earmark,

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    95 rendering proof of origin of the animal invisible and the property of Nikolai’s father’s unknown. In other cases, he just slaughters the reindeer, which allows him to preserve his own herd. When Nikolai arrives to collect his animals, he might recognize them by appearance, but he can no longer prove his ownership of the reindeer by earmark. This type of animal theft undermines the widely distributed practice of long-term, uncontrolled animal exchange between households. However, the very fact that this kind of uncontrolled animal exchange is still prominent shows that dishonesty does not seem to prevail in the tundra. Another source of conflict is the situation mentioned above where poorer herders buy reindeer for fish from herders that are more prosperous. In April 2001, a reindeer herder-fisherman in southern Yamal bought two reindeer from Tokcha’s herd in exchange for fish. A week later, when we were on migration northwards with the whole camp, the same fisherman suddenly appeared with a harness of four deer, two of which were Tokcha’s. We all wondered what was happening. The man complained about the quality of the deer. They refused to pull heavy sledges and became exhausted from driving very rapidly. He wanted to give them back and exchange them for another two. Tokcha was very angry and told him that he was not prepared to agree to another exchange. The man was forced to leave with the deer he had come with. Tokcha later explained that it was the man’s own fault because he did not migrate very often and let the deer graze on poor pastures. He was merely an inexperienced young herder, and it was detrimental to his future reputation to question Tokcha’s honesty. Moreover, he himself had chosen the deer. Tokcha would never agree to do business with him again. As in the general discussion on mutual assistance, it is a question of interpretation as to whether this is exploitation of the poor by the rich. Did Tokcha deliberately suggest weak animals to this man, thereby bartering reindeer for fish dishonestly, or did the reindeer indeed grow weak as a result of the new owner’s lack of experience and his laziness about migrating to fresh pastures? At the annual assembly of the brigade employees of the Yar-Sale sovkhoz in 2001,10 the herders (pastukhi) of the 2nd brigade complained about their brigadir: ‘We do the reindeer service, and he catches fish on his own. He has 3,000 reindeer, so the brigade herd including private deer has 7,000 animals altogether. We have the work of keeping them all together.’ This shows how equal distribution of the workload for herders in a brigade, regardless of the size of the private herd, might be exaggerated and the labour force of the poorer herders abused. This is exactly what Brodnev (1950; 1959) had in mind in shaping his exploitation argument against the notion of mutual help. It is interesting to note that in this case it occurs within the framework of a sovkhoz brigade, indicating that the imposition of state structures on the Nenets herding system did not necessarily change its character. Conflicts can also arise within one household, for example between father and son about the bride-price or kalym. The case of Nikolai Khorotetto (quoted above) is an illustration, although conflict was eventually averted in this case. The inheritance pattern of ultimogeniture, where the youngest son inherits the father’s   10. Faktoria Portsy-Iakha, 23 April 2001.

96  Florian Stammler household and the older sons get a share of the father’s herd as soon as they leave home after marriage, has the potential for conflict. According to the twenty-eight interviews I carried out on this issue, the father decides on the son’s share in the majority of households, and not always to the satisfaction of the son. Also, one son might need more reindeer as kalym, whereas another might not need kalym at all, for example when he marries a woman from the village. Another source of conflict is when the father does not want to give the son a sufficient number of reindeer to start his own household. These conflicts do occur, but not frequently enough to question the general rules that govern life with the reindeer in the tundra and the social relationships woven around this lifestyle. As Evladov ([1929] 1992: 172) put it: ‘People who do not give out reindeer as an interest free credit or free of charge are so rare among the Nentsy that we can think of their behaviour as individual manner’.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to show how property rights and duties around reindeer enable us to understand the reinforcement or establishment of social relations among the Nentsy, and their engagement in two spheres of exchange defined by Gudeman (1998; 2001) as the ‘community sphere’ and the ‘market sphere’. The community sphere among the Nentsy is governed by the zakon tundry. To understand how nomadic pastoralists enter the post-Soviet market economy, a simple investigation of ‘who owns what and why’ would not have been sufficient. I have shown that the assumption of property on a ‘continuum from “individual” (private) to “communal” (public), with many gradations from the individual to the state’ (Hann 1998a: 6) captures the subtle degree to which people can gain public or private, collective or individual access to reindeer and to social relations, and become inclusive or exclusive owners and users of this resource. I have argued that the multiplicity of property rights and ‘property duties’ form the core of the social fabric in the Nenets community and are indispensable to their interaction with forces outside the realm of the zakon tundry. These multiple rights stem from the engagement of reindeer herders in both the community and the market spheres of exchange. The community sphere, where the domestic use of animals prevails, is characterized by inclusive and exclusive notions of property rights and duties, whereas the market sphere of commodities is restricted to the exclusive property rights of the owner. However, this does not appear to be true for the commodity use of reindeer as an identity marker. I have demonstrated that these relationships are not always free of conflict, although my focus in this paper has been on explaining how the Yamal Nentsy cooperate in tundra nomadism. There are always exceptions to the rule. Reindeer are both the vehicle and the reason for relations of mutual assistance among households. They are still closely associated with marriage among the Nentsy, and are used to build up long-term, even inheritable, relations between individuals via delayed exchange. Mutual help in the tundra can be observed in balanced reciprocity (e.g. borrowing transport reindeer) as well as in generalized reciprocity (e.g. giving animals for meat to people in need). My analysis of how earmarks are connected to

Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community    97 kinship relations and inheritance has indicated how these relationships are passed down through generations. When we look at a herd, all these relationships of exchange of ownership and use rights show that rather than a simple pattern of ‘one household – one herd – one owner’, we have a three-category property regime (as was described in Table 3.1), whereby reindeer are either state-controlled, owned by multiple private owners, or owned by a single household. This empirical evidence corrects Ingold’s (1980: 187) assumption that reindeer in tundra pastoralism ‘do not pass between households in reciprocal transactions of a long term nature, nor are they the foci of multiple property interests’. While his analysis might be valid for the market sphere of exchange, it does not cover the whole range of relations governing the community sphere. The ethnographic examples I have given illustrate that the type of ownership pertaining to the herd and to individual reindeer changes the character and use of the animal in the eyes of the reindeer herder. Whereas in the primarily collective work of herding, the amount of labour the herder invests is independent of his share of reindeer in the herd, husbandry decisions are taken individually. Animals for domestic use are treated differently to those for commodity use; in commodity production the animal loses its properties of ‘personal ownership’ and becomes anonymous. The duty to use and treat the animal according to the zakon tundry ceases to exist. This shows that reindeer are an essential cultural property of the ‘community sphere’, where the zakon tundry is still followed in most cases. The systems of mutual assistance and exchange of reindeer are evidence that in comparison with other pastoralists, such as the socially embedded Nuer and the more isolated Basseri, the Yamal Nentsy are less embedded than the former but far more integrated than the latter. This social embeddedness of the Yamal Nentsy in the community sphere, reinforced by cooperation in reindeer herding and reindeer exchange, probably explains why the market economy in Yamal did not substitute but supplement the system of reciprocal relationships between households. I suggest considering this system as a source of social and material security for reindeer herders, which enables them to act in a more entrepreneurial fashion in the evolving market.

Chapter 4

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’? Divergent Perceptions of Property in Animals among the Tozhu and the Tofa of South Siberia Brian Donahoe

Introduction Southern Siberia, northern Mongolia, and the northern tip of Inner Mongolia in China represent the southernmost extremes of reindeer habitat in the world. These are ecological transition zones between the boreal forests of Siberia and the steppes of Eurasia; political and administrative transition zones between the Russian Federation, Mongolia and China; and cultural transition zones between Turkic-, Mongolic-, and Tungusic-speaking indigenous populations.1 The way of life of the hunting and reindeer-herding populations in this area confounds the neat typologies of production systems traditionally recognized in Western anthropology, as it blends traits of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, blurring to some extent the distinction between these two production systems. For example, the south Siberian reindeer herders share a number of characteristics with other pastoral groups. Historically reindeer in these areas have been a source of immense cultural and symbolic significance. In addition to being measures of wealth (Petri 1927; Vainshtein 1961: 58; Mendüme 1984), they have served as important items of exchange in the cementing of various social bonds (marriage) and at rites of passage (birth and death). Shamans in the area were said to ride their reindeer into the spirit world, with reindeer images decorating their costumes and their drums (Vainshtein 1961, 1991: Ch. 6; Diószegi 1961, 1962). White reindeer were considered sacred, and were not ridden, used as pack animals, or killed for food (Wheeler 2001). The reindeer herders in this area raise small herds of reindeer in heavily forested mountains (taiga), predominantly as pack and riding animals, and for their milk products. Referring specifically to the Tozhu reindeer herders of  1. The Tungusic language family includes Evenki, Even, Manchu, and a number of other languages indigenous to south-eastern Siberia.

100  Brian Donahoe the Republic of Tyva,2 anthropologist Tim Ingold has called this form of reindeer herding ‘the closest approach to pure milch pastoralism based on reindeer’ (Ingold 1980: 101). However, reindeer herding in the taiga regions of Siberia has always been a secondary activity that facilitated the principal economic and productive activity of hunting. Wild game is the principal source of meat. In fact, hunter-herders of the south Siberian taiga are still loath to kill a domesticated reindeer for food, and only do so in case of dire need or serious injury to the animal. As Andreeva and Leksin note, ‘One might say that in the taiga there are no reindeer herders but that there are hunters with reindeer’ (1999: 92). This has long been recognized by Russian/Soviet ethnographers, who even introduced a special category for this type of reindeer herding – the Saian type. Working within the framework of the ‘economic-cultural type’ theory of Levin and Cheboksarov (see Humphrey 1980: 5), Vainshtein takes great pains to specify the complex of productive activities and cultural attributes that define the Saian type of reindeer herding, where herders ride the reindeer, milk them, and use them as pack animals. They do not employ dogs to help with the herd, nor do they use decoy deer to attract wild reindeer when they hunt (Vainshtein [1972] 1980: 121).3 Ingold (2000) has suggested that the relationship of hunting populations to the wild animals they depend on is characterized by ‘trust’, while the relationship between pastoral populations and their livestock is marked by ‘domination’. Using this distinction as a starting point, this chapter focuses on two of these south Siberian reindeer-herding and hunting peoples: the Tofa (Tofalar) of south-western Irkutsk Oblast’ and the Tozhu of the Tozhu District in north-eastern Tyva. The Tozhu and Tofa peoples are closely related ethnically, linguistically, geographically, and in terms of their principal economic activities (reindeer herding and hunting and gathering). However, they have long been divided by administrative boundaries, which has led to divergent histories and hence drastic differences in their present-day conceptions of property with respect to the reindeer they raise and the wild animals they hunt. I suggest that the relationship of the Tozhu to wild animals is still predominantly a social one based on trust, mediated by the cher eeleri (sing. cher eezi – spirit masters of places, who are also the masters of the wild animals in their places), and embedded in a ‘cosmic economy of sharing’ (Bird-David 1992). Domesticated reindeer are often described as angsyg (wild animal-like). They have a special status that lies somewhere between wild animals and domesticated livestock, and are still accorded the respect shown to wild animals. In the Tofa case, these social relationships have almost  2. Tyva is more commonly transliterated as Tuva, which reflects the Russian pronunciation and spelling. I have chosen to transliterate it directly from the Tyvan as ‘Tyva’, with the ‘y’ representing a high, unrounded back vowel (‘ы’ in Cyrillic, ‘ɯ’ in standard IPA, and ‘ɨ’ in turcological convention). Likewise, I have chosen to refer to the people as ‘Tyva people’, which is a direct translation of the Tyvan ‘Tyva kizhi’, and is closer to the Tyva people’s selfdesignation than the more common ‘Tuvan’ or ‘Tuvinian’. 3. Vainshtein follows the typology of Vasilevich and Levin (1951), which breaks reindeer herding into five types: the Lapp or Saami type; the Western Siberian or Samoedi type; the Tungus or Siberian type; the North-Eastern type; and the Saian type.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    101 completely broken down. Wild animals are now viewed in terms of the income they can generate, while reindeer are valued solely as a means of transportation during the hunting season. I argue that the reasons for this divergence are related to the different experiences these two peoples had with Russian occupation and especially with Soviet-era collectivization, and the fact that the kolkhozes (collective farms), and later the sovkhozes (state farms), established in the Soviet era were differently designed and set up for different purposes. In the Tofa case, collective and state farms were set up exclusively for hunting, while in the Tozhu case they were designed for reindeer husbandry and, to a much lesser extent, hunting. Whereas this difference has allowed the Tozhu to maintain their social relationships with reindeer, wild animals, and the cher eeleri, among the Tofa these social relationships have deteriorated.

Wild Animals as Property In pre-Soviet times, when virtually all Tozhu and Tofa people were nomadic herders and hunters, land in the Tozhu and Tofa areas was not exclusively owned by anyone, although there were recognized clan- and band-based territories (Skabeev 1925; Petri 1927: 25; Vainshtein 1961). Wild animals were not considered anyone’s exclusive ‘property’ as such, but people had social relations that were built into the rights they could claim to wild animals. For example, a hunter from one band was expected to request permission to hunt on the recognized territory of another (permission was rarely refused), and if successful, to share his kill with the recognized occupying band of that territory. The practice of hunting on another band’s territory was so widespread, at least among the Tozhu, that it gave rise to the custom of uzha, whereby the member of the foreign band was supposed to give the highly valued rump (uzha) of the slain animal to members of the band on whose territory he had hunted.4 Vainshtein cites one Tozhu informant as saying that at the beginning of the twentieth century, one hunter lodged a complaint against another, not because the latter had hunted and killed an animal on the territory of the former, but because he had failed to observe the custom of uzha (Vainshtein 1959: 85). Thus while we cannot say that land or the wild animals on that land were objects of private property over which someone had exclusive control, we can say that the recognized occupying band or lineage group had rights to the wild animal resources on their territory, and the right to a portion of any kill made on their territory by a visitor. The visiting hunter, in turn, could request permission to hunt on that territory with the expectation that permission would be granted. This virtually automatic granting of permission and the subsequent sharing of the kill can be seen as an expression of a sense of equal entitlement to the wild animal resources (see Hann 1998a: 34). In addition, these rights and entitlements carry with them various social obligations. Ingold notes

  4. This was very probably a Tofa custom too, but I have yet to find a reference to it in the literature. Analagous customs existed in almost all north Eurasian cultures (see Forsyth 1992: 50 and Fondahl 1998: 32 on the custom of nimat among the Evenki and other Tungusic peoples; Ziker 2002 and 2003a on the ‘Law of the Tundra’ among the Dolgan and Nganasan).

102  Brian Donahoe a striking parallel … between the alleged ‘ownership’ of territory, and the ‘ownership’ of animal kills in hunter-gatherer societies. An owner is virtually obliged to distribute his spoils, just as he is to admit outsiders. It seems to be as rare, and to be regarded as equally reprehensible, for permission of entry to be refused as to withhold shares of meat. (Ingold 1987: 134) If we follow one standard Western anthropological definition, whereby property is ‘not a thing, but a network of social relations that governs the conduct of people with respect to the use and disposition of things’ (Hoebel 1966: 424, cited in Hann 1998a: 4), then the rights expressed above and the social relationships in which they are embedded constitute a form of property with respect to wild animal resources. However, this standard anthropological definition usually assumes that the social relationships of property are human-to-human. As Hann has put it, ‘property relations exist not between persons and things but between people in respect of things’ (Hann 2000: 1). But in many indigenous contexts, property is embedded in social relationships that are as likely to be human-to-non-human as they are humanto-human, and the concomitant moral obligations apply not only to other humans, but also to non-human entities.5 Numerous writers have noted a social relationship between the hunter and his prey, and it is this relationship that gives the hunter the right to take his prey. In fact, many claim that the wild animal ‘gives’ itself to the hunter as part of this social relationship, while the hunter, in turn, manages his hunting and protects the habitat of the wild animals in such a way as to ensure its continued existence (Brightman 1993; Ingold 2000, esp. chs 3, 4, 7). Drawing on Bird-David’s ‘cosmic economy of sharing’ (1992), Ingold asserts that the relationship between hunter-gatherers and their prey is one of trust, characterized by a recognition that the hunter depends on the prey presenting itself to the hunter, and a respect for the autonomy of the wild animal to either choose to give itself to the hunter or not (Ingold 2000: 69). In the Tozhu context there is likewise a social relationship, one based on trust, as Ingold observes. Here, however, the relationship is not so much between hunter and wild animal as between hunter and cher eezi, who is at the same time master of all the wild animals in his place.6 Stories of cher eeleri abound in Tyvan and Tozhu folklore. A tool-chugaa,7 Askak ivilig aaryg angchy (‘The ailing hunter with the lame reindeer’) recorded by Tozhu writer Alexei Nuguurak,8 features the social relationship between a hunter and a cher eezi. The tale begins with a young orphan hunter wandering through an impenetrable, unforgiving taiga far from his home taiga. He has not eaten for days. Having used his last bullet and missed, he simply lacks the strength  5. For discussions of social relationships between humans and non-humans, see inter alia, Hallowell 1960; Ingold 1987 (esp. ch. 6); Bird-David 1990, 1999; Brightman 1993; King 2002. 6. A note on the etymology: cher = place/land/earth; cherlik = literally of the place/land, belonging to the place/land; however, it always carries the connotation of ‘wild’. 7. Tool-chugaa is a folk genre among the Tyva. A tale with elements of the magical, it is told as if it were factual and is often treated as such. 8. This material is from a sheaf of unpublished papers given to me by the writer Alexei Nuguurak.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    103 to search for food. On the verge of death, he practically gives up. And to top it all off, his reindeer is injured and limping: There was so much noise in the taiga it was as if a war was going on all around him. The boy imagined that the taiga was saying, ‘Hey, man, lie down and sleep for a bit, refresh your mind and body’. The voice was so relentless that he couldn’t resist and lay down beside a large white rock and fell asleep. In his dream, he saw the same taiga he was in. He had no idea how he got there. A maral [roe-deer] suddenly appeared, with antlers that had ten thousand gold and silver branches, legs as stout as huge larch trees, a breast so broad that it pressed against both sides of the taiga valley and touched the rapids of the raging river. The maral touched his ear and said, ‘How I pity you, young man. Are you doing alright or not?’ The young hunter was dumbfounded. He answered, ‘Nothing’s good with me right now, Maral Deer. I’ve fallen ill, and my reindeer friend is also ailing.’ Then the maral sniffed the hunter’s ears and kissed his cheeks, his ten thousand antler branches reaching to the sky. ‘Understand this, hunter, and do as I say. The land will not deny medicine to a well-meaning creature. Be attentive, go and find some medicine. I’m a very close friend of your deceased father, who protected me from being shot and saved my life. So don’t forget your father’s words. You’re very ill, young hunter, you can trust me …’ Then it left. … And the hunter woke up. He felt much better. He began to think, ‘Did the Oran-eezi9 come to me? Did the Cher-eezi come to me? Is something good going to come to me or am I going to die?’ He began to remember his father’s words: ‘Learn the many valuable uses of the maral: antlers, fat; also learn the mysteries of the taiga – its generosity to its wild animals, the medicine of its arzhaans,10 my son. For these, supplicate, bow your head.’ The hunter started walking with difficulty, still tired. He came to a place where the river levelled out and widened, and he bent down and drank deeply. The reindeer also felt invigorated. It began to walk more quickly, shook off its rein and waded into deeper water where it could soak its aching legs, and began to drink. Both of them rested, then again drank from the cool clear waters. The hunter felt sated, his eyes cleared up … The reindeer too. They drank their fill, and rested, and felt better. The hunter looked around and saw something up on the cliff. He went there and found a fat mountain goat that had just fallen from higher up and could not move. The cher eezi had given him a gift to lift his spirits. The fact that the cher eezi in this story is himself a wild animal (this is not always the case) reinforces the argument for the existence of a social relationship between humans and wild animals.   9. Oran is another word for cher, hence oran-eezi is another word for cher-eezi. 10. Sacred mineral springs.

104  Brian Donahoe When preparing to go hunting, hunters always supplicate the cher eezi. They feed the cher eezi by feeding the fire with a morsel of food – even if they only have dried bread (sukhari). In the morning, before setting out on a hunt, hunters fling spoonfuls of their morning milky tea into the fire and in the four directions of the earth (beginning with the east)11 as a mark of respect not only to the extent of the territory of the cher eezi whose land they happen to be on, but also to all the spirit masters of all the lands to the ends of the earth. While feeding the fire, hunters say a few simple words to the cher eezi, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently. Dembirel Karanai, a former hunter and reindeer herder resident in the village of Kham-Syra, explained that part of his hunting ritual involves praying to the cher eezi: I’d always go with a bottle or two of vodka. I had to take vodka. Then when I’d reach my hunting grounds, I’d first boil tea. Then I’d pray to the cher eezi, saying, for example: ‘Please give me a big beast, a chüve with a fat uzha. Please give me a young and willing beast, a chüve with a fat tosh’.12 Saying this you’d fling your tea, your vodka in the direction of the mountains and pray to the cher eezi. The writer Alexei Nuguurak recorded the following chant, which he says a hunter would sing or chant to himself while preparing his bullets and cleaning and loading his gun. The hunter, happy to be preparing for the hunt in the taiga, is in a very good mood: I’ve prepared and loaded my gun. I’m gazing into the smoke of my fire. Oh, my land! Be generous to me. (Present me with something) I, your son, will soon come to you. I’ve prepared few bullets.13 I’m sitting looking at the smoky deep dark forest. My encircling Taiga, be generous to me, I, your friend, your son, will soon come to you.

11. A special nine-eyed spoon, the tos karak, exists for this purpose and symbolizes the nine taigas; nine is the most sacred number in Tyvan cosmology – there are tos deer (nine heavens), tos chuzun mal (nine types of domestic livestock), etc. However, these nine taigas are not the same for everyone, and although some people have concrete taigas in mind, it is more a symbol of the cosmic unity of the hunter with all the taigas in the world. 12. Chüve means ‘thing’ and is used euphemistically to show respect for an animal by not naming it directly. Uzha and tosh are the rump and breast, respectively, the fattiest and most desired cuts of an animal. Recorded July 2001, in the village of Kham-Syra, Tozhu District, Tyva. 13. It was traditional to prepare and bring very few bullets on the hunt. This was a sign of confidence on the part of the hunter and faith that the cher eezi would present him with excellent opportunities. It was also an acknowledgement of the power of the bullet and the unfair advantage it gave to the hunter over his prey.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    105 I’m not alone – I’m with a friend. My trusty flintlock is in my hands. I will go dreaming of a wonderful catch (kill). My true gun is in my hands. I’m sitting thinking about my beloved land. What you give me I’ll thankfully accept. I’ll never complain that it’s too difficult, And I’ll never brag that it was easy.14 If the hunter makes a kill, he cooks some of the meat and gives the first morsel of the best bit to the fire (e.g. the purely fatty tip of the tosh, breastbone). Should the hunt be unsuccessful, the hunter wonders how he has offended the cher eezi, if he has somehow not upheld his part of the trusting relationship, since the latter entails certain responsibilities on the hunter’s part in addition to feeding the fire. For example, there are places where hunters are not allowed to hunt, cut trees, set fires, or camp overnight. In the Serlig Khem region of the Tozhu district of Tyva, where I carried out much of my fieldwork, there is an unusual hillside of grey mud, approximately 50 metres high by 80 metres wide. Water springs from the top of this hillside and slowly trickles down, keeping the area permanently muddy. At various level spots on the way down the hillside, water collects in small puddles, and strangely shaped ‘rocks’ can be found. These are in fact not rocks, but accretions of hardened mud that have tumbled down and been smoothed and shaped by the flow of water into forms frequently resembling people or animals – hence the name of the place, Charash Dash, which means ‘Beautiful Rock’. This is considered a sacred site among the Tozhu, and it is not permitted to spend the night at the top of this hillside. The story goes that if people spend the night there, the cher eezi will not let them sleep; if they do manage to fall asleep, they will die within the year. One of my informants told me that on approaching Charash Dash in the dark from an unfamiliar direction, she unwittingly tried to spend the night there. The wind blew through the trees all night and she could hear the cher eezi telling her to leave. She could not fall asleep. Finally at about four o’clock in the morning, a strange man came to her, made her get up, and told her to move on. She left, and it was only as she was leaving that she realized she had been at Charash Dash, and that the strange man was the cher eezi. Tozhu hunters must also observe proscriptions against killing certain types of animals. As former hunter/herder Shombul Sotbaevich Sambuu put it, White animals must not be shot – it was said that they were the cher eezi. White elk, white moose, white bears – any completely white thing. Around here there was a white deer, and no one dared touch it. There was also a completely blood-red bear, and white breasted elks. If a hunter encountered 14. It was also a custom never to brag that the hunt was easy. To do so would be to pat oneself on the back and take credit for success, when in fact it is entirely up to the cher eezi and not the hunter.

106  Brian Donahoe such an animal, he would immediately go to the shaman to be shamanized over and purified. The shaman would look him over and decide: if it was a bad omen, then he would purify the hunter and get him out of danger; if it was a good omen, the shaman would compound the hunter’s good fortune.15 Former hunter/herder Mikhail Kenden seconded the proscription against killing white animals and animals with otherwise distinctive markings, and added that one should never kill more than one needs: ‘If in one place a hunter were to shoot three or four animals, he would be scolded by the elders. “Aren’t there any other hunters who will come after you?” they would scold. “Won’t any of your own children come after you?’”16 By following these proscriptions, the hunters show their respect for the place and for the cher eeleri, maintain their part of the trusting relationship not only with the cher eeleri but also with their fellow hunters, and, in the process, help to protect the environment. These examples clearly illustrate that wild animals are in a sense considered the property of the cher eezi. It is the cher eezi who decides whether or not to give an animal to a hunter; it is the cher eezi the hunter fears and respects, petitions for help in the hunt, thanks for success, and with whom he establishes a relationship of trust, as distinct from doing so with the animal directly. Wild animals are the medium that constitutes the social relationship between the hunter and the cher eezi. Hence the hunter’s rights to take a wild animal – his property rights with respect to wild animals – are embedded in this social relationship with the cher eezi. In this way, then, these hunters enter into a ‘cosmic economy of sharing’, to use Bird-David’s phrase.

Reindeer as Property Among the Tozhu, reindeer also enter into this cosmic economy of sharing. Despite a series of transformations in the official (de jure) recognition of reindeer as property through Soviet times to the present, the relationship between Tozhu reindeer herders and their reindeer has remained fundamentally a social one. In this section, I will discuss how reindeer have been officially recognized as property, first by the Soviet state and now, in the post-Soviet era, by the Russian Federation, and how reindeer herders have reacted to this official status. Imposed on the reindeer herders during Soviet times, this is an economistic notion of property that ‘disembeds’ it (Hann 2000: 4) from its social context, and in particular neglects the indigenous concept of social relationships between humans and non-human persons and the moral obligations those relationships entail. Then, returning to Ingold’s discussion of trust and domination, I will argue that the Tozhu reindeer herders’ relationship to their reindeer is not one of owner to object of ownership, but rather a social one, based on trust and sharing (reciprocity) and not on domination, and is hence akin to their relationship to wild animals. In this discussion I view property rights as bundles of rights that can be divided into at least four distinct categories: proprietary, exclusionary, disposition, and use 15. Interview with Shombul Sotbaevich Sambuu (b.1921) in his home in Adyr-Kezhig, Tozhu District, 13 January 2001. 16. Interview with Mikhail Dondup-oolovich Kenden (b. 1921) in his home in Adyr-Kezhig, Tozhu Distirct, Tyva, 14 January 2001.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    107 rights. Proprietary rights include the right of possession, which entitles the owner ‘to keep, reinvest or apportion the value that accrues to the property and exposes the owner to the risk of loss’; exclusionary rights ‘entitle the holder to exclude others from using the property’; disposition rights ‘entitle the holder to dispose of or, in legal terminology, “alienate” the property’ by consuming it, selling it, or giving it away; use (usufruct) rights ‘entitle the holder to use a particular property for specific (usually limited) purposes’ (Osherenko 1995b: 1086–87). In pre-Soviet times, individual herders had proprietary, exclusionary, disposition, and use rights over their reindeer, and reindeer constituted the principal form of wealth among the Tozhu. With the incorporation of Tyva into the Soviet Union in 1944, the Soviet government embarked on a massive collectivization campaign in Tyva, much as it had done earlier throughout the USSR. In the case of the Tozhu, this meant that all reindeer herders were encouraged to turn their entire herds over to the newly formed collective farms (kolkhozes). Officially, the members of the kolkhozes held all objects of property (land, livestock, buildings, equipment) in communal ownership, meaning that the members could, in theory, jointly decide how to manage their reindeer. In practice, however, the rank-and-file members only had use rights over the deer (they could use them as pack and riding animals, and could milk them and consume the milk). Effective proprietary and disposition rights over kolkhoz property, including reindeer, could only be exercised by the administrators of the kolkhozes, and that only in accordance with the strict planning of the central authorities. While many of my informants reported that they (or their parents) willingly joined the kolkhozes, there were a number who had refused. In time, most of these recalcitrant herders were forced to join. But the herder-hunters did not always accept this passively. Herders employed a number of what Scott has called ‘weapons of the weak’ (1985). Shamans and other community leaders incited reindeer herders to resist collectivization (Mendüme 1984: 160). Several herding families fled to Mongolia to avoid having their personal herds seized and forcibly collectivized.17 Some reindeer herders slaughtered livestock to avoid having to give them over to the state; others hid parts of their herds in remote, inaccessible areas, thereby managing to underreport the number of head of livestock; still others simply retreated so deeply into the taiga that no one could effectively manage them or force them to join the collective farm. These people maintained private herds throughout Soviet times and have attained an almost legendary status: they (or their descendants), if they are still herding, are spoken of reverentially as the real ‘private’ herders. In 1969, the three kolkhozes in Tozhu were transformed into sovkhozes (state farms). Contrary to the kolkhoz, where property was owned collectively by the members, sovkhoz property was officially owned by the state. Hence reindeer (in addition to land, buildings, and so forth), became the official property of the state. In practice, this did not really change much, as the herders themselves had already been deprived of their proprietary and disposition rights under the kolkhoz administration, but could still use reindeer for riding and for milk. However, herders 17. The descendants of these people make up the core of the Dukha (Mongolian: Tsaatan) reindeer herders in the Hövsgöl region of north-western Mongolia.

108  Brian Donahoe managed to accrue small private herds in a number of ways. A few of them were allowed to maintain private herds of deer for exclusive use by the official hunters of the gospromkhoz (state hunting enterprise). The most productive kolkhoz (and later sovkhoz) herders were annually recognized and awarded prizes in the form of live reindeer given over into their private ownership. Furthermore, if a herder managed to oversee the birth of more than 70 calves per 100 female deer,18 he could keep the surplus as his own private property. The offspring of these private deer were also considered private. My informants acknowledged with a wink that somehow only sovkhoz deer, and never private deer, died of disease or were killed by predators. As the Soviet Union crumbled, state subsidies to the sovkhozes dried up, and the sovkhozes in Tozhu collapsed. Sovkhoz property was shared out to the members in two different forms: land shares (cher ülügleri in Tyvan, zemel’nye doli in Russian) and property shares (önchü khörenge ülügleri in Tyvan, imushchestvennye pai in Russian). Land shares were very small plots in and around the villages, and did not include reindeer pastures or hunting grounds. Property shares were doled out unequally, with the sovkhoz administrators managing to garner most of the physical property for themselves. Since reindeer were not only distributed to herders, but to all members of the former sovkhoz, including tractorists, drivers, kindergarten teachers, and so on, no one was richly endowed. A few herders with fairly substantial private herds19 officially registered themselves as aratskoe (fermerskoe) khoziaistvo (peasant enterprises), which gave them a long-term lease on land and allowed them to operate as private, small-scale entrepreneurs. Others with sufficient private deer simply went off on their own and did not officially lease land. The majority of herders, however, did not possess enough deer to make it on their own. In many cases they were forced to slaughter their few remaining deer for food or sell them live for cash. Those who wanted to remain in herding but were short of deer joined forces with others and created obshchinas (kin-based communal enterprises). The obshchinas were in effect built on the ruins of the sovkhozes, and were intended to fulfil many of the functions formerly performed by the sovkhozes, namely, to organize the productive activities of the herders and hunters, and to provide food, tents, clothing, guns, bullets, transportation, and a regular salary in return for the products of its members’ work as herders and hunters. Unfortunately, since the establishment of the obshchinas, this material support has never been provided, and the herder-hunters have learned not to expect it. The obshchinas were similar to the kolkhozes in that reindeer were considered the collective property of the members, who, in theory, did not receive disposition rights without the permission of the obshchina director. In practice, however, the herders behaved as if they had proprietary and disposition rights over the reindeer, justifying this by saying that since the obshchina had not paid them or provided the promised material support, the reindeer had in effect become their private property in lieu of back pay. For example, all the herders of the Serlig Khem branch of the Ödügen obshchina treated 18. Some herders told me it was 80 per 100. 19. Or who had connections that would help them to get substantial numbers of deer. For example, one former sovkhoz director managed to buy up a number of deer from other herders.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    109 the obshchina-owned livestock in their care as if they were private property, disposing of them as they saw fit without prior permission from the obshchina director. If they sold an animal, they kept the money for themselves. When the obshchina director sent word that the herders were to contribute a few of the obshchina deer in their care to a large deer sale (to Mongolia), one of the herders stated flatly, ‘I just won’t give them any. I don’t have enough deer.’ Another was willing to sell deer, but only if he were to be paid directly by the buyer and given 100 per cent of the purchase price. ‘If they don’t put the money right into my hand, I’ll turn around and come back with the deer’, he said. The obshchina director acknowledged that there was not much he could do about this situation. In 2001, the four largest obshchinas in Tozhu were restructured into a GUP (Gosudarstvennoe Unitarnoe Predpriatie – Unified State Enterprise). The GUP is similar to a sovkhoz in that the physical assets once again belong to the state, which is required to pay the herders and hunters a salary. However, there are contradictory views as to what this means. The herders still feel they have the rights of disposition over the deer, while the GUP director and the representative from the Ministry of Agriculture stated categorically that the deer were the property of the state, and not the herders. The above discussion pertains to the ‘official’ recognition of reindeer as property. However, in the indigenous Tozhu concept, reindeer are non-human persons that, like the cher eeleri, enter into social relations with humans. The rights people have with respect to reindeer are negotiated through that social relationship and carry with them moral obligations. In this sense, I am not discussing the property rights people hold over reindeer vis-à-vis other people or the human social relationships in which these rights are embedded, but rather the rights humans and reindeer have over each other and which are embedded in the social relationship between humans and reindeer. In his discussion of trust and domination, Ingold asserts that the two principles are mutually exclusive, and that you will never find, for example, a relationship between a pastoralist and his livestock based on trust: These principles of relationship [trust vs. domination] are mutually exclusive: to secure the compliance of the other by imposing one’s will, whether by force or by more subtle forms of manipulation, is – as we have seen – an abrogation of trust, entailing as it does the denial rather than the recognition of the autonomy of the other on whom one depends. (Ingold 2000: 72–73) However, citing Gooch’s study of the Van Gujjars, nomadic buffalo pastoralists in northern India, Ingold notes that the Van Gujjars present a fascinating exception to this argument, in three respects. First, the Van Gujjars relate to their buffaloes in the same way that they relate to other animals native to the forest: thus if the latter are classed as ‘wildlife’, then buffaloes are wildlife too, despite their evident tameness and familiarity

110  Brian Donahoe with humans … Secondly, the principle of this relationship, according to Gooch, is one not of domination but of trust … The key to understanding this case lies in the fact that the Van Gujjar[s] do not hunt, nor do they ever kill or eat their buffaloes – the animals are kept exclusively for their milk, and eventually die of old age … [This] divests the caring relationship of its more coercive, authoritarian aspects. Though more cared for than caring, buffaloes retain a measure of control over their destiny. (Ingold 2000: 422) I suggest that the Tozhu reindeer herders have a relationship with their reindeer that is based more on trust than on domination, analogous to that of the Van Gujjars with their buffalo. Reindeer ‘are not considered domestic animals’ (Dongak 1994: 91). Yet they are selectively bred, herded, castrated, saddled and ridden, used as beasts of burden, tied up, hobbled, milked, and (rarely) slaughtered and eaten. How can it be that they are not considered domestic animals? The relationship of domination between humans and domesticated livestock is based on two fundamental assumptions: (1) livestock need to be cared for; protecting them from predators involves staying with them during the day and corralling them at night; fodder needs to be prepared for the winter months, and so on; and (2) livestock are raised at least in part to be slaughtered for meat. Reindeer, on the other hand, are independent by nature, can defend themselves, and do not rely on humans for food (although herders provide them with rock salt when they have it). In the dead of winter, the herds are frequently left to forage for themselves, with the herders tracking them down once or twice a week to know where they are. The Tozhu people have a greater respect for reindeer, which are often referred to as shydamyk (tough, capable, durable), in comparison to other livestock, even the revered horse. Herders speak of reindeer as tuskai (special), onzagai (exceptional), kaigamchyk (remarkable). The following kozhamyk20 celebrates the pride a Tozhu youth takes in his/her reindeer: Upon my reindeer I’m a fine fellow, I’ll go up into Iy Taiga. Upon your cow, you my friend Can’t follow in my tracks. Upon my reindeer I myself Will go up into Sharym Taiga. Upon your ox, you my friend Can’t hope to keep up with my reindeer.

20. Kozhamyk (pl. kozhamyktar) are rhymed ditties, usually humorous and/or boastful, often sung against another person or team in a back-and-forth form of good-natured competition. This kozhamyk was recorded by the author, sung by Elizaveta Kenden, former reindeer herder and hunter, and source of songs and stories, at her home in Adyr-Kezhig, Tozhu District, Tyva, 14 January 2001.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    111 Among the Tozhu, reindeer are considered angsyg – wild animal-like, and the herderhunter relationship to them is ambivalent. Domesticated reindeer differ little from their wild cousins in appearance; they are of the same species (Rangifer tarandus) and can interbreed.21 If not properly looked after, reindeer will turn feral – in Tyvan they become cherlik (‘of the land’, i.e. wild). They are of the land and can return there at any time. Neither are they dependent on the herder, who in turn is well aware of this. Their autonomy, a feature Ingold has noted as characteristic of the trusting relationship between hunters and wild animals, is treated with respect. I believe that this relationship is one of the reasons why the Tozhu, similar to the Van Gujjars and their buffalo, are loath to slaughter reindeer for food – to do so would be the ultimate abrogation of that trusting relationship. While the Tozhu will on occasion kill a reindeer, they must have very good justification for doing so. This could be for sacrificial purposes (usually to provide meat for a funeral or a seriously ill family member), or because the deer’s spine has cracked, or because the herders are in such dire need of food that there is no alternative, in which case they would rationalize by manufacturing a sacrificial occasion. Gooch notes that ‘buffaloes are creatures which are seen to have sentiments and sensibility and which ought to be treated nicely within the moral order of things’ (Gooch 1998: 193). The Tozhu reindeer herders likewise treat their deer with care and respect, and doing so is an integral aspect of being an ivizhi, a reindeer herder, or, more literally, a ‘reindeer-er’.

Who is an Ivizhi? The right to identify oneself as an ivizhi can be construed as a form of cultural property among the Tozhu. While few people seriously aspire to become reindeer herders because of the difficulties and deprivations of the lifestyle, the reindeer-herding way of life is respected and held in some degree of awe among Tyvans generally. It is celebrated in poetry, song, myth and fiction, perhaps most famously in the novel Ödügende Taiga (Ergep 1994). A line from the popular folk song Tozhu Yry (Song of Tozhu) proclaims ‘Ivizhi dep eres attyg’ (Kenesh 2001: 21, words by Leonid Chadamba). This can be translated as ‘To be called an ivizhi is to have a brave and daring reputation’. Knowing how to treat one’s reindeer is an important criterion for being accepted as an ivizhi. This was demonstrated to me in the autumn of 2000. I had been taken on a day’s fishing trip by two Tyvan men, neither of whom was a reindeer herder. One was the son of the herders I lived with. He was an accomplished hunter, but had never lived with the herds for extensive periods, and only came out to the taiga in the autumn to hunt. The other was a family friend, who had also come out to hunt. We stayed at the lake a little longer than anticipated, and when we saddled up to head 21. The ambivalent attitude of Tozhu reindeer herders to allowing wild reindeer to mate with a domesticated female deer reflects the ambiguous position of the reindeer: there is a fear that the female will run off with the wild male and a fear that the calf will be too unruly to domesticate. Yet there is an interest in seeing this union on occasion, because the calf will be stronger and larger than others, and because it brings new blood into the herd (see Vainshtein [1972] 1980: 123 for one opinion on this).

112  Brian Donahoe back, the sun began to set and the temperature dropped dramatically. The leader of our expedition, the younger of the two and the son of the herding family, pushed the deer exceptionally hard, making them run faster and longer than I had ever seen anyone else do in the six months I had lived with the reindeer herders. In fact, I was surprised the deer were able to keep up the pace he was forcing, and felt sorry for the beasts. He pushed them beyond their capacity, ignoring all the distress signals even I had learned to recognize. The next day, the deer he had ridden was limping and had an open saddle sore on its back. His older brother remarked on this, saying, ‘Ol ivizhi eves-tir. Bilbes, toovas’ (He’s not an ivizhi – he doesn’t know, doesn’t care). Thus, knowing how to treat deer with respect is an important part of the relationship between an ivizhi and his reindeer, and is what gives an ivizhi the right to claim the title. This is analogous to Anderson’s discussion of ‘property as a way of knowing’, and his claim that ‘knowing the land properly … is what legitimated their [Evenki herdsmen] right to take wood, water and animals from the land’ (Anderson 1998b: 69–70; see also Fondahl 1998 and Ziker 2002). Tozhu ivizhiler (plural) treat their reindeer with care, making sure to place plenty of padding under the loads, change heavy loads throughout the course of the day, and dismount from the deer and walk downhill after a steep uphill. An animal that begins to show a limp is unloaded and allowed to go off on its own, with the understanding that it will find its way back to the camp at its own pace. And while it may sound funny, the humans distribute their urine (an important source of salt for the deer) discriminately to their favourites or to those they feel need it most, and in other ways make sure the deer have easy access to it – for example, by cutting troughs into tree stumps and urinating there. Reindeer herders will go to extreme lengths to make sure their deer are never left in a situation where they cannot forage for themselves. For example, after a long day of riding during an extended hunt, the deer are extremely hungry and must be allowed to forage, but they must not be allowed to go completely free due to the risk of losing them. Thus, the herders hobble them (in a couple of ways), and while they are able to wander quite far from the hunting camp in the course of the night, they can still be tracked down and brought back. This is what Tozhu herders do when they go to the village or the nearby gold-mining base to trade for supplies or for some other reason. They hobble the deer, leave them several kilometres outside the village where there is forage, and then walk to the village on foot. They do this even when they stay in the village for several days, walking out to check on the deer every day. Many herders actually sleep out in the taiga with the deer and go into the village during the day to take care of their business. In 2002, I came into contact with a group of reindeer herders who came down from their high-mountain summer camp to meet me and return their school-age children to the village. We camped on the banks of the Kham-Syra River, in an area without much shulung (reindeer lichen). At four o’clock in the morning I was awakened by the stirrings of the 71-year-old patriarch of the group, who was untying the reindeer. I asked him what he was doing. ‘I’ve got to take them to where there is shulung’, he said. Noting that they had been eating fresh green grass the evening before, I said, ‘Isn’t there enough fodder for them here?’ He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘They need meat’. The most

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    113 important element of the reindeer diet, shulung is considered its ‘meat’ and necessary for the health and strength of the deer. So off he went at four in the morning to lead his deer several kilometres uphill to where he knew there was shulung, so they could have a good breakfast before moving on. He was back by eight. Finally I want to discuss reindeer as property among the Tozhu on a more symbolic and abstract level. Analogous to how the title ivizhi can be considered the cultural property of the Tozhu reindeer herders, the image of the reindeer can be understood as the exclusive (within Tyva) cultural property of the Tozhu. Reindeer exist almost exclusively in the Tozhu district,22 and reindeer images adorn virtually all material related to Tozhu (for example, official calendars issued by the district administration). Having reindeer is a vital element in the Tozhu sense of ethnic identity, and is one of the things that sets them apart from the Tyva population in general (others being dialect and, according to some, clothing and phenotype).23 In Tozhu I frequently heard expressions such as ‘Without reindeer, we can’t be Tozhu’, or ‘If there are no reindeer, there are no Tozhu’. It is not essential for everyone to be a reindeer herder, but it is important for them to know that reindeer are out there, and that is what makes Tozhu different from other parts of Tyva, and gives Tozhu people the sense of a unique ethnic identity.

The Tofa Now let me turn my attention to the Tofa. In this section, I will briefly look at the same four phenomena I analysed in the Tozhu context, but in reverse order: (1) the image of reindeer as cultural property; (2) the right to claim the title ibizhi24 as cultural property – and the social obligations to reindeer the title implies; (3) reindeer as property; and finally (4) wild animals as property, and by extension, the Tofas’ social relationship to the cher eeleri. Images of reindeer and reindeer herding are pervasive in the Tofa community’s present-day efforts at cultural revitalization. The cover of the Tofa language primer for schoolchildren published in 1989, for example, has a drawing of a schoolboy and a schoolgirl in Soviet school uniforms, standing next to a saddled reindeer (Rassadin and Shibkeev 1989); a book of Tofa legends, stories and songs likewise has a picture of a reindeer on the cover (Rassadin 1996); and the emblem of the recently revitalized Tofa summer cultural festival, Argamchy, also features a reindeer. In this sense, the Tofa are trying to (re)claim the reindeer as part of their cultural heritage, as their cultural property. Hence the image and the idea of the reindeer appear to be a form of cultural property and an important facet of the Tofa people’s sense of a unique ethnic 22. There is one herd in the bordering district of Kaa-Khem, which could be considered an extension of Tozhu, and a couple of herds in the Kungurtuk district in south-eastern Tyva. 23. In 2000 the Tozhu (listed as the Tuvinsty-Todzhintsy) were officially recognized as one of the korennye malochislennye narody Severa (Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North), a status the rest of the Tyva population does not qualify for. 24. Ibizhi, a cognate to the Tozhu ivizhi, is the Tofa equivalent. However, almost none of the Tofa speak the Tofa language and thus use Russian and Russian terms to discuss reindeer herding.

114  Brian Donahoe identity, much as among the Tozhu. But what of the reindeer herding lifestyle? In the main Tofa village of Alygdzher, only one young person said that he had planned to become a reindeer herder. He is the son of the one remaining reindeer herder, and seemed to be of the opinion that it was his best (perhaps only) option of employment. His father, the only full-time reindeer herder left in all of Tofalariia, told me he would jump at the chance to quit herding if there were any other employment opportunities. When asked if he was a reindeer herder, one Tofa informant responded, ‘We’re all reindeer herders here’ – using the Russian term olenevody. He was referring to the fact that virtually all Tofa men in Alygdzher rent reindeer from the only remaining herd, and use them to hunt during the hunting season. They all know how to saddle up and ride a deer. But would such limited involvement with reindeer make them eligible for the title of ivizhi in the Tozhu context? I asked the oldest active Tozhu reindeer herder this question in an interview: B.D. Would you consider someone who only uses reindeer to hunt during the hunting season an ivizhi? T.A. If it’s just for hunting, then I’d say he’s a hunter. If he takes an ivizhi’s deer to go hunting, then that’d be a hunter, I’d say. B.D. OK, then who’s an ivizhi? T.A. A herdsman, a person who looks after (reindeer) would be that, I’d say. As we saw in the Tozhu case, the right to claim the title ivizhi comes from a commitment to the lifestyle as a full-time occupation, and requires demonstration of deeper knowledge and greater competence in far more than saddling and mounting a deer, to the extent of establishing a trusting relationship with the reindeer, based on an ethos of caring for the well-being of the animals. In Tofalariia, reindeer are no longer vital, active, integral facets of people’s lives, and their treatment indicates the extent to which the social relationship between the Tofa people and the reindeer has broken down. In contrast to the trusting relationship that prevails among the Tozhu, the Tofa have had, since their forced sedentarization, a relationship with their reindeer that is of the pastoral type, based on domination. For example, in Alygdzher we met Mitya, the 18-year-old son of the only remaining full-time reindeer herder. Mitya was in town for several days, getting supplies and taking care of other business. His deer were penned up in the fence next to his house in the village for the entire time he was there. This cavalier attitude toward the deer was something I had never witnessed in Tozhu. He is the son of the only full-time reindeer herder in all of Tofalariia, yet he does not know how to treat the deer in the Tozhu sense. The failure of private reindeer herding among the Tofa serves as a further illustration of this lack of knowledge. As in Tozhu, with the collapse of the state farm system came the opportunity to experiment with a variety of ownership and management options with respect to reindeer. As with the Tozhu, at least three men had enough reindeer to try and make it on their own as private reindeer herders in fermerskoe khoziaistvo (peasant enterprises). When they started in the late 1990s, they had a combined total of approximately eighty reindeer. At the time of my fieldwork

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    115 in 2000–2001, however, all three enterprises had folded and the men were left with a total of somewhere between fifteen and twenty deer between them – just enough for them to hunt with, but certainly not enough for an enterprise. The elderly former herder who explained this to me said that they simply ‘did not know how’ to raise the deer and increase their herd. They lacked the necessary knowledge, despite the claim that ‘we’re all reindeer herders here’. Rather than migrating seasonally, they kept the animals on the same small tract of ground all year round, brought them into the village for long periods of time or left them out in the taiga unattended for too long. Why the difference between the Tofa and Tozhu with regard to their relationship to reindeer and to the reindeer herding way of life? I suggest that the different experiences the two groups have had, both under Soviet rule and now in the post-Soviet era, can provide an explanation for this. In the first place, Russian influence among the Tozhu (and in Tyva generally) was far less intense and of a much shorter duration than in Tofalariia, beginning only in the late nineteenth century. This is due in part to the fact that the territory of present-day Tyva was part of the Manchu empire until 1911. Tyva itself did not become part of the USSR until 1944, and even then the Tyva people had a greater say in the implementation of collectivization. During the early years of collectivization, when Tyva was nominally an independent state under the strong influence of the Soviet Union (1921–1944), the government of the Tangdy-Tyva Ulus Respublika (Tangdy-Tyva People’s Republic, later shortened to the Tyva Arat Respublika, the Tyva People’s Republic, or TAR for short) tried to force the rapid transition from a nomadic way of life to a sedentary one, similar to what was happening in the Soviet Union. While many Tyva people welcomed the advances in education, medical care, and access to the goods that came along with sedentarization and collectivization, many others resisted. The government of Tyva, made up predominantly of indigenous Tyvas who were more sensitive to the needs of their countrymen, recognized its mistake. The tempo of collectivization and sedentarization was slowed down in acknowledgement of the importance of the nomadic lifestyle to the economic and cultural vitality of Tyva (Grebnyev 1955: 28–31; Mollerov 1991: 55–58). As Mollerov notes, ‘Collectivization was realized on the basis of the workers who led a nomadic lifestyle’ (Mollerov 1991: 57). In addition, there were far more deer historically in the Tozhu region than in Tofalariia – at the most, there may have been around two thousand domesticated reindeer in Tofalariia, while in Tozhu there were as many as twenty-five thousand. Accordingly, the collective and state farms in Tozhu were set up for reindeer husbandry and, to a much lesser degree, hunting. While the Soviet-era emphasis on meeting production quotas for meat and other reindeer products certainly distorted the traditional Tozhu methods and the purpose of raising reindeer (most obviously raising reindeer for slaughter), it did permit reindeer to retain their cultural significance in the lives of the Tozhu people. At the same time, the continuation of their nomadic lifestyle and the relative lack of emphasis on wild game products allowed them to maintain their social relationships to the cher eeleri and, by extension, to wild animals.

116  Brian Donahoe The Tofa, on the other hand, have a much longer history of interaction with Russians, beginning in 1648. Over the centuries, the influx of non-Tofa hunters and trappers put great pressure on the natural resource base and distorted the Tofas’ traditional relationship to their land and to the animal resources on that land (Donahoe 2006). In the early 1930s, the new Soviet government’s collectivization and sedentarization programmes were applied very effectively in Tofalariia, where the entire Tofa population was settled in three villages between 1928 and 1932 (Slezkine 1994: 279). Three kolkhozes were set up exclusively for hunting, with relatively small, well-defined hunting tracts doled out on a family-by-family basis. Reindeer were taken out of the domain of the family, and raised and maintained by a handful of specialists. Since deer were only used for riding and pack purposes, fewer were needed. In addition, deer that had been handed over to the kolkhoz were now ‘rented’ back to the kolkhoz hunters, which caused great resentment. Some actually killed off deer in response to this. Thus reindeer were effectively removed from the sphere of everyday life. The social relationship between the Tofa and their reindeer broke down. Deer were accorded a status even lower than domestic animals, and treated more like equipment that needed to be maintained. A handful of Tofa were designated as pastukhi (herders) and teliatniki (specialists in caring for calves), positions that were relegated to the bottom rungs of the social prestige ladder. Mel’nikova, noting the Soviet-imposed transition from reindeer herding as an integral and central aspect of daily life to simply raising reindeer for transport purposes, claims that Beginning with programmes to settle the nomadic population, the state machine very quickly destroyed the very basis of household economy that had arisen historically, giving nothing in return … As a result, a strange, perverted economic situation arose, in which the settled population had to engage in a form of economic activity that demanded a nomadic way of life (hunting and reindeer herding). By the middle of the 1960s, the adult male and female indigenous population spent the winter period hunting, and only a small number of people (herders and calf-raisers [pastukhi, teliatniki]) tended the reindeer herds for a miserly payment. (Mel’nikova 1994: 278–79) The ultimate impact of Soviet policies in Tofalariia was to turn deer into a sort of ‘rent-a-reindeer’ community transport service, and reindeer herding into a lowprestige occupation. This situation once again pertains in Tofalariia today. Following the final collapse of the goszveropromkhoz (state hunting enterprise) in Tofalariia in the late 1990s, the assets, including the remaining reindeer, were purchased by the Delta Group, a gold-mining interest in the area. The hunting enterprise was reformed into the ZAO25 ‘Tofalariia’ (a type of closed stock company), in whose 25. ZAO stands for zakrytoe aktsionernoe obshchestvo, which literally means ‘closed shareholding association’.

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    117 employ the one remaining reindeer herder works (there are perhaps a total of three hundred deer in the herd). Reindeer are now rented to hunters at a rate of five roubles (about 16 cents U.S.) per day per deer.

Wild Animals Not only did reindeer lose their cultural significance and come to be viewed in terms of their use-value only, but wild animals also lost their symbolic significance in the ‘cosmic economy of sharing’. With the establishment of the kolkhozes in 1930, all band hunting and grazing grounds were declared state property and carved up into separate, small hunting grounds controlled by the kolkhozes. Most Tofa families were assigned to a hunting tract, and most of the men were employed as hunters by the state. In return for a salary and various supplies, the hunters were supposed to fulfil a quota of squirrel and sable pelts. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the very imposition of socialist collectivization and the land-use dynamics it gave rise to – the formal delineation of these tracts on a family basis, the pressure to meet the kolkhozes’ quotas of sable and squirrel pelts, and the intense competition for animal resources from the newcomer Russians who jealously guarded their territories – replaced the formerly flexible understanding of access to resources, and led to the assertion of de facto proprietary and exclusionary property rights hitherto unknown among the Tofa (Donahoe 2006). This disrupted the social relationships between humans and animals, humans and the cher eeleri, and between humans and humans. The family head became, in effect, the cher eezi – the master of the place and of the animals in it – no longer answering to a spirit master, but rather to a sovkhoz director. In present-day Tofalariia, the family hunting grounds still remain (now referred to as rodovye taigi – family-clan hunting grounds), although use rights over them have in many cases changed hands, generally from indigenous Tofa to Russians, Ukrainians, and other priezzhie (newcomers). In order to maintain their rights to their hunting grounds, hunters must be officially registered with the ZAO ‘Tofalariia’ (operated by Delta Group). Otherwise, there are no limits imposed on what is taken or indeed restrictions of any other kind (this also applies to non-Tofa who have hunting grounds). The local manager of the ZAO ‘Tofalariia’ told me that the hunters know better than anyone else how many and what kind of animals are on their hunting tracts, and how many they can take. In other words, the registered hunters are in effect the ‘masters’ of their own hunting grounds and of the animals on them, albeit without disposition rights. But any discussion of rights to wild animals must include a discussion not only of who has the right to hunt and kill, but also what they can or cannot do with the wild animal products. In the Soviet era, both the land and the resources on it, including wild animals, were considered the property of the state. Official hunters in the employ of the state were provided with guns and bullets, and a license to hunt. However, they were salaried employees and their job was to go out and get wild animals for their pelts, antlers and meat. Thus the products of the hunters’ labour did not belong to them but to the state. While the ZAO ‘Tofalariia’ is not the owner of the land or the wild animals in Tofalariia today, it has established what amounts to a monopoly on the products of the hunters’ labour, not unlike the sovkhoz in Soviet

118  Brian Donahoe times. Tofalariia is very remote, and there are no roads into or out of it, so that the only effective means hunters have of disposing of pelts and other products for cash is through the representative of the Delta Group. They are in effect forced to sell to the Delta Group, at prices determined by the latter. The company provides hunters with licenses and can if it chooses deny a license to an uncooperative hunter. In addition, the eleven-person council that determines who gets a hunting parcel and who does not (headed by the representative of the Delta Group) can take a hunting parcel away from a hunter if it deems that the hunter is not making productive use of it – in other words, if he is not selling his products to the Delta Group. This arrangement clearly puts some limitations on the ‘ownership’ of the wild animal products and of the hunting grounds. Hence, whereas in Soviet times wild animal resources came to be seen in terms of production quotas, now, in the post-Soviet economy, these resources are seen in terms of their economic value.

Conclusion I began this chapter by making a distinction between human-to-human relationships and human-to-non-human-person relationships, and noted that property relationships are embedded in both kinds. Of course, these two different types of relationship are closely correlated and influence one another. As Ingold puts it, ‘Any qualitative transformation in environmental relations is likely to be manifested similarly both in the relationships that humans extend towards animals and in those that obtain among themselves in society’ (Ingold 2000: 61). As a result of the highly successful (from the state perspective) collectivization and sedentarization campaigns during the early years of the Soviet era, relations between the Tofa and their environment – that is between the hunter and wild animals via the mediation of the cher eezi, and between the reindeer herder and his reindeer – appear to have broken down, as land (in the form of hunting tracts) has moved towards exclusive tenure, akin to private property, and reindeer have been removed from the sphere of private ownership. Consequently the Tofa have lost much of the knowledge necessary to continue reindeer herding, a situation that Maffi has termed the ‘extinction of experience’ (Maffi 2001: 7),26 which has led to a transformation in their human-to-human relationships as well. No longer is there a sense of equal entitlement to animal resources; no longer does a hunter have the right to expect that he will be given permission to hunt on another’s hunting ground; no longer are meat and other products of the hunt shared out. Tofa informants express dismay that Russians object to other people shooting an animal or fishing on their land, even 26. Maffi suggests this in the context of the loss of indigenous languages that serve to convey the necessary knowledge and experience. ‘Life in a particular human environment is dependent on people’s ability to talk about it’ (Mühlhäusler 1995, cited in Maffi 2001: 10). In this realm, again, the Tozhu and the Tofa present a crystallizing comparison. The Tozhu language (a dialect of Tyvan) is alive and vibrant, the true native language of all the people in Tozhu. Russian is almost never heard in everyday communication and is truly a distant second language. The Tofa language (which could also be considered a dialect of Tyvan) is moribund, with perhaps a total of thirty speakers, all over the age of 40 (see Harrison 2007 on the status of the Tofa language).

‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’?    119 when it is merely for food in transit through the Russian’s hunting grounds on their way to their own.27 (Russians, on the other hand, have never had this tradition, and were taken aback that the Tofa expected to be able to do this.) The Tofa themselves, however, now also object to this practice, and encroachment on another’s hunting grounds causes tensions that can escalate into violence, not only between Tofa and Russian, but between Tofa and Tofa as well. This contrasts strikingly with the open and non-exclusive sense of property and the ethic of sharing that still pertain among the Tozhu today (see Donahoe 2006). Referring back to Bird-David’s ‘cosmic economy of sharing’, Ingold notes that: hunters and gatherers model their relationships with life-giving agencies in their environments on the institution of sharing, which is the foundation for interpersonal relations within the human community … Both movements, from non-human to human beings and among the latter themselves, are seen to constitute a single ‘cosmic economy of sharing’ (Bird-David 1992) … This principle which, I maintain, inheres equally in the activities of sharing and in those of hunting and gathering, is that of trust. (Ingold 2000: 69) Trust has broken down in the case of the Tofa. The formerly reciprocal relationship between humans and the cher eeleri has turned into a one-sided exercise in extraction of animal resources; the relationship between humans and their reindeer has become one of domination; and the relationship between humans and humans one of suspicion and exclusivity.

27. The hunting tracts closer to the villages tend to belong to Russians, while more remote hunting grounds usually belong to Tofa.

Chapter 5

Milk and Antlers: A System of Partitioned Rights and Multiple Holders of Reindeer in Northern China Hugh Beach

Introduction In August 1997, during the brief period when the research for this chapter was conducted, the village of Olguya in northern China (Inner Mongolia) hosted a population of approximately five hundred people, most of whom composed the thirty families of reindeer-herding Evenki who once wandered freely across the Russian– Chinese border. These few Evenki (sometimes wrongly referred to in China as ‘Yakut Evenki’ to indicate their Russian origins – not to be confused with the numerous other Evenki groups of China, many of whom inhabit the large Chinese Evenki autonomous region) are the only reindeer-herding people in all of China. Their situation today, heralded as stemming from a socialized market economy, demonstrates a remarkable system whereby different rights in the same reindeer resource are the domains of different ‘holders’. The reindeer remain in the possession and care of the Evenki herding families, whose monopoly of possession of the reindeer resource is maintained by law as part of China’s minority policy. However, the antler crop from these reindeer belongs to the state. Should a herder default on his contract with the state Antler Company and neglect to supply the antler factory in Olguya with antlers, the state can demand assignment of the deer to other herders. This chapter will present a number of interesting cases to highlight the variable strengths and domains of the state and the private reindeer holders under this multiple-management system.1 Note that I have chosen to abandon the term ‘dual ownership’, which I employed previously (Beach 2003) in an effort to describe this system. The term ‘dual’ might be thought to imply an equal balance between the rights of holder groups, which cannot be assumed or substantiated in this case, while my purpose was simply to indicate the plurality of these groups. The term ‘ownership’ is burdened by variable, contextually  1. An abridged version of this contribution appeared in Cultural Survival Quarterly vol. 27, no. 1 (2003). The German sinologist and ethnologist Nentwig, who visited Olguya twice, also provides considerable reflections on the Evenki herders (see Nentwig 2003). For further information on the Evenki see also Nentwig (1989 and 1991).

122  Hugh Beach and culturally sensitive concepts including possession, use, authority and responsibility. This chapter is devoted precisely to deconstructing this loose term. In any given time and place its strict legal meaning might be codified in detail, but nonetheless be of little significance for a description or understanding of daily life. For example, the right of ultimate authority over something, if rarely exercised, can dwindle to symbolic proportion. In using the term ‘holders’ I wish to indicate those who use, control, or have in possession articles (reindeer) to various degrees and for various purposes, without meaning to rank either the amount or type of their legal authority at the outset. On the contrary, it is my purpose to present empirical information that will give meaning to such terms. In my stretch of herding experience, with strongest links to the Fennoscandian and Alaskan fields, milk and antlers, as products of Rangifer tarandus (reindeer), elicit associations with radically different reindeer management systems. Among the Saami, the milking of reindeer harks back to a period when reindeer were utilized mainly as a living resource. Milking continued throughout the era of intensive, so-called ‘whole nomadism’ characterized by subsistence herding (animals utilized as a ‘dead resource’, i.e. for meat, too), but faded as the dead resource gained in prominence with increased integration into the market economy. In the Saami case, access to the market brought with it strong pressures for ‘herding extensivity’, that is, with the deer mixed, spread and loosely attended to soon after calving and on into autumn. Except for bursts of marking activity when the deer were temporarily collected under herder control, milking became impractical and petered out with the declining tameness of the herds. Goat milk and later powdered milk compensated. Antler cropping, on the other hand – the cutting of wet, velvet antler from living deer, usually for the highly lucrative Asian market – integrates well with extensive herding. While not permitted in Fennoscandia, antler cropping is permitted in Alaska as it is also in China. The antlers can be cropped once a year but otherwise the deer are left to roam extensively, where the only herding investment necessary is to keep them from getting swept away by encroaching caribou herds. Without the sizable profits from antler cropping in Alaska, for example, it is doubtful that herding would have persisted there at all, given losses of reindeer stock to the resurgence of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd and the abundant alternative source of deer meat this non-domestic stock has supplied to local communities. While intensive herd management need not exclude the possibilities of antler cropping, reindeer milking is unexpected in a management system whose production is dominated by market-oriented antler cropping. Yet this is precisely what I encountered in northern China among the Yakut Evenki of Olguya. My presence there grew out of an exchange between Chinese and Swedish social scientists interested in issues related to reindeer economies, and was sponsored by the Swedish and Chinese Academies of Science. My formal and most accommodating host in China was Professor Hao Shiyuan, Director of the Institute of Nationality Studies in Beijing, who provided me with a combined research assistant and translator in the form of Dr Zhang Ji-jiao. I am indebted also to Mrs Diu, herself an Evenki and administrator of the municipality encompassing Olguya, and Mr Kong, a local scholar of the Olguya Evenki (cf. Kong 1989). Dr Zhang, Mrs Diu and

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    123

Map 5.1 Northeast China. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Mr Kong were my constant companions and co-detectives in trying to grasp what gradually revealed itself to be a system of partitioned rights and multiple holders of the Olguya reindeer: the milk, or subsistence aspect accruing to the Evenki herding families, the antler crop accruing to government authorities but its profits shared in part with the herders, and the system as a whole rolled into an over-arching policy of support for a small minority people. In this chapter I hope to draw the basic parameters of this system and its course of development. My inability to speak Mandarin or Evenki and the short duration of my visit to Olguya and the surrounding herding camps cannot permit more than a crude outline.

124  Hugh Beach Material was collected from interviews with herders in all four of the main family/ clan-based herding camps within Olguya’s orbit, ranging as far as 73 km from the settlement and named after the current family head with herding engagement. The campsites moved from place to place in the dense larch and conifer forests, although specific sites were commonly frequented and prepared with tent poles and small wooden corrals. Family members, who alternated work periods or returned to Olguya for supplies, kept the authorities and other family members informed of the herders’ whereabouts. A form of cooperation between the herders and the forestry authorities had also developed, whereby the herders watched out for and reported forest fires from their dispersed vantage points. In return they received assistance with transportation and gifts of supplies. The camps were named after the heads of families involved in herding. When I was there in 1997, these camps were called Malisu (formerly Ledimi, after Malisu’s deceased husband), Damalla, Gushulan and Galishka. Our visits to the camps were combined with supply runs and minor ‘business’ meetings between herders and our accompanying forestry or herding administrators. One or more family members eager to visit or return to herding work guided our approach. At times our guides were hard pressed to find the camp, as it had moved since their departure, but they had good ideas of where to look and were helped by markers left for them by the roadside and along the paths. Herding administrators, Antler Company personnel, and other members of the herding families were interviewed back in the main settlement of Olguya. A number of my older informants spoke Russian, and recalled that they had come into contact much earlier with the British anthropologist Ethel John-Lindgren (cf. Lindgren 1930 and 1935).

Recent History The small Olguya group of reindeer herding Evenki, composed of about four clans, were previously part of a larger Evenki population of hunters moving freely across the Russian–Chinese border. Historically, they practised a form of reindeer herding consistent with the other south-Siberian reindeer groups: small numbers of clanowned reindeer were milked and used for transport. The deer were highly prized and never slaughtered for meat. Their antlers might be cut in small quantities and sold to Chinese Han merchants in the minor settlements they visited occasionally for supplies. When Russian–Chinese hostilities erupted along the border in the 1960s, this group of Evenki was on Chinese territory. Intent on curtailing their free roaming across the border and settling the families permanently in one locality under a kind of ‘production-team model’, the Chinese had, in a series of steps, relocated them farther inland from the border, first quartering them in Alonson, then Mangui, and finally building the settlement of Olguya with housing, a school, an antler-processing factory, administration offices, and eventually even a small museum devoted to their history and culture. Regarding the history of China’s policies regulating reindeer herding in the Olguya area, in 1997 residents invariably referred to two milestones: the state appropriation of 1967 and the reform of 1984. Since the reform, some revisions have been made with respect to sizes of salaries or proportions of profit shared by

Figure 5.1 Olguya settlement (photograph: H. Beach).

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    125

126  Hugh Beach the herders and the state, but the main principles of management in the sense of possession, use, responsibility and control have been continued.

State Appropriation In 1967, the Chinese state appropriated approximately a thousand head of reindeer, but it was not until very much later that herding as a major income generator through the development of the antler industry was promoted under state control. State appropriation of the reindeer in this case meant that all of them were bought by the state at 20 yuan/head. However, as they remained in the possession of their previous owners/herders, this forced ‘sale’ could not be so readily distinguished from a form of development aid, especially since at that time the main family sustenance came from income generated by the hunt. Agriculture was also introduced to the Olguya Evenki after the appropriation of their deer, as only a few family members were required to attend the deer in the surrounding camps. The rest of the families were able to remain in the settlement where the children attended school. However camp life could at times be attractive. A reindeer holder might need and appreciate the help of a family member who would be more than pleased to stay at a relatively well-supplied camp. Under the production-team system all income was to be turned over to the team, who conveyed it to the government, which in turn distributed payment to the producers. So I queried my informants. If the deer remained in the care of their original owners, and antler production had not yet been sufficiently developed to bring any real profit to the state, what was it that the state ‘bought’ when it took over the reindeer, and why was this done? The answer, confirmed by all, was simply that it was done for ideological reasons, both because the state believed all property in a socialist system should be held collectively and because it was intent on raising China’s minority peoples to a more ‘advanced’ state of development. The ideological foundation of the Olguya herders’ economy should not be underestimated today either, although this foundation has undergone change in relation to the so-called ‘socialized market’ form. Despite the development of the antler industry in the 1980s, its profits are still nowhere near sufficient to pay for the food, housing, transportation, schooling, medical care and other support given to the Olguya community. Mr Turong, former head of the Olguya settlement at the time of state appropriation in 1967, recalled that during this appropriation period the herders also got a salary from ‘the work team’ on an 8-point scale depending on how dutifully or ‘hard’ they had worked (according to the daily judgment of the work team leader). With 0.7 yuan per point, the maximum possible pay was 5.6 yuan per day. Since the state now ‘owned’ the deer, any antler cropping performed by the herders was not going to (legally) bring them any individual profits. Nor had the state at first invested in an antler processing plant capable of treating, drying, slicing, packaging and exporting its antler resource. Whatever salary a herder might have made per day had no relation to the number of reindeer in his possession. Of course it is impossible to evaluate the importance of this point-scaled salary without knowing the purchasing power of the funds at the time, but even this is of no great significance in an economy based to a large extent on aid and subsidies

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    127 to goods provided. I was, however, told that it was like a minimum wage – never sufficient to live on alone from purely market purchases without state benefits. Numerous goods such as rice and milk were made cheaper for the Evenki in their village than for the regular population outside.

Reform In an effort to increase antler profits by inducing private initiative, the state introduced a major reform in 1984. The reindeer were redistributed on paper if not in fact among the approximately twenty herding families, who could use the reindeer for transport and had full control over the subsistence resources provided by the reindeer.2 These resources consisted mostly of milk. But the antler crop, which had by 1984 become lucrative, remained under state ownership. A specified household head from each family signed a contract, to be renewed annually, with the newly established Antler Company, agreeing to care for the deer and hand over the entire antler crop to the company. The contract herder was to obtain 30 yuan per reindeer per year and an additional sum for each newborn calf. On rare occasions the slaughter of a deer for its meat and hide might be required. Herders were not expected to go hungry when their hunting proved futile for a longer period; if they were in desperate need of warm clothing, they could slaughter deer for hides. However, as a rule, the alternative less damaging to state interests was to be chosen. For example, deer that were least useful in antler production, or were weak or sickly, were to be slaughtered, and a report was to be filed in all cases, and the slaughter justified. Each year all those involved in herding work, and most importantly the household reindeer herding contractors, convened with administrators from the Antler Company and the local government in a Herding Council. The Herding Council was a particularly vital institution in the arrangement, as it allowed for the active participation of the herders in management decisions. It is here that herdingrelated issues were negotiated, for example, the antler profit split, possible payments per head, provision costs, service needs, inheritance issues involving reindeer, applications for new contracts, and reassignment of reindeer to create new herds or to remove deer from a contract holder who was unable to meet the obligations of his contract. If the contractors and the (other) herders did not think that someone was performing their job adequately, or if some form of service was lacking, they could bring this up at the meeting. The local government then considered the recommendations of the council. By the early 1990s, the herders had lobbied successfully in the Herding Council to increase their profits by exchanging with the company some of the set payment per reindeer for a cut of the antler profits. The initial arrangement called for 60 per cent of the antler profits to go to the herders, and 40 per cent to the state. From the   2. Various explanations were given for the formula of redistribution. One informant claimed that it was based on ‘pre-revolution’ family herd sizes, but all others denied this. Most agreed that it was a matter of dividing the existing stock among the existing families, but that some consideration was also given to the relative sizes of these families, the bigger families gaining some more animals.

128  Hugh Beach company’s perspective this was also desirable, as it provided each contractor with a real incentive to crop all of their deer. To maintain a high incentive for the herders to guard their animals diligently against predators (commonly hunters interested in stealing reindeer antlers, tails and penises) and to foster herd increase, the state company continued to pay set amounts per deer, now 15 yuan per deer and 40 yuan for each newborn calf. It was up to the contract holder how much of this profit trickled down to family members who had helped with the herding work. Only those of ‘Yakut Evenki’ heritage were permitted to hold reindeer as a registered householder with an Antler Company contract. A few non-Evenki who had married into the group and dedicated themselves to the profession were also granted a conditional right to herd reindeer, but they could not become householders with company contracts. There will be occasion to look more closely at such exceptions and the character of these contracts, for they are highly revealing of the system of partitioned rights and multiple holders. The point to acknowledge now is that conditions for the Olguya Evenki in 1997 at least were considered in effect highly subsidized and privileged; their lives were by no means easy, but from the perspective of the Han people in the surrounding countryside, they were thought to be downright pampered. Administrators at all levels were sure to point out to the visiting anthropologist the long list of special benefits accorded the Olguya Evenki in the name of Chinese national minority policies, and indeed their statements were later corroborated by my herding informants. These are the only reindeer herders in China, and I was told that the Chinese government wanted to demonstrate its consideration for this unique livelihood and for this tiny minority people. Special benefits accorded the Olguya Evenki include prioritized positions of employment in a local timber factory. The factory provides the Antler Company with an annual subsidy of 50,000 yuan, and it is the company that provides food and services to its herders in the field and assistance when it comes to weddings, sickness or burials. The herders are allowed to build fires in the forest for cooking, while others are not. Any Evenki male herder over eighteen years of age is given an extra grant of 36 yuan per month to compensate for uncomfortable working conditions. Herders are able to purchase certain staple provisions at a reduced price. Their purchase of firearms for hunting is highly subsidized by the state. The children of herding families are given free education, 21 yuan per month for ten years of school costs, and a dormitory place should their parents be in the field. The elderly receive geriatric care. As noted, the forestry division pays herders for guarding against forest fires. Each nuclear herding family is provided with 56 square metres of free housing from the state (after 1985, a brick house rather than a wooden one). In sum, the herding families obtained economic support and services from many different levels of government, including the central government, the central committee for ethnic questions, and the administration of the Inner Mongolian province. Another point that causes Han people to consider the Evenki herders privileged and to seek marriage partners among them is their exemption, as a small ethnic minority dwelling in a remote area, from normal family planning regulations. The usual rule is one child per family in the cities, but two children in the country. For the Olguya Evenki apparently no regulation was enforced at all.

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    129 Deer were not earmarked prior to the reform. Thereafter, however, each contractor had their own earmark registered with the company, and the deer were marked according to their contractors. One effect of this change was an increased mobility of family herding units and their deer. Previously, herders in the same camp were usually related, whereas after the reform unrelated friends could join forces and work together with their animals in the same camp. Should conflict arise between contractors in the camp, one or more could simply move with their animals to another camp. In the past, it was unheard of for a herder to move between camps. Among the Evenki, the contract holders, who were not necessarily those performing the actual herding work, obviously stood to benefit most from the reform. We did encounter herders who were not contractors and who expressed considerable dissatisfaction with their lot. They felt that they were doing most of the work – especially the more strenuous and least desirable jobs (isolated for long periods in the forest) – and that money that trickled down to them from the respective family contractors whose herds they helped to manage was indeed no more than a trickle. Then again, with employment opportunities scarce and camp life relatively well provisioned by the company, these herders found alternatives to be rare and even less attractive. While there seemed to be no general pattern of exploitation of the non-contract herders’ labour – as concrete forms and amounts of ‘appreciation’ vary significantly from family to family – it is quite common for noncontract herders to seek their own contracts. An application is made to the Herding Council, but there is little prospect of a new contract unless the company feels confident that the antlers will still be efficiently cropped and the existing corps of contractors is willing to part with some deer in order to assemble at least a minimal start-up herd for the new contractor candidate. Success as a contractor, however, from the company’s perspective is predicated on the contractor’s ability to ensure the necessary labour force, usually with reliance on family members. This is rarely possible for a young, unmarried man, and even less so for an unmarried woman. In 1997, the number of contract herding households in Olguya was twenty-two, while the herders numbered thirty-four. It should not be assumed, however, that all twelve non-contract herders necessarily sought their own contracts. Some were not enamoured of a lifelong herding career. Nor should it be assumed that the entire herding labour force consisted of only thirty-four herders. Other family members, even children on school breaks, might spend time helping in the camp sporadically. From the contractor’s perspective, fielding the necessary labour force and keeping the workers satisfied with limited means could be quite problematic. Apparently the antler cropping effort, although prepared in cooperation with the contractors, was not itself performed by the latter or their families alone; for this there were too many deer and too few herders. Rather, this was a task performed in conjunction with the company’s hired hands, and it was the company that organized and paid for their transportation and upkeep throughout the job. Cropping must be done at a certain time for best quality, so that the work period of about a month is intense if all the deer are to be cropped.3   3. The deer antlers are cropped with handsaws.

130  Hugh Beach An interesting method for a contractor to show ‘appreciation’ of herding labour, I learned, might be for the contractor to permit a temporary herd hand to cut a secondary crop of antlers from some of the deer. Not infrequently a reindeer will generate a secondary antler growth after the first cropping, and while it is usually small and deformed, this growth can still bring a profit. However, I discovered that the company strictly prohibits secondary cropping. Not only should all antler material belong to the company, but the company even outlaws secondary cropping for its own sake; it is thought to injure the deer and possibly impair antler growth in the following season. It is worth noting that with improved professional processing and marketing of the antler crop, profits from this business grew considerably. As reindeer antler began to bring higher prices, however, the concomitant instances of poaching caused losses to both herders and the company, and the need to keep reindeer under strict control and surveillance rapidly increased. Herding informants spoke with extreme indignation about the all-too-common occurrence of discovering the bodies of deer killed for no other reason than to cut off the tail and the penis for sale as inducers of sexual potency.4 The deer also had to be protected from falling victim to traps put out by hunters without the intention of harming them, but deadly to them nonetheless. Constant intensive management of such prized and vulnerable reindeer property is costly and demands a high labour investment. It also leads to a high degree of tameness. During the bare-ground period the smoke from smouldering fires made by the herders afforded their deer relief from insects. With the deer gathered ‘in the hand’, the continuation of traditional regular milking of select cows was an easy matter and added substantially to family food rations. The deer were so tame that fencing was used in some of the camps – not to keep the deer enclosed but to keep them outside the family tents. In effect, neither state appropriation nor the ensuing reform succeeded in removing the deer from clan possession and subsistence use. Unfortunately there is to my knowledge no detailed ethnographic account of traditional clan rights and forms of internal reindeer distribution among this group of Evenki. Hence the contemporary situation can hardly be compared with the past on a point-by-point basis. Yet although Chinese state authorities had little concern for a smooth continuity with the past, neither were they devoted to upsetting aspects of it for no purpose. The herders emphasized repeatedly that with only minor exceptions the deer had not been redistributed, and (from the deer’s perspective at least) had enjoyed the same daily herding routines. Even as the state grew interested in taking possession of the antler crop, it saw no reason to quash clan or family relations to the deer if ideological and economic goals could still be met. Both the state and the herders alike saw great benefit in the reorganization of rights and responsibilities occasioned by the reform. Now herders were motivated to work diligently   4. It was quite common to find in Chinese homes the penis from any of a variety of reindeer species in a glass jar immersed in alcohol and herbs. Consumption of only a small amount of this alcohol is thought to increase male sexual potency. My informants were grieved to learn that in Sweden the penises from the thousands of reindeer slaughtered annually are discarded. A reindeer tail, used for similar purposes, could bring as much as 300 yuan.

Figure 5.2 Reindeer camp (photograph: H. Beach).

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    131

132  Hugh Beach for the antler crop. Most importantly, whereas in the past if reindeer disappeared, herders were far less inclined to bother looking for them; now after the reform, such a loss held a greater and quite major private component for a family and would elicit a search and better guarding in the future. Should a clan or family prove unable to provide the necessary householders and contractors or labour force to take responsibility for the welfare of their allotted deer, deliberations in the Herding Council with representatives from the company and the administration as well as all the contractors could lead to the deer being reassigned. Then again, should a clan or family produce members eager and able to become contract herders and in need of employment, the same council might be called upon to consider an adjustment of distribution. Hence the interests of the two main holder entities, the families and the state Antler Company, are negotiated. It is here, in the midst of these deliberations and the relevant justifications for various deer distributions that one can most readily discern what I have termed the system of partitioned rights and multiple holders. The reform of 1984 (far more than later revisions) brought with it the most radical changes and improvements in the lives of the herders. With the establishment of the Antler Company and the local Forest Factory to provide money and infrastructure to the herding enterprise, living conditions for the herding families were enhanced. Movement between the settlement of Olguya and the camps, which would previously have taken a week by reindeer transport, became fast and easy by company motor vehicle. With settlement, money, and access to outside supply lines, the Evenki economy became enmeshed in that of the market. Salaries, a share in the antler profits, and numerous benefits to herders and their families put the Olguya Evenki in an enviable position. However, these developments also had a downside. In fact, some non-Evenki argued that the ‘overly pampered position’ of those in the Olguya settlement even proved detrimental to the Evenki themselves. Problems of alcohol and violence in the settlement and out in the camps stemmed, it was claimed, from policies that ensured privileged treatment and priority employment despite poor performance. Many youngsters came to be locked in a situation whereby their only hope of employment was within the limited domain of the herding/company structure. Herders grew prone to alleviating weeks of isolated and sometimes solitary surveillance of the reindeer in the forest with overconsumption of alcohol. Before, alcohol consumption was strictly regulated. After the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), however, the regulations were relaxed, while the growing road network facilitated the spread of alcohol everywhere. Paradoxically, alcohol was at times considered to be one of the ‘perks’ of the herding profession and was brought to the camps, often in large quantities, as a gift. Some of my informants considered alcohol-related problems and violence to be prime reasons for what they claimed to be a decline in the Olguya Evenki population. The assertion that affirmative policies for minority groups bring with them debilitating addictions to artificial social subsidies can be heard regularly and not without substantiating evidence. Yet, if the ill effects of affirmative policies are to be overcome by the elimination of such policies, then the injustices they were originally designed to counteract will appear all the more blatant and could well result in conditions more debilitating still. There appears to be no easy formula or degree of affirmative policies

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    133 that would stand free of critique for being either too great or too small. Distinctions between right and privilege, and between compensation and subsidy, become blurred (cf. Beach 2004). It is not my purpose to pass judgment on the value of these affirmative policies, but the invocation of them in local debate in support of or in opposition to the conditions for the Yakut Evenki illuminates their social situation. In 1990 (some informants claimed it was 1992 or even 1995) a revision of the formula for antler profit distribution was enacted, which increased the herders’ share with the company from a 60/40 to a 70/30 per cent split. At the same time the regular salary for the herders was scratched entirely. This was considered part of a national policy trend towards a so-called ‘socialized market’ economy, whereby the means of production would remain in collective state hands, but profits for the workers would depend on their individual initiative and capacity to work. For the year 1997, I was informed that approximately 350 kg of antler had been produced, that the price obtained by the company varied from 800 to 1,000 yuan per kg, and that therefore the company had earned about 350,000 yuan from the antler crop that year. The previous year had yielded earnings of about 280,000 yuan. This meant that 70 per cent of these sums would be 245,000 yuan and 196,000 yuan respectively, to be divided among twenty-two contractors. These contractors (household heads for families of various sizes) hold in fact different numbers of reindeer, the variability of which was initially influenced by some consideration of family size, but has since been subject to the vicissitudes of fortune and the increase of good care. However, if we average out these herd-size differences, the average antler-based income would be about 9,000–11,000 yuan per contractor per year (or about 1,000 USD) – a substantial income in this context.

Negotiations of Management When I asked how the council would deal with a case in which a family could no longer care properly for the deer in its charge, I was told that relatives, most likely the children in the case of a deceased or disabled contractor, would take over the contract. It was for them, the heirs, to decide, but only one of them, usually the eldest, could be the contractor. The deer could be split among the siblings, but only one of them could hold the contract. Apparently it is most common upon marriage and the start of a new nuclear family to apply for a separate family contract, and even then it is the general rule that all members of the same extended family adhere to one contract held by the family head. Hence a single camp composed of a number of smaller nuclear family units might still have only one contractor. Then again, it might have a number of different contractors if some of these smaller family units belonged to different extended families. Given this basic background we can proceed to examine some actual cases illustrative of this system of partitioned rights and multiple holders. Case 1: Gushulan The Gushulan camp was one of the four main camps of the Olguya herders in 1997 during my visit, although it was composed of only one small family, an Evenki

134  Hugh Beach woman and her Han husband, Mr Gushulan. Both had children from previous marriages. Mrs Gushulan had studied through the senior middle school, worked at a nursery school, then the timber factory and later a clothing factory before taking up reindeer herding. She had learnt to herd from her parents and other relatives during her childhood in the mountains, but did not start herding deer of her own until she had married someone who was eager to help her. The opportunity to acquire deer arose when her mother died and there was no other heir to look after them. She stated that they were family property and more important to her than regular employment. She was also intent on keeping them in the family. However, because Mr Gushulan was not Evenki, he could not be a contractor;5 instead she held the contract, but Mr Gushulan did most of the work with the deer. They had no children together, and since Mrs Gushulan had a daughter from a previous marriage, it was this daughter who would rightfully inherit the deer. Nevertheless, as it was also the internal affair of each family as to how they distributed their wealth, the Gushulans gave a good deal of their reindeer earnings to Mr Gushulan’s brothers. Were Mrs Gushulan to die, I was informed that it would be up to her relatives and not the company to decide who should inherit her deer. With her family’s blessing, Mr Gushulan might be permitted to take over herding the deer (i.e. use them for milk, obtain certain forms of herder support, and most probably be given compensation by the family contractor for his labour), but he would not hold ultimate control over the distribution of any aspect of their partitioned rights as property. The family could however reassign the deer to someone else as it pleased (assuming the company had no cause for concern about a diminished antler crop). Case 2: A Non-Evenki Contractor I learned of an exception to the rule that only Evenkis can become contractors. This was the case of a man of Russian ethnic origin, who had been permitted to become a contractor on the vague grounds that he had once been married to an Evenki woman. But how could he become a contractor if Mr Gushulan could not, I queried. The explanation given was that no Evenki family member wished to herd the deer that had been put in the care of this Russian man. (Such deer were referred to as ‘loose deer’.) Interestingly, after this man had worked as a contractor for many years with these reindeer, one of his ex-wife’s heirs decided to take up herding, and the deer were ‘given back’. The Russian man lost his contract. Case 3: Jobless Youth Requests Contract A jobless Evenki youth who wanted to become a reindeer contractor had his petition supported by the local government council. The head of the Herding Council had gone so far as to exact pledges from family deer holders that each would give the young man some reindeer stock. But when he came to collect the deer, the deer holders were reluctant to hand them over, making him unable to become a   5. The Gushulan herding unit is plagued by other formal restrictions as well. It is only Evenki herding men who are given 36 yuan per month in support. Mrs Gushulan is Evenki but female, and Mr Gushulan is male but non-Evenki.

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    135

Figure 5.3 Evenki woman milking a reindeer (photograph: H. Beach).

136  Hugh Beach householder. Hence, it seems that while the Herding Council, where state company representatives and local government officials also hold seats, can try to facilitate the installation of new contractors and re-allocations of deer, collective state antler rights cannot interfere with the reindeer-allocation affairs of the families, as long as the deer receive the necessary care and their antlers are cropped. Case 4: Sale of Deer and Import of Russian Deer Since the early period of state appropriation, the number of Evenki deer has remained more or less the same. Now that antler profits are considerable, and herding has become a more vital occupation than hunting for the Olguya Evenki, it is understandable that the Herding Council, and especially the Antler Company, wish to increase total reindeer stock. Contract holders were never permitted to kill a deer for food unless it was injured, or there was a grave emergency. Were a deer to be sold by its contract holder, the profit would have to be shared with the Antler Company. The minimum selling price for a deer was 5,000 yuan (prohibitively expensive for most). Moreover there was concern that the small and isolated deer population (only about one thousand head) would suffer the ill effects of inbreeding. Therefore, in 1996, with funds granted at a high ‘state’ level, twenty-nine Russian reindeer were purchased dearly for 600,000 yuan and imported to Olguya. These ‘Russian reindeer’ belonged to the local government and were kept together under careful observation at a veterinary station not far from the settlement.6 The Antler Company was not involved in any way. For mating purposes, thirty Evenki deer were assembled from the different camps and brought to the station. The contract holders of the deer selected for breeding were to be given 2,000 yuan for each deer, but to save money it was decided instead that the contract holders would be compensated with the genetically improved specimens resulting from the breeding effort. The herding holders of the Evenki deer would naturally stand to gain from this infusion of new genes into their reindeer stock, but they did not seem to be major players in any of the decisions related to the breeding programme.

Summary The livelihood of the Olguya Evenki has been transformed from a hunting base with small-scale herding for milk and transport, to a herding base sustained by market-based antler cropping, supplemented by continued milking and hunting, but dominated by minority policies and accompanying aid initiatives. The state appropriation in 1967 affected the lives of the Evenki to only a minor degree and meant nothing with respect to how the deer were distributed, herded or utilized. It was primarily   6. Their caretakers at the veterinary station were understandably nervous about the security of these expensive Russian imports. Were one of the Russian deer to be lost to a poacher desiring its tail or penis, or killed by a hunter’s trap, it would mean the loss of 20,000 yuan as well as its genetic breeding value. The government was loath simply to distribute these valuable newcomers among the camps. Breeding was therefore to be controlled at the station, and later generations to be located among the Evenki herding camps. At least this was the plan in 1997, soon after their arrival.

Milk and Antlers: Partitioned Rights    137 an exercise of ideological principle. Even the reform of 1984 brought no immediate or necessary change in the actual placement of reindeer in the different clan/familybased camps. The reform, however, did entail the elevation of freely mobile nuclear families to independent holder/contractors; clan ties were not extinguished, but they no longer had an iron hold on the reindeer. Individual householders received their own reindeer earmarks. The reform did promote the careful guarding of the entire herd once the poaching of deer for sexual potency products had increased. It was also this same growing access to the outside and the legal market for such products that led to the establishment of the Antler Company. Services, aid funds, and the sharing of antler-profit funds did indeed bring important changes to the lives of the herding families. Settlement in Olguya was a profound change. Yet, despite all of the changes occasioned by this system of partitioned rights and multiple holders, certain basic forms of reindeer subsistence use, actual herding practice, relations of inheritance and control of reindeer, and herder-to-herder relations of power and authority remained almost unaltered despite being layered with new categorizations. As indicated by the cases above, what I have called the system of partitioned rights and multiple holders observed in Olguya is far more than a matter of two parties, the private subsistence users and the corporate antler-product manufacturers, vying for resource control and for profit. There is a decided cooperative and mutually dependent aspect encompassing the whole. The entire Olguya community, including the Antler Company, the timber industry, the service infrastructure and administration, is keenly concerned for the well-being of the herders. While the herders milk the deer in one of the oldest traditional forms of subsistence use, they are also highly engaged in and benefactors of a market-oriented antler firm. In fact, the former could never be maintained without the latter.

Postscript Five years after this research was conducted in Olguya, an article from the Xinhua News Agency published on the Internet on 15 March 2002 by ChinaOnline7 announced that the township of Aoluguya (Olguya) was soon to be relocated from the mountains to a new settlement built for its Evenki inhabitants at the end of a railroad line in Mangui. This, of course, makes it all the more questionable whether the reindeer herding livelihood can continue in China (Nentwig 2003). Yet, this same Evenki group had previously been hosted temporarily in Mangui before the construction of their accommodation in Olguya, and it is not certain that their form of forest herding cannot survive in the environment afforded in the Mangui area. Then again, it is likely that reindeer herding as it comes to be practised in Mangui, with less isolation accompanied by the probability of increased poaching and the need for stricter guarding of the deer, will move increasingly towards a reindeerfarming model. The subsistence aspect of the dual-ownership system described here is likely to dwindle further. According to the Chinese authorities, the herders will benefit from closer links to modern infrastructure. While this may be so, the tiny group of Chinese reindeer-herding Evenki will surely find it far more difficult to   7. See Cultural Survival Quarterly, Spring 2003, p. 32 for a printed English version.

138  Hugh Beach survive as a socially and culturally distinct entity. In the end, these closer ties may well be the conclusion of their unique story.

Part II The Eurasian Steppe

Chapter 6

Pastoralism and Property Relations in Contemporary Kazakhstan Anatoly M. Khazanov

Contemporary forms of pastoralism and property relations in Kazakhstan are the outcome of environment, history and politics. While the environment has remained basically the same, history and politics have been unfavourable to pastoralists since the second half of the nineteenth century. The whole of ex-Soviet Central Asia can be neatly subdivided into regions that are suitable for irrigation agriculture (medieval Maveraunahr) and those that are favourable to extensive and mobile pastoralism (part of medieval Dasht-i-Qipchaq). For millennia, almost all the territory of Kazakhstan except the southern irrigated zone, which belonged to Maveraunahr in the medieval period, was the domain of pastoral nomads (Khazanov 1992: 69 ff.). This is not surprising, since approximately 80 per cent of the territory (2,717,300 square kilometres) consists of natural pastures and hayfields. It was in fact the most important region for pastoral nomadism in the entire belt of Eurasian steppes, semi-deserts, and deserts that stretches from the Danube to North China. Up to the beginning of the twentieth century, the pastoralist population of Mongolia had never exceeded a million, whereas in Kazakhstan it had occasionally numbered several million. The traditional forms of property in stock and pastures practised by Kazakh pastoralists followed the pattern common to all nomads of the Eurasian steppes (Khazanov 1994: 123 ff.). Stock belonged to individual pastoralists or families, and each son received his share upon marriage, or in more rare cases, upon his father’s death. (The youngest son usually got a larger share, since he and his family lived with the parents and looked after them – the practice of minorate was widespread in the Eurasian steppes.) Private livestock ownership was supplemented by different forms of reciprocity and redistribution. Pastures were considered the corporate property of large, far from stable nomadic units, but actual admission to and utilization of them was vested in different subdivisions of lower levels down to auls (kin-based nomadic communities). The distribution of seasonal pastures was a highly complicated matter, as they were jointly utilized in certain seasons (usually summer) by several auls and larger subdivisions, while in others (especially winter) access to them was restricted. Prosperous auls were in possession of watered meadows and hayfields close to their winter quarters; in

142   Anatoly M. Khazanov contrast, poor auls possessed only a small number of hayfields or none at all. It is no coincidence therefore that conflicts among the Kazakhs were frequently associated with competition for meadows, which were rare in these arid lands. Drastic changes in the country’s property relations began with the imposition of Russian colonial rule. As early as 1868, any land that belonged to Kazakhs was declared state property (Viatkin 1941: 318). The Russian government confiscated many of their summer pastures, occasionally even their winter quarters, first settling them with Cossacks and later with Russian peasant colonists from the European areas of the Empire. In addition, the government obliged Kazakh nomads to register in fixed counties, attempted to prescribe their migratory routes, forced them to pay for pasture utilization, and imposed a money tax on them. Pastoral nomadism was gradually ousted to the more arid areas of Central and Southern Kazakhstan (Demko 1969; Masanov 1995: 229 ff.). Yet pastoralism remained a viable occupation, and its property relations were based on the principles of individual ownership of stock and collective utilization of pastures and other natural resources. Moreover, the Kazakh pastoralist economy demonstrated remarkable growth in the initial years after the Bolshevik revolution, when some of the valuable lands sequestered by the imperial Russian government had been returned to the nomads and semi-nomads, in accordance with the 1921 and 1924 Agrarian Regulations. Table 6.1 Average number of livestock in Kazakhstan (per household)1 1870 1881 1885 1890 1900 1910 1920 1922 1923 1925 1926 1928 59.0 29.9 27.0 23.3 21.2 26.0 14.8 9.0 10.1 24.4 33.3 43.9 Sources: Ashmarin 1925:123; Desiat’ let Kazakhstana 1930: 208.

This period, however, was shortlived. The Soviets had always treated Kazakh pastoralists as guinea pigs – raw material in the pursuit of a vain utopia. The years 1929 to 1933 brought the trauma of forced collectivization and the bloody settlement of nomads on fixed lands, accompanied by the confiscation of individually owned livestock. The denomadization and collectivization of Kazakhs met with widespread opposition. Many slaughtered their stock in protest at what they correctly perceived as state robbery. Additional heavy losses were incurred through negligence, since pastoralists no longer looked after the stock that had been taken away from them. Others tried to drive their stock across the Soviet border, mainly into China. They were pursued by war planes shooting indiscriminately at both people and stock. Yet half a million people managed to flee the country.   1. The sharp decrease in livestock figures in the years 1920–1923 was immediately related to the Civil War, during which the Kazakhs suffered greatly from both the Whites and the Reds, as well as to the subsequent famine of 1921–1923.

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    143 The fate of those who remained was even worse. About one and a half million people, no less than a third of the Kazakh population, perished; their herds were literally decimated. Pol Pot certainly had his Soviet predecessors. A tragedy of this kind had never been witnessed in the entire history of the Kazakh people (Abylkhozhin, Kozybaev and Tatimov 1989; Abylkhozhin 1997: 167 ff.; Kozybaev 1998). However, the political aims had been achieved: the traditional nomadic Table 6.2 Dynamics of the Kazakh population in Kazakhstan  

Year

Kazakh Population

Kazakhs as Percentage of Total Population



1830

1,300,000

96.4

1850

1,502,000

71.1

1897

3,000,000



1926

3,713,000

57.1



1939

2,640,000

38.2



1959

2,775,000

30.0



1979

5,289,000

36.0



1990

6,500,000

39.7



79.8

Sources: Bekmakhanova 1980, table 28; Censuses of 1926, 1939, 1959, 1979 and 1989; Asylbekov 1991.

way of life ceased to exist; the Kazakhs had now been domesticated, and were soon afterwards to become even a minority in their own country.2 In the course of a few years, about 550,000 nomadic and semi-nomadic households were forced to settle, and to start working on the newly organized state (sovkhozes) and collective farms (kolkhozes); the difference between the two existed mainly on paper. Individual families were allowed to retain only a small number of animals to provide for their immediate subsistence needs. Moreover, many farms were located in waterless areas where agriculture and even animal husbandry faced great difficulties. About three-quarters of the country’s natural pastures had not been utilized for close to twenty years. Up to the late 1930s, distant-pasture stock raising had not been encouraged, since it was considered a remnant of ‘backward’ pastoral   2. Kazakh historians are less puzzled by the cruelty of the Soviet sedentarization policy than by its apparent senselessness. Some of them attempt to explain it as a perverted economic rationale. An interesting hypothesis was recently put forward by Abylkhozhin (1997). He claims that the sedentarization campaign in Kazakhstan was actually a continuation of the tsarist policy aimed at promoting cultivation in Kazakhstan at the expense of pastoralism. If he is right, Khrushchev’s virgin land campaign was not the voluntaristic and spontaneous action it is frequently made out to be. An argument in favour of Abylkhozhin’s explanation is the fact that in the early 1930s, the Soviets strove to produce more grain for export, in particular to Germany. However, additional research should be done in the archives to come to a definite conclusion.

144   Anatoly M. Khazanov Table 6.3 Dynamics of livestock numbers in Kazakhstan (1913–1951)  

Year Number

1913 29,931,700 1916

28,499,400

1920

16,300,300



1928

30,350,900



1934

4,800,600



1941

12,490,000



1951

23,973,400





Sources: Nurmukhamedov, Savosko and Suleimenov 1966, table 37; Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Kazakhstana 1978: 107.

nomadism. Besides, the authorities were afraid that the shepherds involved might somehow escape their strict control. The results were predictable. The pastures around the settlements soon became exhausted, but state quotas for the products to be supplied by the sovkhozes and kolkhozes remained the same, or even increased. This dilemma forced local managers to search for a solution. Some of them remembered the not too distant past and began without authorized permission to outland several herds to far-off pastures with a supply of water, a practice that was later accepted by the Soviet authorities. It soon turned out, however, that the chabans (shepherds) themselves were not overly enthusiastic about this development. Before the introduction of collectivization, they had not been separated from their families while pasturing stock. Now they were obliged to be apart from them for at least several months a year, tending stock that no longer belonged to them. Small wonder that the occupation of shepherd began to lose its former prestige and attraction. The Soviet authorities were obliged to resort to special measures to encourage people to become shepherds. Thus, deferment from military service during the Second World War was granted to those involved in long-distance pasturing; after the war, government awards were bestowed on the best herdsmen. A shepherd, for example, who obtained a hundred foals from a hundred mares could be awarded the title of a Hero of Socialist Labour, with the corresponding privileges. Only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did the number of livestock in Kazakhstan reach pre-collectivization figures; but pastoralist productivity remained much lower. Grain production on so-called virgin lands, mainly in Northern Kazakhstan, which had been initiated by the Soviet government in the second half of the 1950s, was also carried out at the expense of stockbreeding. Some of the best summer pastures were converted into arable land. Many of the state and collective farms that specialized in livestock raising were closed; and numerous small collective farms were amalgamated into larger sovkhoz units. As a result, small settlements (auls), where many of the

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    145 families were related and somehow managed to maintain the old pastoral traditions of reciprocity and social life, were abandoned. Furthermore, directors of newly created state farms offered jobs solely to young male Kazakhs; the old herdsmen were left to die in their auls, with nobody to learn the intricate details of their skills (Khazanov 1995: 162; Zhambakin 1997: 152; Alimaev 1997: 160). Meanwhile, the virgin land campaign aimed at sowing wheat on huge tracts of dry steppe – from an environmental and economic perspective a dubious undertaking from the outset – turned out largely to be a failure. In less than fifteen years it had generated three million hectares of sand and made a further twelve million hectares of land liable to wind erosion (Komarov 1978: 53; Abylkhozhin 1997: 267ff.). Such was the way of things in the early 1960s when the Soviets, aware of growing food shortages (according to the Soviet joke, the only permanent fixture under the communists was ‘temporary’ food shortages), began to focus their attention on animal husbandry in Kazakhstan. Although the order to increase the number of sheep and goats to fifty million head was wholly unrealistic, for a short time the Soviets succeeded in maintaining quite a large number of livestock. However, the figures were not based on sound economic considerations, nor did they take production costs into account. Animal husbandry depended on huge state subsidies, and could only be achieved by completely neglecting environmental factors. The objective was to produce the greatest possible output under the conditions of guaranteed input. Access to the inputs (fodder, transportation means, and so on) required for livestock production was organized via the state distribution system and controlled by the bureaucracy. Since inputs allocated to farms were never adequate in practice, farms were unable to meet the prescribed production assignments. As a result they accumulated huge debts, especially in the final years of the Soviet economic system. Significant attention was also paid to the selection of new species of livestock. However, deficiencies in the Soviet economy largely divorced the selection work from practical demands, and prevented it from genuinely improving livestock production. The introduction of new breeds had a very limited effect on the livestock sector, and was mainly carried out for its own sake. The environment was to suffer most. By 1989, the total number of livestock in Kazakhstan had exceeded the reasonable limit. Moscow’s constant demand for an increase in numbers resulted in a serious deterioration of natural pasturelands. It also caused significant damage to the biodiversity, ecosystem and habitat of the particularly vulnerable semi-arid and arid zones. This led to a detrimental trend from multispecies to monospecies herd composition, to overgrazing without a seasonal rotation of pastures, and to the erosion of a third of the pastures (Alimaev 1997: 159–61; Serebriannyi 1999: 166–67). In addition to the existing 727 farms, approximately 400 new farms specializing in sheep and horse breeding were established in desert and semi-desert areas between 1966 and 1980. Contrary to century-old pastoralist practice and experience, the smallest production units on these farms were large folds (800–900 ewes) or herds of horses (500–700 mares). This congestion of livestock in a limited area, especially around watering places, turned vast areas of fertile pasture into sand deserts within a short space of time.

146   Anatoly M. Khazanov Although the livestock sector in Kazakhstan had shown some evidence of modernization by the end of the Soviet period, it can be assumed that this was carried out in a characteristically inefficient and erroneous manner. Pastoralism ceased to be a family business and witnessed a gradual loss of prestige, while lack of personal responsibility and incentive rendered the traditional work of shepherds dull and uninspiring. The Soviets tried to professionalize different aspects of traditional pastoralist practice, but narrow specialization in appointed groups brought about the loss of the entire spectrum of pastoralist skills. Consequently, a chronic workforce shortage became the norm in herdsman husbandry. Although livestock production in Kazakhstan has lost its traditional character, it has never been organized on the principles of a modern, intensive ranching economy. After independence, the transition of pastoralism in Kazakhstan from the Soviet command economy to what was intended by the government to become, in principle, a capitalist-type market economy has brought major changes, some of which are unfavourable to pastoralists and pastoralism.3 Changes in the organization of the livestock economy continue to yield new forms of production units with considerable variation in physical assets, farm membership, decision-making structures, access to markets and credit, and the relationship to government and local authorities. Some forms of farm organization, particularly the larger ones, appear to be transitory, leading to the creation of new forms, while others seem to have become more stable. The legal environment also continues to evolve, as does the administrative implementation of the relevant laws. The challenges to livestock development begin with this ongoing disequilibrium and the economic and social uncertainty it engenders. In cases where new farms are struggling to develop effective production and marketing strategies, the economic decision-making responsibility is frequently thrust on individuals without the relevant experience. In others, and this applies particularly to larger units, farm managers are more interested in converting assets into cash for personal investment elsewhere than in the success of the farm. The strained national economy limits market opportunities, and the banking sector does not provide adequate credit options. At the same time, illegal fees extracted by corrupt government and bank officials and executives4 add to the cost of doing business all the way from the farm to the consumer. Legislative and administrative bases of property rights are also in considerable flux, and most pastoralists are unaware of their rights under the new laws.

  3. The following section of this chapter is primarily based on data collected between 1996 and 2000 in the course of research on the impact of economic reforms on pastoralism in Central Asia. The research was conducted by scholars from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in collaboration with Central Asian scholars (Heads of research: Anatoly M. Khazanov and Kenneth A. Shapiro). It was funded in part by USAID’s Global Collaborative Research Program. For preliminary publication of the data, see Khazanov and Shapiro 1999–2001. See also, Khazanov, Naumkin and Shapiro 1997; Khazanov, Naumkin, Shapiro and Thomas 1999; and Khazanov and Shapiro 2005.   4. Anyone who manages to obtain a small credit in Kazakhstan has to pay at least 10 per cent to the person who authorized it.

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    147 In Kazakhstan, agricultural reforms in general and in the livestock sector in particular should contain several key elements, namely, the privatization of stock and reorganization of land ownership, along with other assets of former state and collective farms; the dissolution of these farms and the emergence of new viable economic and social units; stable and transparent legal structures that unambiguously regulate and guarantee ownership and utilization of land, pastures, and water resources; and finally, the creation of modern marketing and credit systems. Despite some progress, these goals have not yet been achieved. It is true that more than 90 per cent of the stock in Kazakhstan is now owned privately. It was privatized during the early stages of agricultural reform, albeit unjustly. The situation is more ambiguous, however, with regard to land and pastures, where the issue of ownership is directly related to the tempo and ultimate goals of ongoing reforms in the country’s pastoralist sector. Major differences exist between the collective (joint, group, communal) ownership characteristic of traditional pastoralism, the state ownership of the Soviet era, and the private ownership of modern ranch pastoralism. The latter had emerged from the outset and operated within the framework of developed capitalist economies. Despite their romantic Hollywood image, North American cattlemen were businessmen, and often shrewd ones at that. For numerous ecological, social and economic reasons, I am not at all sure that the complete privatization of pastures and the development of fenced ranching, which includes significant initial investment in the construction of fences, drilling of wells in each enclosure, and such like, is optimal in the current situation. Expenses of this kind can only be incurred by wealthy countries and/or wealthy stock producers. For Kazakhstan it is, at best, a pie in the sky. Furthermore, preservation of state ownership in its Soviet form is also detrimental. Perhaps the best solution at the moment would be various combinations of private ownership of some lands and pastures, especially winter quarters, with joint, collective or cooperative ownership of others (Khazanov 1997: 31–32). These constellations should vary in accordance with the country’s ecological zones. Furthermore, the public obligations of private landowners, such as environmental protection, compliance with zoning and utilization regulations, observance of rights of way, and accessibility of water sources, should be clearly defined and observed. Even this solution implies dramatic changes in the social organization of Kazakh pastoralists. At the moment, however, the government of Kazakhstan still lacks a clear conception of common property resources as compared to those that are either state or privately owned. Besides, it pays much more attention to the management of arable lands than to that of pastures. Although Kazakhstan introduced its first Law on Privatization in 1991 (Haghayeghi 1997: 321), the law permitting land lease for ninety-nine years with the option of inheritance was only adopted in 1999. At the time, the then Prime Minister Nurlan Balgimbaev claimed that the bulk of the Kazakhstan population (he certainly had ethnic Kazakhs in mind) was not ready for the privatization of land ‘either morally or materially’ (Interfax Russian News, 12 August 1999). A similar explanation was provided by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev. He told Kazakh farmers that if he were to adopt a land law the next day, those who had

148   Anatoly M. Khazanov money would buy it up and they as farmers turn into a labour force (Interfax Russian News, 20 August 1999). However, in his annual address to the nation in 2002, Nazarbaev admitted that the existing Land Law had failed to stimulate agricultural production and he called on parliament to pass a law on the private ownership of land. Since this was the president’s wish, there was no question that the new law would be adopted. It was finally passed in 2003. Nevertheless, details of this new law and its implementation are vague. It is not clear how it will affect the utilization of pastures in the desert and semi-desert regions of the country, or whether access to seasonal pastures will continue. In 1991, the government of Kazakhstan launched a policy aimed at the dissolution of state and collective farms, and the development of private farming, including the livestock sector. At that time, the country had approx. 2,120 state farms and 430 smaller collective farms. In fact, privatization had already begun in 1990 before the break up of the Soviet Union. However, land and pastures were available for use only, not for ownership (Zhambakin 1997: 147). From the very beginning, the reform was accompanied by widespread embezzlement of state and collective property by those in power (Rumer 1996: 59–60; Kalyuzhnova 1998: 137). Allocation of resources and decisions on input and output were left in the hands of the bureaucracy. Directors and managers of the former kolkhozes and sovkhozes took control of disproportionate shares of farm wealth, while local officials maintained tight control and captured as large a flow of benefits as possible (and this they did to the full!). Hence most private farms were set up under adverse conditions. By 1992, only about 350 private farms had been established, for the most part by farm managers, technical staff and former party officials. Many of them are now wealthy. In all, the early stages of privatization in Kazakhstan were largely cosmetic. Agricultural enterprises underwent little change; they retained the same infrastructure, management and organization as their Soviet predecessors. The second phase of Kazakhstan’s agricultural privatization, which lasted from 1993 to 1996, began when the government gradually cut back and subsequently terminated most of the funding to state and collective farms; in May 1993 it passed the Presidential Decree on Privatization in Rural Areas. The decree called for completion of ‘denationalization and privatization of enterprises in the agroindustrial complex in the years 1993–1995’. It established the absolute right of a kolkhoz or sovkhoz member of staff to withdraw from the enterprise and be allotted a share of land and property ‘in accordance with established procedure for organizing a peasant farm’. While the right to establish private family farms (characteristically referred to in the decree as ‘peasant farms’) was guaranteed, it gave prominence to the formation of joint stock companies (JSC), which, in fact, became the dominant form of privatization. Apart from further accumulation of assets by farm managers, the change was largely nominal. In other respects, the old organizational structures and social hierarchies remained in place. The World Bank summarized this process as follows: ‘During the main period (1993–1996), officials and farm managers orchestrated the process, giving little information to other rural people. On most farms, land and property shares were

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    149 allocated to people, but rarely distributed. On some farms, most of the land was allocated to the raion (local government unit), rather than to farm members’ (The World Bank 1998: 61). A Presidential Decree in March 1994 exacerbated the tendency of farm directors to gain control of their enterprises. Those with at least twenty years of service were granted 10 per cent of the farm’s saleable assets, and given temporary use of another 10 per cent for up to five years. The remaining 80 per cent of assets were to be distributed among the members of the farm. However, many farm directors successfully hijacked this 80 per cent.‘Most farm managers sought to increase their holdings. In some cases, they bought or leased these shares straightforwardly; in other cases, they coerced members to lease or transfer their shares to them in return for the promise to pay wages or to guarantee employment’ (The World Bank 1998: 61). Farm members who wanted to leave during this period and establish their own farms had considerable difficulty in doing so. Farm directors and local administrators did not actively publicize the new rights of former kolkhozniks and sovkhozniks. On the contrary, they attempted to minimize the exercise of such rights. Farm members who nevertheless decided to leave were given poor land. Those who remained with the descendants of Soviet agricultural enterprises exercised little control. As in Soviet times, hakims (local government officials) ‘recommended’ farm directors, and in a similar vein, members rarely voted against the hakim’s choice. If they had, the new director would have been hamstrung by the local administration. State and collective farms have historically been a source of revenue and extortion for local government personnel. It is therefore not surprising that the latter were interested in their continuation in the post-independence period, and attempted to keep them under their control. As might have been predicted, joint stock companies were proving nonviable, while the push for privatization accelerated between 1993 and 1996. Hence other forms of organizing agricultural production emerged. They included, firstly, sizeable units labelled Limited Liability Enterprises (LLE) or Producer Cooperatives (PC), and secondly, small private household/family farms. Both the LLE and PC represented large subdivisions of former sovkhozes and kolkhozes. The new units frequently consisted of individual villages that had been amalgamated into giant state and collective farms in the 1960s. Despite these changes, many of the joint stock companies still continued to exist. Most pastoralists were not eager to start their own private farms. Instead, they preferred to stay on the large units, despite a deterioration in living conditions and incomes. This was partly a result of coercion, discouragement or the withholding of information by farm directors and managers, and local government officials. At the same time it reflected the pastoralists’ assessment of the chance of success for individual farmers, which was low – farmers had limited access to market channels dominated by large enterprises and virtually no access to credit at acceptable interest rates and repayment terms; and there was a weakening consumer demand as a result of the country’s post-independence recession. When asked why they remained, most survey respondents gave answers that reflected a passive, fatalistic outlook, deeply rooted in their Soviet past. They explained that they had no choice, that was what

150   Anatoly M. Khazanov they had been told to do by their superiors, they knew no other life, or they had no access to resources. Thus, although the large units were in bad shape, the majority of pastoralists remained part of them. The third phase of privatization in Kazakhstan was launched at the end of 1996. By that time, the descendants of the sovkhozes and kolkhozes from the Soviet era were suffering from the termination of state subsidies and the thinly cloaked theft of resources by farm managers.5 Many of them went bankrupt and began to disintegrate. The government had no choice but to encourage the vast exodus from JSC and LLE, and the formation of private farms. New bankruptcy laws forced many large enterprises to disband. The state pressed them to distribute the remaining assets among their members, but again, managers sold whatever assets they could get their hands on for personal gain. Disproportionately large shares of the remaining assets that were distributed went to relatives of the farm managers. Thus, many of those who left did so under highly discouraging conditions and were obliged to survive on a small herd of livestock and a plot of land to be farmed without modern technology. This prompted some to join forces, since they felt they would be unable to make it alone. The number of registered peasant farms had grown markedly by the end of the 1990s, increasing from 30,785 in 1996, to 42,523 by January 1997, to 81,697 by January 1998, and to 84,766 by January 1999 (94.2 per cent of all legal agricultural units). Also, 2,380 PCs, 2,290 LLEs and 373 JSCs were still in existence. Of these, only 53,000 were genuine farms. The rest merely existed on paper, or consisted of vegetable gardens around homesteads. Besides, official statistics fail to reveal the fact that about 2,550 state and collective farms that still existed in the early 1990s have since been dissolved, not into 85,000 viable private farms but primarily into thousands of small family homesteads. These homesteads produce little or no surplus, and are struggling for survival under very difficult conditions. The following are some of the more striking characteristics of the registered farms (this information is based on field research and data drawn from KazAgro 1997 and KazAgro 1998): Families per Farm Of the 42,523 peasant farms existing in January 1997, there were 63 per cent consisting of just one family, 27 per cent of two to three families, 6 per cent of three to five families and only 4 per cent of more than five families. Land per Farm The average peasant farm had 355 hectares (ha), with farms in the southern irrigated zone less than 150 ha in size and those in the dry north and central areas up to 1,800 ha. With regard to size distribution nationwide, 25 per cent of peasant farms had less   5. Weinthal (2002: 167) witnessed the absolute authority of the corrupt head of one of these agricultural enterprises near Almaty. While its members were in the throes of building a new dairy as part of a joint USAID/Agridev (Israel) assistance programme, he sold several dozen cows at his discretion, without consulting anyone on the farm, including the head of the dairy.

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    151 than 35 ha; 8 per cent from 35 to 100 ha; 40 per cent from 100 to 500 ha; 14 per cent from 500 to 1,000 ha; and 13 per cent over 1,000 ha. It should be taken into account, however, that the majority of farmers were not allotted natural meadows or hayfields. Livestock per Farm The average peasant farm holding included five head of cattle and seventeen sheep and goats. The distribution of sheep holdings was as follows: 81per cent had less than 50 head; 10 per cent had 50 to 100 head; 9 per cent had 100 to 200 head; and the remaining 2 per cent had over 500 head. These figures are much lower than those for the year 1928, the eve of collectivization. Autoconsumption These farms consume a large portion of the animal products they produce. In 1998, home consumption accounted for about 47 per cent of meat, 64 per cent of milk, and 39 per cent of wool. It is obvious that the majority of these ‘farms’ are at best doomed to subsistence existence and have little in common with modern Westerntype farms oriented towards market production. As for the general picture of contemporary pastoralism in Kazakhstan, it is useful to start with a broad three-part classification of existing livestock enterprises: 1. Joint stock companies or limited liability enterprises, or similar large units, which are direct descendants of the Soviet sovkhozes and kolkhozes. Apart from size, they share the old system of clearly distinguishing between livestock commonly held by the enterprise, and the rest of the animals held by individual families. 2. Small farms consisting of one family, or a few closely related families. Livestock on these farms are held in common as the property of the whole group. Individuals do not have their own animals. 3. Small farms formed by unrelated families. These show a similarity to large enterprises, since several animals are kept individually, while others are common property. However, farm members are very much aware of how many animals they contributed to the common herd, and take more interest in its management; they can also exercise the right to withdraw their animals from the herd. At the moment, the farms with the greatest prospect of stability, or at least survival, seem to be those of the second type, especially the larger ones. These prospects are further enhanced where non-farm sources of income are available. This is crucial now that credit is still largely unavailable. Non-farm income helps to finance farm operations. Smaller farms operate as subsistence units. However, many of them are too small to make a livelihood and hence sell their animals to cover their basic needs. Eventually their members will either leave for the city or hire themselves

152   Anatoly M. Khazanov out as farm labourers. In fact, this is already an ongoing process, and one that is having more than a few negative effects. The first farm type seems to be a transient occurrence. Enterprises of this kind will eventually dissolve or be appropriated by their directors or managers. Most members will either leave or be forced to leave, or at best be retained as hired labourers. In Northern Kazakhstan, where the appropriated farms are mainly involved in grain production, this procedure is already quite conspicuous. The third type also appears to be transient, albeit for different reasons. First, farms formed by unrelated families were set up because each household was too poor to go it alone. Six poor households together are none the less six poor households. Their involuntary cooperation was not therefore going to improve their chances of survival significantly. Second, members tend to devote relatively little energy and care to the common effort. In all probability, households with more ambition and the prospect of better opportunities will leave the farm to work on their own. Local officials also predict that this type of group enterprise will fail. It is now time to turn to the general trends, problems and difficulties characteristic of contemporary pastoralism in Kazakhstan. A striking feature of the country’s current situation is the fact that pastoralist specialization is no longer profitable on any of the livestock-raising farms, and has to be supplemented by other economic activities. From the perspective of the Kazakh farmers interviewed during our research, and with the exception of milk production in the regions close to some of the large cities, livestock production has become unprofitable as a result of high input prices for energy, feed and medicine, and low prices for animal products, especially meat and wool. On farms of the second and third type the stock is kept mainly for consumption or for social reasons and prestigious considerations (Masanov 2000: 89–90). Another prominent characteristic was the serious decrease in the number of stock in the years following independence, although the overall number then stabilized somewhat and has even increased in recent years. Nevertheless it is currently much smaller than in the late Soviet period. This situation has aggravated the human nutrition problem and endangered the preservation of wild ungulates (due to a weakening of state preservation and the increase in poaching). In 1991, Kazakhstan consumed 71 kg of meat per capita, which was about the same as in the United Kingdom. In 1993, consumption fell to 59 kg, and in 1998 to 45.1 kg. In the 1990s, bazaars in Astana, Almaty and few other cities were well stocked with a variety of high quality fresh meat. In addition, grocery shops and supermarkets offered meat and milk products from various countries ranging from Australia to Spain. This was because the domestic reprocessing industry for agricultural products was still underdeveloped, while import duties were low. Nevertheless, customers were few and far between. Even in Almaty, only a little over 30 per cent of the people purchased high quality meat products on a fairly regular basis. In Western Kazakhstan (Atyrau and Aktau oblasts), most meat buyers were employed in the developing oil and gas industries (Brent 2001). Several factors contributed to the decline in the county’s livestock production; some are of a political, others of an economic nature. Agricultural policy in

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    153 Table 6.4 Dynamics of livestock numbers in Kazakhstan (1992–2001)  

Year Sheep

Cattle Horses Camels



1992

33,908,000

9,084,000

1,666,400

145,000



1993

33,732,000

9,576,300

1,703,500

148,800



1994

33,312,000

9,347,000

1,776,600

154,900



1995

24,272,600

8,072,900

1,636,000

141,200



1996

18,786,000

6,859,900

1,556,900

130,500



1997

13,000,000

5,424,600

1,310,000

111,100

1998 9,691,300 4,307,100 1,082,700 97,100

1999

8,691,300

3,957,900

986,300

95,800



2000

8,725,400

3,998,200

969,600

96,100



2001

8,939,400

4,106,600

976,000

98,700

Source: the UN FAO statistical site, http://apps.fao.org

Kazakhstan remains essentially a top-down business in which immediate producers have little or no say. As a result, their problems, concerns and interests are seldom taken into account by policy makers. The state retreated prematurely from its former role as provider of subsidies, credits, services and input-supply systems (such as fuel, equipment, veterinary services, and feed). At the same time the national government and local authorities still largely control farm resource allocations, production decisions, and marketing opportunities, either directly or indirectly. Thus, in the initial reform period, the state remained the chief owner of food-processing enterprises, although many of them were indebted or bankrupt. Moreover, the price for state services frequently exceeded the wherewithal of producers. There is also a discrepancy between decisions made at government level and their implementation by local administrators. Privatization of livestock per se was not the root of the slump in livestock numbers, but rather the corruption and embezzlement that accompanied the process. Added factors were the lack of effective government support and a consistent economic policy on agriculture. The destruction of established marketing channels after the collapse of the Soviet command economic system also contributed to the decline in livestock numbers. Since primary producers lacked cash and credit, they had to barter and/or substitute the only property they had – stock – for real cash. Once livestock was privatized it became the major liquid asset of many pastoralists, and was sold or bartered to obtain other agricultural inputs and household necessities. In the same vein, directors of large enterprises bartered or sold stock to pay for gasoline, lubricants, electricity, taxes – and, last but not least, to enrich themselves. Even today, many of the remaining large cooperatives and joint venture farms pay their members and farm workers with stock, as money is still in short supply.

154   Anatoly M. Khazanov The state is no longer involved in the purchasing of meat ordairy products, or in price control – a fact of little consolation to the primary producers. The marketing system is still underdeveloped. In addition it suffers from significant mafia penetration and the rampant corruption of numerous local administrators. With the advance of the market economy, there is evidence that new private marketing systems are emerging, especially in the big cities. In such cases, the marketing chain from the immediate producer to the market place (bazaar) or modern supermarket can best be described as follows: producer – dealer – wholesale firm – plant – bazaar or supermarket (Esenova and Dobson 2000), making the physical infrastructure that links the producer with the consumer more diverse. However, access to the meat and dairy business at the level of dealer and wholesaler is heavily laced with corruption. Small livestock farmers possess little bargaining power when it comes to dealer, wholesaler and processor. This leads to monopolization and control of prices at the purchasing end, which is detrimental to the interests and incomes of pastoralists. Another reason for the sharp decline in the sheep population lies in the overemphasis on wool production during the Soviet period. After the Second World War, the local coarse-wool meat sheep in Kazakhstan were for the most part replaced by fine-wool merino sheep to provide raw wool for the Russian textile industry. The Kazakh fine-wool sheep was a new breed developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Although superior to local sheep for wool, the merino sheep was inferior for meat production. The economic crisis in Russia and a glut of wool on the world market in the 1990s left Kazakhstan with few options and unprofitable prices for its fine wool. The price of wool was the lowest ever in people’s memory. This had several international ramifications, among which was the negative impact on Australia, for example, but much more so on the Central Asian countries with weaker economies. In the spring of 2000, wool was being sold in Kazakhstan for as little as 50 tenge/ kg, which is about 30 cents U.S. Russian traders (in Western Kazakhstan), and particularly Chinese traders (in the rest of the country),exploited the situation to purchase wool and pelts from Kazakh pastoralists at a token price. Hence there was little or no economic incentive to maintain sheep in large numbers. In all, pastoralism in Kazakhstan has not yet recovered from the hardships of the privatization process, and it may well be asked if there is light at the end of the tunnel. In attempting to answer this question, the potential for growth and development should be considered, and new development trends analysed. The labour force is understood to be conscientious and relatively well educated, at least in comparison with many other developing countries. Peasants, including pastoralists, are hard-working people. The heart of the matter is that as long as they remain peasants and do not become contemporary capitalist farmers, they will remain premodern, or non-modern. One of the major difficulties in the transition of pastoralism to a marketoriented capitalist-type economy in Kazakhstan is the legacy of the Socialist command economy, which arrested innovation at the grass-roots level. As a result, the 1990s witnessed widespread popular unwillingness to adopt new approaches and do things differently; nowadays there is a growing understanding, at least among some pastoralists, that the situation has changed forever and that they have no choice

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    155 but to adjust to it. A further stumbling block is the damaging agricultural policy of the Kazakh government. Agriculture, and particularly pastoralism, was neglected by the government for many years after independence. In 1992, the agricultural share of Kazakhstan’s GNP was 30 per cent. By 1997 it had dropped to 11 per cent. In 2002, Tolen Tokhtasynov, a member of the Kazakh parliament, claimed that in that year the government intended to invest 130 billion tenge (about 850 million U.S. dollars) in the development of the new capital, Astana, and only 13 billion tenge in agriculture (http://ej.ru; 19 July 2002). Even when mistakes have been recognized and admitted, they are difficult to amend. Under the circumstances, the main role of the state would be to encourage local solutions to the problem, while allocating material support in the form of development of the infrastructure, marketing, and credit systems; provision of adequate veterinary services; and the effective combating of corruption, embezzlement, and all other criminal activities. However, this is still a far cry from current reality. In spite of this rather grim picture, there are positive elements that show a potential for reconstructing pastoralism in Kazakhstan. First of all, consumer demand has risen in some sectors of the urban population as a result of the economic boom associated with oil windfalls. Secondly, a growing number of policy makers are now coming to the conclusion that the only road to improvement is to press on consistently with market-oriented reforms. Various blueprints for these reforms are therefore currently under discussion, with some even at the implementation stage. The government recently decided to invest more money in agriculture. Food processing has also been upgraded, and at the moment Kazakhstan is producing enough meat and dairy products for local consumption. Thirdly, despite all obstacles and their position on the brink of inertia, some pastoralists are successfully adjusting to the new conditions. New forms of organization have emerged within, among, and particularly outside of the relicts of Soviet-type farms. Few of them fit the common definitions of ‘farm’ or ‘household’, not merely as these are used in developed countries, but even as they have occasionally been adapted for use among, for example, Middle Eastern or African pastoralists. Nevertheless, some of them may hold the seeds of a more promising future for the pastoralist economy. These new, voluntary, decentralized and horizontal forms of organization and cooperation could become a substitute for the old Soviet forms based on the pyramid-shaped chain of command, and, at the same time, prevent the return to subsistence-oriented forms of pastoralism. Fourthly, an excessive decrease in the number of livestock, deplorable though it may be, allows pastures to regenerate and their carrying capacity to be restored. This is far from insignificant in conditions where primary producers have no access to an affordable supply of feed supplements, especially concentrates, and are forced to rely on traditional, extensive methods of grazing. Still, the situation is highly critical. Today distant pastures are underutilized because they are of no advantage to farms with only a small number of stock. In addition, lack of adequate transportation, road maintenance, and water developments limit the distance involved in livestock grazing. Even on short drives (less than 100 km) of average difficulty, animals often

156   Anatoly M. Khazanov lose up to 15 per cent of their body weight. For this reason a large number of livestock (with the exception of horses) used to be moved from pasture to pasture by vehicle in the late Soviet period. Today, the excessive cost of trucks, fuel and lubricants makes transportation of this kind extremely rare. Valuable species are now in the process of being restored in these pastures, which were almost completely abandoned after 1992–1993. However, there is a danger of pastures being infected with mosses and lichens. If they are not exploited, they can become overgrown and lose their productivity. There is an additional problem. While distant pastures have been abandoned, livestock are concentrated on a smaller resource base, and pastures that are close to settlements are overused (Zhambakin 1997: 153; Zhambakin 1999: 145). On the whole, even the positive moments in recent developments are contradictory and should not be overestimated. The decline of pastoralism in Kazakhstan is fraught with economic and dangerous social consequences. In the post-Soviet period, hundreds of small villages were abandoned due to lack of schools, hospitals and transportation. A growing number of young people, unable to find employment and with no prospects for a decent future in the livestock sector, are now moving to the urban centres, where some of them have become an underclass, prone to violence and crime. The government understands the seriousness of the problem, but hopes that these migrants will eventually find employment in the industrial and service sectors. However, they are ill prepared for these jobs. At the beginning of the 1990s, Kazakh scholars and those from other countries predicted the revival of traditional forms of extensive and mobile pastoralism in the region. So far, nothing of the kind has happened and will probably not occur in the foreseeable future. Far from having been the endeavour of individual families, traditional pastoralism in Kazakhstan was inseparable from kinship-based communal ties, mutual cooperation, and reciprocity. The post-Soviet development takes quite different dimensions: 1. Pastoralism is becoming even less mobile than in the recent past. 2. Communal forms of land tenure and pasture utilization destroyed in the Soviet period have not been restored, and the role of kinship-based ties in the organization of pastoralist production remains insignificant. One may agree with Behnke (2003: 107) that in Kazakhstan viable producer groups cannot be based on the revival of indigenous local organizations. 3. Economic and social differentiation is growing. Kinship has become a burden to well-to-do stockowners, while widespread theft of livestock, even by neighbours, indicates the further deterioration of communal ties. 4. The negative effects of privatization are not balanced, and the number of dispossessed and displaced persons is disproportionately high, while mechanisms to lessen the pain of dispossession are weak. 5. Most pastoralists lack both the experience and the necessary capital to set up market-oriented enterprises.

Pastoral Property in Kazakhstan    157 Thus, there can be no question of a return to traditional forms of pastoralism. At the same time, the transition to market-oriented forms is largely blocked for the majority of pastoralists. It seems that the government of Kazakhstan has made a stake on large, private, market-oriented enterprises, and ignored the rest. Wealthy stockowners benefit from this policy, while all the others lose out. The danger of re-peasantization and even rapid pauperization of many of those who remain in the pastoralist sector is acute. Instead of becoming small-scale but efficient marketoriented producers, these people could become locked into the role of subsistenceoriented, non-capitalist smallholders. In a worst case scenario they may even become labourers in the large new agricultural enterprises captured by former communist managers during the so-called ‘nomenclatura privatization’. This is not a matter of justice or fairness. Similar to other CIS countries, justice and fairness in contemporary Central Asia resembles a train that gets to the station too late, if at all. Above all it is a matter of economic efficiency. Large ranch enterprises with wage labour are characteristic of the capitalist livestock sector in some developed counties. Under Kazakh conditions these enterprises could well become latifundias. At the moment, however, it is still hard to predict which scenario will gain the upper hand. To sum up, the traditional pastoralist way of life in Kazakhstan has been destroyed and, in my opinion, its culture irreversibly lost. Neither ecological nor economic factors, nor modernization per se, but abusive, corrupt, mismanaging and exploitative state powers, almost always alien to pastoralists and detrimental to their interests since the nineteenth century, have ruined extensive and mobile pastoralism in a region where it had thrived for at least three thousand years – so far without replacing it with a viable modern alternative. Only the future can tell how pastoralism will fare there in the twenty-first century. Its recovery is still uncertain.

Chapter 7

Property Rights in Livestock among Mongolian Pastoralists: Categories of Ownership and Categories of Control Peter Finke

Introduction: Dimensions of Property Rights Mongolia is unique in its predominance of pastoralism as an economic base. In presocialist times more than 90 per cent of the population, including a large part of the aristocratic elite and the clergy, subsisted on livestock rearing. Although this has changed in Mongolia in recent decades, pastoralism has remained an essential element of its lifestyle and identity up to the present day. Livestock and sufficient grazing areas are the key resources in any pastoral society, and how access to these resources is organized determines the distribution of wealth in society. In the course of the twentieth century, property regimes in Mongolia changed fundamentally and had far-reaching consequences for the livelihoods of herding families. The two events that caused a major impact were the collectivization of livestock during the socialist era and the privatization or redistribution of these and other assets in the early 1990s. More than a mere change of ownership of specific resources, both of these transformatory processes also included a change in economic behaviour and social relations. They did not do away with the overlapping and flexible property rights of the traditional system but instead introduced new ambiguities. This chapter describes these ambiguities and tries to model them in a theoretical frame that stresses the importance of looking at the multi-dimensional nature of property rights. As a theoretical background I draw on models of new institutional economics and the so-called property rights approach (Alchian 1950; Demsetz 1967; Libecap 1989; Eggertsson 1990; North 1990). Its proponents define property rights as a specific type of institution, that is, formal and informal rules structuring economic and social interaction, or the ‘rules of the game’ as North (1990: 3) puts it. Property rights are thus bundles of rights and obligations concerning the ownership and use rights of specific resources and connected practices (including the misbehaviour of some actors). In the essential definition by Furubotn and Pejovich:

160  Peter Finke Property rights are understood as the sanctioned behavioural relations among men that arise from the existence of goods and pertain their use. These relations specify the norms of behaviour with respect to goods that each and every person must observe in his daily interactions with other persons, or bear the cost of non-observance … The prevailing system of property rights in the community is, then, the sum of economic and social relations with respect to scarce resources in which individuals stand to each other. The means through which the prevailing property rights assignments in an economy affect the allocation of resources is exchange. Indeed, trade generates contractual agreements, not so much to exchange goods, but to exchange bundles of property rights to do things with those goods. (Furubotn and Pejovich 1974: 3) Property rights are therefore not merely a specific ownership structure, but an entire system of rights and duties connected with the access to and usage of specific resources. This includes, amongst others, all (legal or illegal) interventions imposed on a predictable basis by other actors on a person’s use options, such as taxes, restrictions on sales or the danger of appropriation by the state or other actors. As soon as these interventions attain a regular character, they become part of the institutional setting because they can be anticipated and thus influence decision processes and economic behaviour. In other words, institutions, and thus property rights, include not only the rules, but also the degree of deviance and the probability that deviance will be sanctioned. Hence the main function of property rights or other institutions is the establishing of expectations about the future actions of others (North 1990; Knight 1992). As institutions, property rights are always the result of a bargaining process between various groups of actors who attempt to pursue their own interests by modelling institutions to their benefit. For this reason, they inevitably reflect the power and resource asymmetries inherent in the respective society at any given moment. On the other hand, since every institution means a restriction of alternatives available, they are constantly under pressure of change because actors have an incentive to seek for institutions that are less intrusive to their particular interests (Ensminger 1992; Knight 1992). Property rights are thought to be the most significant variable for economic behaviour and thus the performance of an economic system. Advocates of new institutional economics are often accused of supporting the neoliberal claims of a general superiority of private property rights. This is not necessarily the case. What most of them would rather emphasize is the importance of clarity and credibility of property rights. In capitalist societies we typically associate credibility with unequivocally defined private property rights that are guaranteed by law. It is assumed, however, that clarity and credibility are equally important in all economic systems, as uncertainty about future access rights may prevent people from investing in the sustainability of a particular resource. The privacy of property rights is thereby not necessarily the most vital attribute. Not having to fear appropriation may be far more important than being the legal owner of a piece of land or an animal. From

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    161 this perspective, the struggle against the private-collective dichotomy of neoliberal ideologists is tilting at windmills. For most new institutionalists it is fairly clear that the notion of unrestricted private property is more an analytical concept than anything that resembles reality (Acheson 1989; Ensminger 1992, 2002a). This chapter attempts to counter the private-collective dichotomy with a fresh approach. It will be argued that different types of property rights are not arranged along a mono-dimensional curve ranging from private ownership through different types of collective property (including state ownership) to open access, where no one can be excluded from using a particular resource. This model mixes several dimensions typologically into one, obscuring more than it explains. One drawback of the one-dimensional analysis of property rights is the vague distinction between individual and private property. In capitalist societies, a firm or a household clearly features within the realm of private property, while a state farm or tribal land does not. Analytically, however, it is not clear why a group of people linked by citizenship and/or common territory with joint ownership in a resource is essentially different from a group of stockholders, when property rights systems are distinguished by the number of owners rather than the degree of control they have. While in a joint stock company, multiple owners may have full rights to buy and sell – but not necessarily total management control – in others, individual property may not be private at all, as in the case of the small plots on state-owned land that were assigned to rural households in most socialist societies.1 What I propose here is a less ambiguous distinction between two different dimensions of property rights. One is the definition of the owner (or otherwise defined property holder), which can be an individual or some form of collective or group. The second dimension is the degree of control these property holders can exercise over the use of these resources in their own interests. The multiple ways in which these two dimensions can be combined will be exemplified by four different patterns of property rights among pastoralists in Mongolia. The first two deal with how livestock was owned during the socialist period. In the first example, I show that state ownership of resources by no means implied total state control, as there were numerous ways to ‘privatize’ them. Complementary to this, as will be demonstrated in the second example, individually or household-owned livestock were private only to a limited degree only, since the state determined numbers and sale prices. The other two cases deal with the situation in post-socialist Mongolia. Today, livestock have been returned to individual ownership, but state intervention and social obligations still restrict genuine control by the owner. From a different perspective, livestock are officially allocated to individuals or nuclear families but can also be viewed as the common property of extended families or kin groups. Here again, the actual control that various actors have over their property is as vital for their economic planning and social behaviour as is formal ownership, and varies according to power relations, physical capabilities, and other individual factors.

  1. The lack of influence stockowners have on managers in large corporations is a frequently cited example of this in new institutional analysis (Eggertsson 1990).

162  Peter Finke There are numerous other conceivable combinations of the two dimensions described above and further dimensions might well be identified. For the purpose of this chapter, however, I will confine myself to these two in order to point to the main weaknesses of a mono-dimensional approach to property rights.

The Ethnographic Setting Before turning to the discussion of various property rights in livestock, let me make a few comments on the ethnographic setting. The data presented here stems from fieldwork conducted in the mid-1990s in the district (sum) of Xovd in western Mongolia. The district lies in the north-western part of the province (aymag) of the same name, in close proximity to the centre of the province, which also bears this name. The district is further sub-divided into five so-called bag (see Map 7.1). Ecologically the district is a mixture of mountain ranges in the western parts, which belong to the Mongolian Altay, and desert steppes in the east. The climate is arid and cold. Annual precipitation is below 150 mm in the plains, and exceeds 300 mm only in the upper parts of the mountains. During the winter, average temperatures remain at around –25 Celsius for almost three months (December to February). In the summer, monthly averages rarely exceed 25 Celsius in the lowlands and might well drop below 15 Celsius in the mountains. Pastoralism is the heart of the local economy. The herds consist of the same five animal species kept throughout Mongolia, namely sheep, goats, cattle (including yaks), horses and camels. Farming is of secondary importance, although the district comprises some of the major agricultural areas in western Mongolia. Agriculture is for most families primarily a source of supplementary income. The predominant ethnic group is the Kazakhs, who make up almost 95 per cent of the population. In addition, a small group of the west-Mongolian Ööld and a few Uygur families reside in the district. The ethnic constellation has changed several times in recent decades, first with the immigration of the Kazakhs and the emigration of Mongols in the mid-twentieth century, and later again with the large-scale emigration of Kazakhs to Kazakhstan and a minor re-migration from there (Finke 1995; 2004). Because many of the Mongols, who in the meantime migrated to the Xovd-sum, did not register there, official statistics only partly reflect this pattern. The total population of the district numbered some 4,800 individuals in 1991. With a surface area of 2,800 square kilometres, the population density was 1.5 per square kilometre – one of the highest in rural Mongolia. In the following years, it dropped to 3,800 due to emigration to Kazakhstan, but recovered after 1994 when emigration ceased.

Property Rights in the Socialist Era Collective and State Property In contrast to the Soviet Union, Mongolian politics took a somewhat cautious approach to collectivization. A first attempt was launched in the 1930s, but was interrupted by massive resistance in the countryside. Final collectivization had to wait until the late 1950s. Most authors claim that this time the herders joined the

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    163

Map 7.1 The Xovd-sum. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

newly established collectives voluntarily. This may be a question of definition. In contrast to earlier attempts, national politics did not force herders to submit their

164  Peter Finke

6000 5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

0 1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Figure 7.1 Population of the Xovd-sum 1990–1995 (source: S.O.X.S. n.d.). Created by the author.

livestock but instead increased the cost of not doing so (by higher taxes or limited provision of fodder for collective animals) (Sanders 1987; Bawden 1989). The outcome was a whole new system of property rights. The state became the ultimate decision maker over production and distribution procedures. Central planners set national targets and divided them among the administrative and economic units, that is, the provinces, districts and collective enterprises. Each of these was obliged to deliver a specified amount of produce to the state. Although the herds of the collectives were officially the common property of their members, de facto they were treated as if they were state property. The collectives had little say in determining production plans. At the same time, the state provided most of the necessary inputs (such as fuel and machinery) and covered losses resulting from extreme weather conditions or epidemics. The new system saw rigid specialization by occupation, which had hitherto not been in place. Traditionally, pastoralists in Mongolia kept multispecies herds and engaged in various other economic activities as an insurance strategy against epidemics and natural calamities, and as a means of diversifying their production. People now became herders, agriculturalists, or drivers, and were dependent on others for the provision of the necessary goods and services. Others were assigned responsibility for distributing newspapers among the herders once a week or driving livestock on hoof to Russian slaughterhouses. Livestock duties were further distinguished by species as well as by the age and sex of the animals, so that some herders might look after young male goats only, while others tended reproductive females, horses or camels (Finke 1995). A fixed quantity of newborns and animal products had to be delivered annually to the collective from the assigned herd in order to fulfil its plan in the eyes of the state. Herders were paid a monthly salary in return, according to the number of animals herded and the quantity of products delivered. They were also provided with foodstuffs and clothing. Income consisted of a basic salary plus or minus a

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    165 bonus, depending on whether delivery quotas were over- or underfulfilled. However, rewards were so low that they failed to become an incentive to work harder (Goldstein and Beall 1994). Instead, successful herders would receive medals and sponsored tourist journeys, which seem to have been less welcome than monetary rewards might have been. As stated earlier, the distinction between collective and state property in practice was blurred, although it was to become important again during the privatization process. The prime focus here is the actual control that the official owner – the state or the collective – had over their property. Control was curtailed in a number of ways, the chief of which was the far-ranging influence herders had in practice in everyday decision making in pastoral affairs. Coupled with this was the arduousness of enforcing rigid rules in a country as vast as Mongolia. Other reasons included a general tendency to disregard fixed state rules, which was also true for other socialist societies (Humphrey 1983; Verdery 1996). In everyday life, herders treated their assigned animals as if they were their own. People could decide on the animal species they wanted to herd and where they would graze them on a daily basis. Control of the animals was rare and merely superficial. The collective would set the dates for seasonal movements, but not the exact destination. It was, however, responsible for the provision of hay and fodder, transport facilities, and veterinary care. In most cases, sons of herders inherited the job of their father, as well as the herd itself, clearly indicating that it was practically regarded as family property. This situation gave rise to multiple ways of cheating and shirking on the side of the herder, for example by slaughtering the collective’s livestock, declaring it dead, or exchanging dead private animals for healthy collective ones. The illegal appropriation of collective livestock was so common that it became a regular source of income for many households, including the provision with meat and other products. Control was not easy, since livestock are hard to detect in the mountains or in the bushes of the lowlands. Officials in charge of controlling numbers and the well-being of the herds could also easily be persuaded with a few bottles of vodka or a sheep to disregard fraudulent behaviour on the part of the herders. Many informants claimed this to be the reason why former officials and veterinarians entered the post-socialist market economy with livestock numbers way beyond what they were officially allowed to have. Illustrative of the lack of enforcement was a significantly lower fertility rate among collective and state-owned livestock compared to those that were individually owned. Figures in Table 7.1 show surviving newborns per 100 female animals (cattle and horses), where the discrepancy was particularly pronounced. Since it is highly unlikely that individually owned animals would have higher fertility rates and/or lower death rates than collectively owned animals of the same breed if they have received equal treatment, these figures clearly point to either (a) possible neglect of collective newborns and pregnant animals, thus lowering their chances of survival, or (b) (and this seems the more plausible explanation) the exchange of perished animals from the personal herd with live animals from the collective herd.

166  Peter Finke Table 7.1 Surviving newborns per 100 female animals  

Collective sector

Cattle 62 Horses

Private sector 84

59 76

Source: BNMAU 1990: 45f. These are the national figures for the year 1989. Unfortunately, I do not have detailed statistics for the Xovd-sum in this respect, but there seems no reason to assume that they would differ essentially from the overall figures.

In terms of property rights, these patterns indicate that the state or the collective may have been the legal owner of the herd but the actual control over their property was restrained by the impossibility of compelling the actors in charge of the production process to comply with the rules set by the owner. Individually Owned Livestock in Socialist Times The second case of property rights to be discussed concerns the personal animals people were permitted to own apart from their obligations to the collective. These are frequently called private herds, but it will be shown that this labelling is misleading. In my view it would be more appropriate to refer to them as individually owned. The number of animals households were allowed to own depended on region and profession. In the arid regions of western and southern Mongolia, each herding family was allowed to own 75 animals. In the more fertile central and northern parts of Mongolia the number was 50. Of these, two-thirds had to be smallstock; the rest could be large stock. The figure of 75 was valid for one statistical family, in other words a nuclear family. Households comprising three generations could thus possess 150 animals, since a married son was recognized on paper as a separate family. For non-herding members of the collective, the figure was 16 animals, while state employees were allowed no more than 8 animals per family (Finke 1995). People could, of course, misreport livestock numbers. Many animals never appeared in statistics. If detected, the person in charge of law enforcement could be persuaded not to notice. In other cases, surplus animals were transferred to relatives who owned fewer animals than officially permitted. These transfers could occur in reality and thus involve the physical movement of the livestock, or be merely on paper; the latter did not usually attract much attention since it was common practice for herding households to take care of the animals of their relatives in town. Nevertheless, numerous households had herds of less than seventy-five animals, even in 1990, when the above-mentioned restrictions had already been lifted (see Table 7.2). One reason was the stipulation that herders were forced to make up for any failure to reach delivery quotas with animals from their own herd. Another reason was low meat prices. Depending on the family structure and availability of labour, it often made more sense for herders to buy animals for consumption (or maybe slaughter those of the collective) than to invest a great deal of effort

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    167 in building up their own herds. This was, of course, also a question of personal preference and skill. Table 7.2 Number of livestock owned by nuclear families of the 3rd brigade in 1990   Number of livestock

Number of families

Percentage

0–25

34

21.3

26–50

36

22.5

51–75

39

24.4

76–100 22

13.8

101–125

16

10.0

126–150

7

4.4

151–200

5

3.1

201+

1

0.6

Source: S.O.X.S. n.d.

This implies again that the state did not really have the desired degree of control over its rules. The point here, however, is that the state was able to impose serious restrictions on how individually owned livestock might be used by their owners. These restrictions seem so intrusive that the term ‘private property’ no longer makes sense. People were, of course, allowed to slaughter and milk their animals, but inheritance and the right to sell only existed to a limited degree. Inheritance was restricted in that seventy-five animals was the upper limit that could be achieved or transmitted in this way. Each son was of course eligible for another seventy-five animals – if he worked as a herder for the collective – so that over the years extended families could accumulate quite substantial stock numbers. However, this was only possible if the herd had been hidden at an earlier stage. De jure, the possession of animals was narrowly defined by the state and hence hardly a private issue. This is evident when we look at the fate of the sons who decided not to become herders. Their decision left them with no more than eight or sixteen animals, depending on their profession (and, of course, their willingness to comply with this rule). Selling livestock was in principle permitted, but under conditions determined by the collective. The prices for the animals and their products were fixed and had to match those of the state. Selling animals privately was permitted up to a point. In fact, most herders sold their surplus animals to the collective. As already mentioned, state prices for meat and livestock were extremely low so that it made little economic sense to raise animals for sale. It was the need to get rid of animals over and above the official number allowed that occasionally drove people to sell their livestock. Hence, although individually owned, these animals were not private property. People had

168  Peter Finke limited rights over the use of their livestock and could neither accumulate nor sell them freely.

Changes in Property Rights in Post-Socialist Times Privatization, Private Property and the State The two cases to be discussed in the following concern the post-1990 situation, in which the privatization of livestock and other assets again initiated a major transformation of property rights regimes. Privatization in Mongolia began in 1991 in the rural areas and was completed rapidly in spite of widespread disapproval by the population (see also Goldstein and Beall 1994). The law foresaw free mass privatization by voucher, similar to some East European countries. For this purpose, the total value of the country’s assets was calculated, and divided by the number of citizens. In fact, the actual mode of distribution was left to the devices of the individual collective. The argument was that livestock, by law, was the property of the members of a collective, and not the state, although in practice the state was the ultimate decision maker. As a consequence, distribution modes differed within the country and were always the result of extensive negotiations (Potkanski 1993; Müller 1995). Details of the privatization process in the Xovd-sum have been described elsewhere and will be summarized only briefly here (Finke 2000, 2004). As a result of the low number of livestock per capita, a decision was taken to distribute 70 per cent of the total herds during the first phase of privatization, since the 30 per cent distribution recommended by the law would have left too many families with too few animals to build up a herd of their own. Similar to other animal-poor districts it was also decided to exclude state employees, such as teachers and physicians, from the distribution process because they were not members of the collective. Livestock was distributed to the members of the collective according to age, labour years, and family size. Former occupations were irrelevant, as was the number of animals delivered in the process of collectivization. Many people reported irregularities. These were primarily due to the fact that the animals were not collected centrally and redistributed but were obtained from individual herders, who in turn often tried to hide the animals, pretending they had perished. Livestock were thus returned to the individual ownership of herding households. The question is whether this constitutes private property – that is to say, if herders have full control over how they use, accumulate and sell their animals. Their restriction on stock numbers has disappeared. Herders are free to increase their herd sizes at will. They are even encouraged to do so by means of a successful herder award, a contentious policy in the face of growing pressure on grazing land. A significant aspect of the property rights system is its credibility. In postsocialist Mongolia, this is fairly high. Herders firmly believe these animals are now theirs and do not fear fresh appropriation by the state, a fact that is not selfexplanatory, given the historic experience of collectivization. Livestock numbers increased all over Mongolia as a result, although the large emigration to Kazakhstan from the research area caused a temporary decline in the early 1990s (see Table 7.3).

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    169 Table 7.3 Livestock developments in the Xovd-sum (1989–1995)   1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Camels

1,610 1,644 1,299 906 864 983 1,080

Horses

8,327 7,928 6,857 4,647 4,859 5,409 6,227

Cattle

9,772 8,766 7,982 5,571 5,599 6,619 7,835

Sheep

54,528 54,661 47,847 32,972 34,670 36,288 40,974

Goats

50,563 51,765 48,429 34,928 38,884 44,874 56,045

Total 124,800 124,764 112,414 79,024 84,576 94,173 112,161

Source: S.O.X.S. n.d.

Appropriation by other actors, or livestock theft, has increased in recent years, but is still remarkably low compared with other pastoral regions in the world. A pastoral management where large stock are not supervised in any way but frequently left to their own devices for several weeks illustrates that livestock theft is not seen as a major threat. According to the definition given above, this is part of a given property rights system. A high theft risk – that is, lack of control over personal resources – influences decision-making processes and is hence part of an institutional setting. In a world where everyone steals everything from everyone else, we can hardly speak of private property rights, even if they do exist on paper. Restrictions on use rights, especially the sale of livestock and livestock products, are a further constraint on the privacy of property rights. Herders face serious obstacles in this regard. One of these is taxation. Taxes on livestock, however, are considered extremely low, so that their influence on economic decisions is negligible. A herd owner of 300–400 animals has to pay the equivalent of a sheep or a goat. Families with small herds are usually exempt from livestock taxes. Far more serious are the export bans and other state-imposed handicaps on the sale of livestock products, thereby aggravating the already difficult situation of marketing agricultural products. The most intrusive state interventions in this regard were the export bans on cashmere, the single most important product herders have to sell, and on livestock/meat. In the case of cashmere, the state is primarily interested in maintaining a monopoly on the processing of raw cashmere into textiles. The only factories that exist are located in the capital of Ulaanbaatar and are still run by the state. Of course people smuggle cashmere out of the country to China, where prices are higher. Smuggling livestock is quite a different matter. Here, the concern is not state monopolies but the spread of disease (and thus primarily an import ban by the Chinese government). This concern is not unique to Mongolia and may well be justified. For the herd owners, however, it represents a serious obstacle to successfully adapting to the market economy. The demand for meat in Mongolia is almost non-existent because most families herd animals of their own. Hence banning non-

170  Peter Finke state organizations from selling livestock abroad heavily encroaches on the range of options available. To summarize, individually owned herds are most certainly closer today to a neoclassic understanding of private property than was the case during the socialist era. Nevertheless these rights are not unrestricted, and the state exerts substantial control over what people can do with their herds and when, and under what conditions they can sell them. Individual and Family Ownership of Livestock Finally, I will turn to an aspect of property rights in livestock that has nothing to do with the dichotomy of state versus individual. Instead it deals with relations between the individual and his or her kin group. Again, apart from the question of formal ownership, it also includes the control that individuals or households have over their resources. Although much of the following could also apply to the socialist period, it has now become an urgent issue in the new market economy, since households today more than ever depend for their well-being on their herds. The basic unit of production and consumption among Kazakhs and Mongols is the household. It can consist of either a nuclear or a three-generation family. The latter is the case with the youngest son, who generally stays with his parents after getting married. Elder sons are provided with a herd and a yurt of their own, and establish separate households. The district administration annually collects painstakingly detailed data on household composition, livestock numbers, and other economic figures. Although these rest on self-declaration by the herders, they are considered a reliable basis for statistical analysis by most authors. Random checks in the Xovd-sum indicated an average deviation of less than 10 per cent, which has also been confirmed by other studies (Templer et al. 1993). Low taxation rates probably explain this honesty. Furthermore, these numbers were necessarily consistent over the years, since gains and losses against the previous year had to be accounted for (although once again these statements were not checked thoroughly by the officials). These statistics take the nuclear family as a unit, so that three-generation households appear in separate categories. Sons are registered as separate families, and a portion of the paternal herd is officially allotted to them. This also applies to sons who remain in the household of the father. As a rule, each son acquires between a quarter and a third of the latter’s herd. The youngest son, who has to take care of the elderly parents, often receives a larger share. According to Islamic law, daughters should inherit half the amount that sons do, but in general receive only a dowry, typically consisting of a horse, a cow and some smallstock.2 If the father dies before his sons come of age, the household is officially registered in the name of the eldest one still at home, and not in that of his widow (see Table 7.4). Each child is individually assigned animals in the father’s herd, which are considered theirs. They know their own animals (‘mine is a black one with a white  2. This is in line with reports on inheritance patterns in pre-Soviet Kazakh society, where daughters would not be allotted a share in the herd (Hudson 1938; Krader 1963).

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    171 Table 7.4 Family of Maxmud   1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Maxmud 85 150 208 155 207 178 188 Father

103 68 129 120 –

– –

Son

– – – – 149 151 123

Brother

67 64 112 91 159 167 136

This family represents the ‘classic’ method of allocation. Maxmud and his brother had received their respective share of the herd long before 1989, when they married. Because his father resided with Maxmud, they were considered one household but continued to have separate herds on paper. After the death of the father in 1992, his herd was transferred to Maxmud’s eldest son (who was not married at the time). The latter’s uncle, Maxmud’s brother, had no further claims on these animals since he had already received his share upon his marriage. Comment: the general increase in livestock numbers for all families between 1990 and 1991, and between 1992 and 1993, were a result of the two phases of privatization.

spot on its head’) but are frequently unable to specify them (‘is it this one or that one over there?’). They have no rights of disposal until after marriage. The ultimate decision maker of the entire herd is the household head, in most cases the father, although wives participate to a large extent. After their marriage, sons have formal sovereignty over their allotted herd. De facto, however, the father and other kin can still exercise control. Within the extended family, livestock are rearranged in the official statistics from year to year. One reason for this is taxation. Since each family is entitled to an allowance of two large stock per person it can be an advantage to split the livestock more equally among the relatives. A second reason is that medals are awarded to successful breeders and thus brothers or a father and son can pool their animals in such a way as to qualify themselves for this honour. Some transfer entire herds from one household to another so that several members of a family are decorated in succession (see Table 7.5). The alterations in herd size are registered in the annual family statistics as sales and purchases. Even more significant, for the argument here, are the animals shifted between fathers and sons. Fathers frequently reclaim part of the herd they had previously allotted to a son. This could be a matter of miscalculation or the result of an unexpected development in the herd size, leaving younger sons with possibly less livestock than they were due. In other cases it can be seen as a form of punishment for a father’s dissatisfaction with his son’s behaviour (see Table 7.6). Although common in many families, shifts of this kind depend greatly on the power relations within the family. Once sons have reached the age of forty, it is highly unlikely that their father will try to encroach on their herds. The same is true for sons who have established a certain degree of independence for other reasons, such as settling in a separate camp. However, it can also apply to sons who have taken up residence in the district centre or become agriculturalists. In contrast to

172  Peter Finke Table 7.5 Family of Qarazhan   1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Qarazhan 141 138 191 175 324 1020 75 Mother

98 136 136 172 269 37 4

1. Son

– – – – – – 28

2. Son

–

3. Son

– – – 23 94 57 10

4. Son

– – – – – – 1115

–

99 106 164 83 37

Qarazhan is the wealthiest herder in one of the five bag in the Xovd-sum. He has ten children, five of whom are sons. His father died in the early 1980s and his mother has been registered as a separate household ever since. This rare circumstance is due to the fact that she was living with Qarazhan’s eldest son, who had been adopted by his own father (and thus treated as the latter’s youngest son). Because this son had lived in the provincial centre for many years, he was not officially head of the household, which in the socialist period would have meant a smaller number of animals. He took over what remained of the herd only after he had resettled in the countryside in 1995 (he was elected head of the bag). In the meantime, his father (whom he addressed as his older brother) had reorganized the official ownership within the extended family. In 1994, he brought the joint herd under his control, which now exceeded a total of one thousand head, the required number for the award of ‘successful herder’. In the following year he transferred the entire herd to his recently married fourth son (who still lives in the same household), so that he would be decorated the following year. Table 7.6 Family of Amankeldi   1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Amankeldi 89 98 86 87 127 195 58 1. Son

– – – – 0 85 64

2. Son

42 29 35 45 72 62 49

3. Son

0 18 100 72 92 55 171

Amankeldi died in 1994, leaving behind his widow and three unmarried children. His eldest son had long since left the paternal camp and settled in the provincial capital. In the early 1990s, he migrated to Kazakhstan, depositing his livestock with his father. When he returned in 1994, he was reallocated his share of the herd. The next two sons had never got on with one another. On the death of their father, the elder of the two moved away to join the camp of a distant relative. The younger one stayed with his mother. A major share of the remains of his father’s herd was then allocated to him.

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    173 Table 7.7 Family of Quandiq   1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Father

59 57 182 226 359 282 538

1. Son

27 12 57 56 102 169 89

2. Son

0 10 55 46 94 175 94

3. Son

– – – 2 108 129 90

4. Son

– – – – – – 90

Quandiq has six sons, four of whom were grown up as of 1995 and registered as separate families. The younger two of these four were still living in Quandiq’s camp. The fourth son had married in 1994 but had not set up a separate household. Because he was seriously ill at the time, the third son had not married (he died the following year). The two elder sons settled in the district centre, although neither of them had jobs. Dissatisfied with these two, Quandiq decided to redistribute the livestock holdings within the family, essentially by concentrating them in his own hands. His married sons were equipped with the same number of animals, which was, of course, an advantage for the younger ones who did not yet have families. The remaining five hundred animals remained with the father and would eventually go to the two younger, unmarried sons.

their brothers who became independent herders, they still leave their animals with their father and thus have only limited control over their property (see Table 7.7). Shifts on paper do not necessarily indicate a change in the perception of ownership by the actors involved. In many cases, however, they do reflect a social act, clearly evident in the frequent complaints expressed by the sons concerned in relation to their father’s behaviour. In terms of property rights, a son might therefore be the formal owner but not have full private property. Sons set up independent households and are officially allotted their own herds, but their fathers can occasionally exert considerable control over their property. Changes of this kind do not occur among other patrilineal relatives. In most cases brothers split up and settle separately after the death of the father, frequently at a great distance from each other. They no longer have immediate influence over each other’s property. There is, however, a way in which kin relations can indeed interfere with the privacy of individual property rights. Although pastoralists in Mongolia do not create far-reaching redistributive loan networks, as is the case in other parts of the world, affording mutual support is obligatory should the need arise. Help is primarily given in the case of what is perceived as an accident, for instance when wolves deplete the household herd. In one particular instance, a herder received gifts of animals from kin and neighbours, and ended up with more sheep than he had originally possessed, indicating that certain categories of individuals were obliged to contribute. Similarly, some of the re-migrants from Kazakhstan ended up with herds of a hundred animals or more as a rescue operation. In this sense, kin as well as close friends and neighbours can demand access to the herds of others. In contrast to the father-son relation described above, this is not perceived as a question of property rights but as the mutual giving of gifts and reciprocity. It

174  Peter Finke does imply, however, that a defined group of people have a legitimate claim to other people’s property, which I defined at the beginning as control of property.

Conclusion The four cases of property rights in livestock described in this chapter can only represent a cross-section of possible configurations. Comprehensiveness was not the aim in this respect. Instead, the examples demonstrate from different perspectives that any real-life property system contains (at least) two distinct dimensions. For lack of a more precise term, I referred to them as the category of owner and the category of the factual degree of control an owner has over his/her property. The conclusion I drew at the beginning was that individual and private property should be regarded as two separate issues that may or may not coincide. And private property rights in the usual sense are never unlimited, if only because the cost of monitoring and enforcing them is often prohibitive. All four cases presented combine various forms of ownership and control over resources. I want briefly to examine each of these in light of the categories introduced in the beginning. One puzzle in relation to the socialist property rights regime was the ambiguous separation of collective and state property. Although animals were formally the property of the collective, the state actually treated them as its own. Irrespective of whether formal or factual, neither owner had the ability truly to enforce property rights to the degree they desired. Due to the enormous cost of monitoring this would have incurred, the collectives did not pursue a detailed determination of daily life decision making with regard to livestock breeding. This gave way to multiple opportunities for shirking on the part of the herder. As a result, collective property rights were severely restricted by the control that individuals had over that property.3 Privatization again is more than a simple transfer from the collective or the state to the individual. It includes a redefinition of rights and duties connected with the ownership and usage of goods and resources, and thus a restructuring of social relations as well. Today, individual families are formally the owners of the livestock and certainly perceive themselves as such. In fact, the state – as in all societies – is entitled to restrict the rights of the owner in a multitude of ways, which can have a significant impact on the latter. Although it certainly occurs more rarely now than in socialist times (partly due to lack of effective control), it nevertheless questions the sovereignty of the formal owner. The issue of private property rights thus becomes one of degree and not of kind. In the final case presented, the problem was even more diffuse. From a certain perspective it could be argued that in many pastoral societies the household or the head of the extended family should in fact be considered the ultimate owner of the livestock. This, however, does not necessarily correspond to how it is perceived. Their view is closer to an image of (nuclear) family property, and to some degree of individual property within the family, but acknowledges that parents and other   3. In the entire informal sector, so vital to the socialist world, state or collective property was in fact restricted by the factual – legal, semi-legal or illegal – control opportunities on the part of the individual (which could also be called agency costs).

Ownership and Control in Mongolia    175 relatives often continue to exercise significant control over the resources of their children without being the owner. This control recedes over the years and varies with the power relations and emotional attachments within the family. It is thus important to distinguish (at least) two separate dimensions of property rights, the ownership unit and the degree of control owners have over their resources. Together they form a better analytical frame to capture the complexity of property rights than one of the common simplifying dichotomies or mono-dimensional curves encountered in the literature. It is one issue to redefine property holders as is currently the case in post-socialist societies; but it is equally important to look at the various ways the rights and possibilities of owners are restricted and how this influences decision making. This is, of course, not only an issue in (formerly) socialist societies but applies to all types of societies. The complex ways in which Western states regulate the usage of land, or restrict the modification of houses under monument protection, are a vivid illustration of this.

Part III Africa

Chapter 8

Forms and Modalities of Property Rights in Cattle in a Fulbe Society (Western Burkina Faso) Youssouf Diallo

Introduction The West African Fulbe (Fulani in the English-language literature and Peuls in the French-language literature) are predominantly pastoralists whose principal form of property is cattle. As in most Fulbe groups, in the Fulbe society of western Burkina Faso, the raising and possession of cattle is the preferred method of accumulating wealth and acquiring property and status. The social and economic functions of cattle determine the forms and modalities of property rights in this society, where every individual is allowed to constitute a herd of his or her own and assert the power that controlling this type of property affords. It must be noted that rights in cattle are not held exclusively by men. Age and gender also affect property relations and multiple rights among pastoralists. Women and children are not only entitled to herds of their own, they are also given either conditional or full recognition of their rights in family herds. Shared rights in cattle enable individuals to strengthen ties of kinship and affinity to other groups and individuals and, beyond the family circle, relations of cooperation and solidarity with neighbours and friends. This chapter deals with the conditions and social contexts of acquisition of property in livestock and the rules of (pre-)inheritance among the Fulbe of western Burkina Faso.1 Name giving, marriage and death are the important social events that affect the pattern of family life among the Fulbe and contribute to shaping the system of circulation and redistribution of cattle. These social events, and particularly birth and death, lead the head of the family, who is the principal manager and holder of the family property, to observe some precautions in the redistribution of cattle during his lifetime. After a short overview of family organization and livestock management, I discuss Fulbe attitudes to property, and the social contexts and modes of transmission of rights in cattle through inheritance and gifts. Then, I look into the forms and concepts of multiple property rights in cattle and their meanings.  1. Information on the topic was gathered in 1997 during fieldwork carried out in western Burkina Faso and northern Côte d’Ivoire.

180  Youssouf Diallo

Livestock Management Many authors have described major aspects of the social organization and culture of the West African Fulbe (e.g. Dupire 1970; Riesman 1974). Only a short outline of their family system will be given here. The Fulbe family system is an elementary or large polygynous unit composed of a man, his wives, and his married sons and their children. They live in small separate camps. The camp (wuro, pl. gure), which is the most significant residential unit, is generally located in the periphery of sedentary village communities. This residential unit consists of a headman, his children and several brothers under his control, forming a paternal descent group called suudu baaba. Other members of the wuro might include non-kinsmen such as religious leaders (imam) and Koranic teachers (moodibaabe) with their families, who are more or less dependent on the head of the camp. All of the members living in the camp are under the legal authority of the head of the family, who is very often the oldest man and known as mawdo. The mawdo is the manager of the property and the milking rights, and supervises the economic activities of the family. Milk supply is an essential element of the domestic economy. The circulation and redistribution of cows strengthen family ties as well as non-kinship relations with neighbouring groups and certain dependent categories mentioned above. In general, the aim of a Fulbe cattle owner is to increase his herd or to at least maintain its size at such a level that the milk production is sufficient for family consumption. The division of labour makes the herding of cattle an exclusively male activity. Adult men are managers, while children and adolescents are herders. The utilization of family members as manpower is in decline among some Fulbe groups and is being replaced by reliance on hired herdsmen, especially to manage bush herds. The management and supervision of a large number of cattle requires the cooperation of the cattle owner, his sons, and their young Fulbe employees. The hired herdsmen, who are paid in cash, subsist solely on milk and lead an otherwise ascetic life. They are always on the move in search of pasture and water. The cattle owner or one of his older sons usually checks up on the herdsmen and the herds on a regular basis. With regard to the economic sphere and its activities, Fulbe cattle husbandry is a dynamic and complex form of production with its own internal logic. Cattle are a symbol of prestige, and a number of successful Fulbe pastoralists possess more than one herd. The wealthiest Fulbe generally divide their large herds into bush or satellite herds, called garki, and milk herds known as suraadi. The suraadi are kept close to the Fulbe settlement and produce milk for home consumption. While milking is not exclusively women’s work among the Fulbe, in general it does not imply a clearcut gender division of labour among the Fulbe. Frequently, however, women have the task of milking the cattle, making butter and selling it at the market along with other products. Although they take part in the market system by selling milk and cattle, and purchasing commodities, the Fulbe of western Burkina Faso are not fully involved in the market economy. They subsist for the most part on milk (kosam), which they consume and sell or exchange for cereals or other goods. Fulbe women use the revenues to buy cooking ingredients. Stock is rarely slaughtered or sold. As a rule, sales take place on special occasions, such as the pilgrimage to Mecca, or when a

Property Rights in Cattle    181 Fulbe cattle owner has to pay his young employees’ salaries. Pastoral production remains to a large extent in the ‘traditional’ sphere. For the Fulbe, cattle must first and foremost produce milk, not meat. Failure to take this into account has led to difficulties in livestock projects, the intention of which has often been to promote meat production. Attempts made in West Africa by development agencies in the 1970s and 1980s to control the pastoral economy and to involve the Fulbe in the market system met with their resistance. Two principal varieties of cattle are kept in the area under study: the taurin, a humpless breed, and the zebu, a humpbacked longhorn. Originally, the zebu was the cattle breed owned by most of the Fulbe, who consider it part of their identity. Trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, which is transmitted by the tsetse fly, is the major constraint to cattle husbandry in the sub-humid areas of western Burkina Faso. The threat of disease has led to the use of a zebu–taurin crossbreed, known as worsooji, as one of the best methods of controlling trypanosomiasis. Unlike the zebu, the taurin is resistant to tryponosomiasis and yields only a small amount of milk. In addition to high milk productivity, the worsooji combine draught performance with a good selling price (Diallo 2004a). This practice of crossbreeding illustrates the rational economic behaviour of the pastoral Fulbe. Property Marks Yet another indication of economic rationale is the use of brands with respect to property rights and the question of identity. Animals are individually identified and named in the Fulbe society of western Burkina Faso. The use of brands is the common form of identifying cattle as belonging to an individual or a family. Collective branding has received little attention from authors dealing with pastoral societies (Dupire 1954; Waldie 1994). This lack of attention is probably due to the fact that cattle branding remains a limited practice among West African pastoralists. One reason for the somewhat rare use of brands is that each pastoral Fulbe knows and recognizes the cattle he possesses and can therefore dispense with property marks. However, according to some informants, the aim of collective marking, where it exists, is to nip theft in the bud. The calves are branded at one or two years of age before weaning takes place. The brands (sumoodu) comprise only a few designs, usually crosses, parallel lines, circles or stars (see Table 8.1). Cattle can be branded on the neck, on the hump or on the right flank. Many Fulbe believe that brands on the left side bring misfortune and that the respective owner is less likely to have a large herd. In terms of property relations, the practice of collective cattle branding may suggest a collective ownership of cattle in which the domestic group maintains joint control over the livestock. This, however, is not always the case. While it may be true that the Fulbe consider some cattle as family property that an individual cannot alienate at his own discretion, it is also true that they have a clear notion of individual ownership. The Fulbe owner of a herd, or jom na’i, refers to his livestock or other property with the expression min jei, which literally means ‘it’s mine’. In general, a head of cattle remains the property of an individual, who has full rights of control, allocation and disposal over it.

182  Youssouf Diallo Table 8.1 Brands of cattle

Property Rights in Cattle    183 Table 8.2 System of shared rights in cattle Categories of Beneficiaries Origin cattle or title holders

Context of acquisition

Remarks

Sukaraaji Children Ascendants Name-giving (Father, Mother) ceremony

- Property of the children - Full rights of disposal of the father - Milking rights of the mother

Fute Wife Husband Gift

- Wife’s property and full rights of disposal

Dangol innira Wife and later Husband Marriage her children

- Milking cows of the wife; heritable by her children

Birteedi Wife Husband Temporary ‘loan’

- Milking cows of the wives - Remain the property of the husband

Sogoramaaji

- Milking rights of the borrower

Kinsmen or non-kinsmen

A wealthy herd owner

Temporary loan

Ronamaaji Wife/Children Husband/Mother Cattle inherited after the death of a herd owner

- Property of the children and the widow

Kalifaaji Kin, friend or Loan neighbour

- Role of supervision - Milking rights of the herdsman

Principles and Types of Property Rights Some authors of comparative jurisprudence have explored various legal concepts of property and examined the connection between property and privileges. Maine, who was one of the first writers to describe ancient Roman concepts of law, has discussed the property privileges of the family head (paterfamilias) and their impact on kin, and demonstrated how the absolute power of the head of the family over his children and his wife underwent gradual change in the course of time (Maine 1880: 135–46). With regard to property relations in ancient Roman society, Weber has also emphasized the tremendous authority of the father over his wives, children and slaves (Weber 1991: 76–79). This is not to suggest a comparison between ancient Roman ideas of law and Fulbe customary law (laada), which focuses on matters associated with rights in livestock. What I want to stress here are the linkages between property, power and status, which, as McIver (1948: 83) has already shown, are not given, but socially

184  Youssouf Diallo determined. The second interrelated aspect under consideration is an absolute form of property and the privileges that derive from it. Attitudes toward property rights and the rules of inheritance among Fulbe pastoralists clearly point to the key status of the head of the family. The privileged claims of a Fulbe family head and his exclusive control over certain categories of cattle endow him with power. Indeed, the right of ownership of the head of the family very often means the absolute right of disposal of livestock, of which sale, loan and gift are the attributes. The wife’s livestock, to which a Fulbe man has no rights, are an exception. The privileges of property or livestock control involve a crucial but implicit differentiation of the levels of control between ownership and possession. The Fulbe usually distinguish between usufruct rights and ownership, the link between these two basic types of rights being that the prerogative to grant usufruct rights or possession to others proceeds from the rights of ownership. The circulation of cows is an example of this. A rich man can provide kinsmen with livestock to enable them to have the usufruct of milk. Not only kinsmen, but also neighbours, friends and guests are among those who may benefit from milk rights. The allocation of the rights to milk, which is the predominant aspect of usufruct rights frequently held in cattle, is the privilege of the owner. Family members have rights in cattle, but so do the hired herdsmen who are taking care of the herds. They can milk the cows and consume the produce, and are entitled to sell a portion of the milk. Thus, division of labour plays a part in the distribution of multiple property rights. Taking into account the context of the acquisition of rights by gift, loan and inheritance, the sources from which they originate and the people involved in the transactions, we can distinguish at least seven categories of cattle: sukaraaji, fute, dangol innira, birteedi, sogoramaaji, ronamaaji and kalifaaji. These concepts cover different forms of property or shared rights in cattle, which are controlled by either an individual or groups of individuals, and to which specific privileges and obligations are attached (see Table 8.2). I will return to this point in the last section. Beyond the broad distinction between usufruct and ownership rights, mentioned above, Fulbe customary law recognizes a plurality of rights. This plurality forms a complex bundle of privileges including the full right of disposal, which confers on the owner the right to use, sell, manage, distribute or give away the use of cows. These privileges can either be held by a single individual or a family group. Thus, the relationship between property and privileges is dynamic and flexible, rendering the Fulbe notion of property ambiguous. In most cases, property does not mean the exclusive relationship of a single individual to livestock. As a flexible and practical notion, it denotes differing ideas of rights of possession, and rights to use, dispose of or allocate livestock. This does not imply that traditional Fulbe property laws do not recognize individual ownership in cattle. As already indicated, the system acknowledges this form of ownership, which gives an owner the full right to dispose, to sell and to allocate. Yet, rights held in certain categories of cattle that are not controlled exclusively by a single individual demonstrate the complexity of Fulbe attitudes toward property. Restrictions on the properties of children and wives are typical of the ambiguities. As shown below, two features characterize the ambivalent relationships of a father, his wife and their

Property Rights in Cattle    185 children’s livestock. The first is the limited and conditional rights of the mother over her children’s property. The second feature is the absolute power of the father and his exclusive control over that property. The father is the supreme arbiter in all matters of property among his descendants. Children can hold the right of ownership in their own name, but they cannot claim the full right to enjoy, control and dispose of their cattle until they have reached the age of majority. It could be said that a Fulbe father acts as the true paterfamilias, and that the power he exercises over his children’s property is similar to that of patria potestas. The ambiguity of property relations and the system of sharing and donation, as discussed in the case of inheritance, show that the pastoral Fulbe do not live in an egalitarian system. Not all members of the family have equal access to livestock. Moreover, although members of the same family may have the right of possession in cattle, they cannot actually claim the right of ownership, meaning the exclusive use of property and the full right of disposal. The distinction between individual rights of ownership, milking rights and full rights of disposal, although clearly conceived, may be blurred, because privileges are juxtaposed or combined in a variety of ways according to social circumstance, gender and age. Reality is thus much more complex than the broad distinction between ownership and usufruct, since the main characteristics of the system of rights can be distorted by individual decisions and the extreme flexibility of Fulbe social and economic organization.

Conditions and Modes of Cattle Transmission Cattle constitute economic wealth and are the central pillar of Fulbe social life and Fulbe culture. As I have already mentioned, the social and economic functions of cattle shape the forms and modalities of property. On the one hand, traditional Fulbe property laws are intended to guarantee that members of the joint family gain access to a livelihood from livestock. Because of this, the common management of herds is an important characteristic of social relations. Joint management, which entails the exploitation of milk cows kept in a communal corral, requires compatibility and flexibility in the claims that various members of the family might have on the same cattle. As a specific case, the management of children’s property (sukaraaji), or of certain categories of milk cows that are jointly exploited, highlights the overlapping of various shared rights that can be regarded as community of use. On the other hand, the social significance of livestock is one of the key aspects shaping property relations, which are also affected by gender and age. In identity formation and maintenance, cattle are an expression of belonging to a group and a source of prestige. The traditional laws of the Fulbe regulate the acquisition of property through gifts or (pre-)inheritance. Name-giving ceremonies, marriage and death are the special occasions on which a man can establish or pass on his property rights to other members of the family. I will initially consider the name-giving ceremony and marriage – the two times when property can be transferred prior to the death of the owner and subsequent inheritance.

186  Youssouf Diallo Name Giving and Marriage The status of the first-born male is central in the Fulbe family system, which recognizes children’s rights in livestock. The overall pattern of the name-giving ceremony is as follows. Seven days after birth, a Fulbe child undergoes the namegiving ceremony. Kinsmen, non-kinsmen, neighbours and friends are invited to attend the ceremony, which is performed in accordance with Muslim rules, at the father’s compound. The head of the newborn child is shaved and the child is kept at the parents’ house. Having been informed by the father, the priest (moodiibo) publicly announces the name of the child. Interestingly, the ritual at the name-giving ceremony is not only characterized by the slaughter of a beast (sheep or bull), but is also the occasion on which a father establishes property rights in the name of the newborn. The child is offered a young heifer (gnalel) from the paternal livestock. The father attends the ceremony and declares on this occasion: ‘mi suki o gnalel’ (or ‘mi hokki o gnalel’), a phrase meaning ‘I have given him a heifer’. The gift of a heifer to a child is a paternal obligation intended to give a child the chance to constitute a herd (sukaraaji) of his own. Pastoral Fulbe also believe, however, that this is the best way of knowing whether a newborn child will have luck with the herd or not. As McIver (1948: 126) noted a long time ago, ‘property is not wealth or possessions, but the right to control, to exploit, to use, or to enjoy wealth or possessions’. The management of the sukaraaji highlights the parental privileges and control over the property of the child.2 Both father and mother adjust their respective rights to control, use and exploit the sukaraaji until the child reaches adulthood, after which the child may claim his property, which had up until that time been kept in the communal herd. Paternal authority over the child’s property is unconditional, while that of the mother remains limited. In this case, the mother is allowed to enjoy the usufruct rights (milking) of her child’s sukaraaji. The father, on the other hand, enjoys the full right of disposal, which includes the right to sell the cattle he himself has given to his child. The father creates property rights for his child by virtue of his paternal authority and retains the ultimate right to this property. As long as the child has not yet reached adulthood, the father enjoys the full right of disposal of the cows and their offspring (sukaraaji mako). He is the manager and can do whatever he pleases with the sukaraaji. This form of property in cattle is characterized by precariousness, since the nominal owner has no power to dispose of his property, which he can even lose in the interest of the family. A father in need of cash can easily withdraw a bull from his child’s sukaraaji and sell it, an indication that the child’s right of ownership is purely nominal and constantly subject to abrogation. Theoretically, the father should replace the beast he sold with a cow, but he is not obliged to compensate the child. The rights of the parents in sukaraaji lapse when the child marries or leaves the family to set up a new independent wuro elsewhere. The name-giving ceremony is not the only occasion on which the acquisition of cattle by gift takes place. Marriage (dewgal) is another instance. Theoretically the Fulbe have no restrictions on matrimonial alliances with members of sedentary groups, apart from the prohibition of marriage to members of certain castes, such   2. Sukaraaji stems from suka meaning ‘give’. Suka (plural: sukaabe) also means ‘child’.

Property Rights in Cattle    187 as blacksmiths. In practice, however, they rarely marry out of their ethnic group; Fulbe men tend to marry Fulbe women only and vice versa. Nevertheless, among the pastoralists of western Burkina Faso, who allow marriage between all categories of cousins (dendiraabe), preferential marriage is the most common form, albeit not exclusively so. Marriage can be arranged by the family heads of the respective bride and groom, in which case it involves the payment of bridewealth. The latter implies the transfer from the groom to the bride of a symbolic sum of money or valuable goods, such as cattle, although a Fulbe man is not automatically obliged to pay the bridewealth in cattle. Since women are not exchanged for cattle among the Fulbe, there is no transfer of property rights over livestock between groups. Marriage influences property in at least two ways. When a young girl marries, for instance, her father presents her with a gift of livestock, which she can take with her to the new household. On the other hand, it is of great importance for a Fulbe man to provide his wife with livestock, and marriage gives him the first opportunity to do this. Livestock provided by a husband upon his marriage are called fute.3 Other accounts claim that the fute are a form of compensation paid not to the wife’s group, but to the wife herself, the amount of which is not predetermined. The fute remain the personal property of the wife, to which she has exclusive rights. A Fulbe man has certain rights over his wife, but not over her property. The husband has no right of allocation or disposal over the fute kept in the family herd, and merely plays a supervisory role. In contrast to the sukaraaji, he cannot sell the fute without his wife’s consent. Fulbe women are said to be emotionally involved with their fute. A husband who ventures to sell a cow from his wife’s fute could create a conflict resulting in divorce. Inheritance Besides name-giving and marriage ceremonies, inheritance of cattle upon a father’s death is another essential mode of property transmission. Systems of kinship generally estimate and establish the degrees of proximity between the individuals inside a group and thus define the rules of inheritance that specify the deceased’s next of kin when children are not involved. Following the same method, the Fulbe rules of inheritance take into account the direct descendants of the deceased, or in their absence, his brothers and their sons, and finally other kinsmen in his group. For instance, if a father dies young or suddenly, his livestock is initially entrusted to his own younger or elder brother. The distribution of his entire wealth, or part of it, then becomes the responsibility of the latter, or in his absence, a testamentary person. The expression ‘testamentary person’ is possibly misleading as a description of the person in charge of dividing the wealth among the heirs. The rules of inheritance are liable to change and subject to personal modification, which can be introduced by the brother of the deceased. Inheritance takes either the indirect form of a gift (pre-inheritance), characterized by the gradual sharing of livestock between the sons during the father’s lifetime, or   3. Among the Djelgoobe of northern Burkina Faso, the livestock a man provides on the occasion of his marriage are called koowrudi or futteeji (Riesman 1974: 87).

188  Youssouf Diallo the direct form of transmitting property rights upon the death of the father. It should be noted that in addition to being complex the rules of cattle inheritance are also a sensitive issue, frequently leading to family conflict. Most fraternal conflicts among the Fulbe derive from the division of wealth (jawdi) upon the father’s death. The complexity of the situation and the conflicts that arise between heirs explain why preinheritance, which takes the form of the gradual transmission of livestock to the sons, remains by far the most important channel of cattle transfer. In such cases, the right to distribute livestock by pre-inheritance is the prerogative of the father – in other words, the true owner. The transmission of property rights from father to sons is regulated in such a way that a large portion of the paternal livestock gradually passes into the hands of the sons during the father’s lifetime. In pre-inheritance, the father–daughter relationship is frequently neglected in favour of the father–son relationship. The second form of transmission of property rights that I identify here as a direct form of inheritance is somewhat more complex. In the case of death, not only do the direct descendants – males and females – have claims to the livestock of a deceased man; the claims of his wife or wives to a share of the inheritance are also recognized. The Fulfulde term for inheritance of property is ronawe, whereas the livestock that children and widows inherit from the deceased are called ronamaaji. Fulbe customary law in Burkina Faso does not deny women the right to inherit cattle. Theoretically, the entire ronamaaji – or part of it, that portion of livestock which was not already distributed by the father during his lifetime – must be divided between the deceased’s widows and his heirs. In fact, not all of these people get full benefit from livestock sharing. The system of cattle inheritance tends to exclude women or at least not take them fully into account. A similar mode of inheritance, which passes in the male line, has been discussed by numerous authors dealing with West African pastoral societies. Stenning, for example, has drawn attention to the gender bias and complexity of the rules of inheritance of Fulbe pastoralists in northern Nigeria, where, in the system of the Wodaabe, women do not inherit from their fathers. Among the Wodaabe, the customary order of cattle inheritance starts first of all with the sons of the cattle owner, then his brothers (full and half), his brothers’ sons or his father’s brothers and, finally, his paternal parallel cousins (Stenning 1994: 48). These are the nearest male kin of a deceased man, and can claim their share of his herd. This situation is not only typical of Nigerian Fulbe; it reflects ideological conditions in most of the West African pastoral societies. In the Fulbe society of western Burkina Faso, too, the Muslim rules of inheritance, especially the Malekite School and its diverse interpretations, add to the complexity of the system of inheritance. Widows, sons and daughters have a share in cattle in the system of inheritance defined by Malekite law (see also Monteil 1980: 216–17). According to this law, these are close kin, and can inherit different portions of property in cattle from a deceased stockowner (see also Dupire 1996). On the death of a Fulbe man called Adamu, his forty cattle were divided into eight portions between his two sons, two daughters and three widows, in accordance with Malekite law. Seven cattle shares, that is to say thirty-five heads, were allotted to Adamu’s sons and daughters, while the eighth share (five head) of cattle went to the three widows. Malekite law gives priority to children over widows and to

Property Rights in Cattle    189 sons over daughters; the order of the children’s birth is of no significance. Of the heritable cattle in Adamu’s case, the daughters received only half the total amount that went to his sons. This means that each son got eleven cattle and each daughter five. The remaining three cattle were sold for FCFA (Franc Communauté Financière Africaine) 150,000 and the money given to the children. Again, each son got FCFA 50,000 and each daughter FCFA 25,000. In short, Malekite law prescribes that all brothers receive an equal share, while sisters receive only half the quantity given to each brother. From what has been said about the rules of inheritance, it is evident that the Fulbe have a predominantly patrilineal mode of transmission of property in livestock. According to many accounts, a man’s property is not transmitted to his daughters but to his sons. Although the mode of inheritance has been influenced by Islam, the father–daughter relationship remains marginal. The patrilineal mode of transmission of property in cattle is linked to family interests. Daughters are destined for marriage and will leave their families. Underlying this system of inheritance are also practical and ideological considerations. For the Fulbe, cattle are both wealth and a source of prestige. Therefore, the aim of the system of inheritance is to keep as many livestock as possible in the family or the paternal lineage group. As a result, the children’s share of the inheritance is entrusted to the paternal uncle (bappaanyo) until they marry.

Shared Rights in Cattle Shared rights in cattle, as illustrated in Table 8.2, are manifold. Fute, dangol innira and birteedi are the three concepts that clearly define a system of shared rights linked to the institution of marriage. In a polygynous system – this is frequently the case in Fulbe societies, where a man and his wives live together – each wife and her children count as a distinct consumption unit. As a vital economic resource, Fulbe women acquire the fute after marriage. More generally, the fute provided by a husband form a highly esteemed albeit small portion of the wife’s property. This explains why most Fulbe women bring several head of inherited cattle into their household and become wealthy in their own right. If a husband possesses cattle it is his marital obligation to provide his wife (or wives) with cows to milk, thus adding to the fute and cattle inherited from her parents. The Fulbe express the notion of the wife’s use rights with the milking metaphor, dangol innira. Dangol is the rope Fulbe women use to tie up calves in the corral; innira means ‘named’, but this word may stem from inna, which designates ‘mother’. Yet, as argued below, the use of the word innira suggests that the expression dangol innira, which serves to denote the exclusive relationship of a wife to a number of milking cows, is not applied simply in the metaphorical sense. Birteedi, literally ‘milking cows’, is another term used by the Fulbe to designate the cattle that wives milk. In terms of the husband’s exclusive or privileged claims, the fute are less malleable than the dangol innira and the birteedi. These two forms of milking rights differ in the sense that the privileges a wife derives from birteedi are subject to constant change and are thus more flexible than those of dangol innira. The first concept merely refers to the usufruct right – the women do not have the

190  Youssouf Diallo full right of disposal over the cows – whereas the second indicates a usufruct right that will later develop into ownership. The difference between the two is reflected in Fulbe attitudes towards birteedi and dangol innira. In the case of birteedi, only the produce (milk) from the cows belongs to the wives or those to whom the cows have been allocated, while the cows themselves remain the property of the husband who has the right to alienate them. A polygynous husband retains the full rights of control, allocation and disposal over the birteedi, leaving the wives his dependents. A wife enjoys the right to milk as long as she remains on good terms with her husband. However, one particular wife might not be in the same position as her co-wives. If he sees fit, a husband biased towards one wife can withdraw some milking cows from two wives in order to provide the third with birteedi. Inequalities are thus mirrored in the allocation of cattle to be milked. A child cannot inherit the birteedi his father has put at the disposal of his mother, since these cattle are in a sense on loan. On the other hand, wives can take full advantage of dangol innira. Indeed, the sons of a deceased father can inherit from the portion of dangol innira in which their mother had previously enjoyed milking rights. According to some informants, dangol innira is another indirect mode of transmission of cattle to the descendants of the deceased. It is a mechanism of preinheritance whereby a husband gives a number of milk cows to his wives, who later pass them on to their respective children. Hence the custom of allocation of dangol innira used as milking cows allows children to inherit cattle from their father via their mother.4 This indirect mode of transmission is supplemented by the direct inheritance of cattle, a channel through which children inherit cattle (ronamaaji) from their deceased father. We do not know the historical circumstances under which dangol innira, initially regarded purely as milking rights, became accepted as the right of ownership to cows among some of the Fulbe, who give women the full right to dispose of and transmit cows to their children. In view of the prevailing traditions in Fulbe livestock management, there are in practice three possible modes of sharing cattle among a man’s descendants. As already indicated, the first is the institution of sukaraaji, whereby children can acquire cattle, but the right of ownership remains alienable in this case. The second is the system of (pre-)inheritance; and finally there is dangol innira, a mechanism whereby a woman’s children can later claim rights to ownership of the cows and their offspring. It should be stressed that the third mode of cattle transmission can cause problems, since incompatible claims can lead to conflict between the heirs, who may have different numbers of cattle. As a result of this potential for conflict, some Fulbe tend to abandon dangol innira as a means of children inheriting cattle. Finally, I will turn to the relationships between cattle owners and friends or neighbours. As movable property, cattle can be lent by a rich cattle owner to neighbours or friends. Sogoramaaji are the cows a Fulbe man places at the disposal of someone else to afford him or her the usufruct of milk. In other words, sogoramaaji are cattle temporarily lent by a rich cattle owner to someone less wealthy than  4. A similar type of property known as senndereeji exists among the Wodaabe of Niger (see Bonfiglioli 1988: 177; Dupire 1996: 202–3).

Property Rights in Cattle    191 himself. The relationship between a giver and a receiver differs from the institution of habbanae – frequently described in the literature on West African pastoral societies – whereby the borrower of the cow is usually entitled to its calves (see e.g. Bonfiglioli 1988). An example of transfer related to sogoramaaji might be a man who provides his son-in-law with cows to furnish his daughter with milk. Sogoramaaji and the accompanying calves are not the private property of either the borrower or the daughter of the lender. Sogoramaaji cattle are a conditional loan. The borrower does not pay anything in return but must take care of the sogoramaaji. The lender can take back his cattle, after consultation, at any time. A man without livestock can also solicit the help of relatives or friends. Cattle looked after for a friend, a neighbour or someone else are referred to as kalifaaji, a term of Arabic origin that expresses trust and solidarity among the Fulbe themselves, as well as between Fulbe pastoralists and sedentary farmers. Since cattle husbandry is considered the prerogative of the Fulbe, they have a set of institutional arrangements with sedentary farmers. Kalifaaji are some of the norms that specify farmer–herder cooperation. Besides the kalifaaji, the classical example of cattle supervision here is still the practice of farmers entrusting Fulbe with their livestock. A Fulbe man has milking rights to kalifaaji entrusted to his care, as long as he remains on good terms with the owner. Although herding activities are paid for in cash, the Fulbe also have usufruct of the milk.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed types of property rights in livestock in a pastoral society and the dynamic relationship between privileges and property. Privileges that derive from property, which in itself does not essentially refer to the exclusive relationship of a single person to livestock, can either be held by a single individual or a family group. In discussing the social and economic functions of property among the Fulbe, it was necessary to indicate conceptually the main categories of livestock and the various rights invested in them that can be passed on to or claimed by members of a joint family. Although individual rights of ownership, milking rights and full rights of disposal are clearly conceived, these distinctions may be blurred, juxtaposed or combined in a variety of ways according to social circumstances, gender and age. Women and children are entitled to livestock of their own, which can be transmitted to them as gifts or inheritance in a variety of contexts (marriage, birth and death). The privileged status of the head of the family and the power vested in him via the exclusive control of livestock affects the system of transmission of property. Religion also plays a role in property relations. Although Islam has affected the transmission of livestock by inheritance, personal bias and interpretation can alter the rules of inheritance and confer on them an unequal character. Other forms of transfers of rights have not been discussed here, as it is difficult to assess their significance in property relations among the Fulbe of western Burkina Faso. These transfers include, for example, the loan of draught oxen or the institution of habbanae through which a borrower of cows is entitled to the calves.

Chapter 9

Individualization of Livestock Ownership in Fulbe Family Herds: The Effects of Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal in Northern Cameroon Mark Moritz

A man’s herd is a complex organization of individuals tied to one another in diverse ways; quite as complex as the community of people in which he lives and in many ways reflecting that community. His herd depicts the household structure, lineage, and clan; expresses the network of social relationships as they extend to his father’s father and the yet unborn son of his son; and also reflects the ties that have been established through the marriages of his aunt and his sisters and the no less tenuous ties arrived at through contractual relationships, all of which bind him to widely scattered fellow tribesmen. (Goldschmidt 1986: 80) Not unlike the Sebei herds in East Africa (Goldschmidt 1986), family herds of Fulbe pastoralists in West Africa reflect the social relations of their households and can be read as the social biographies of the people who keep them (Bonfiglioli 1988). Some of the animals in Fulbe family herds, for example, may be descendants of a line of animals that have been in the patriliny for generations. A few may have been given to the children of the household, thereby reaffirming the sustained fertility of both family and herd. Some animals in the Fulbe family herd could be gifts or loans from parallel cousins, reinforcing kin ties between families. Others may have been inherited by wives from their parents, expressing affinal ties with the matriliny. Yet other animals are entrusted or loaned by friends and represent the current social network of the household head and other adult males. One could argue, following Mauss (1925), that the Fulbe family herd is a complete social system in the sense that the community as a whole is implicated in the herd of one family via the transfer and exchange of animals, and the obligations entailed. This means that by examining the property relations of

194  Mark Moritz one family herd, pastoral social systems can be described (Douglas 1990; Goldschmidt 1969). In fact, Bollig (2000) argues that livestock exchange networks are a more accurate reflection of social structures than emic structuralist representations. However, the social system of one of the pastoral Fulbe communities in which I conducted my research from 2000 to 2001 can no longer be reconstructed in this manner and read as the social biography of its people. The individualization of livestock ownership and disappearance of livestock transfers in this peri-urban community has resulted in more exclusive property rights and the concentration of livestock in the hands of one person, namely the household head (baaba saare or patriarch). As an ‘invisible transformation’, these changes in property rights cannot be directly observed but have far-reaching consequences for social and economic relations within and between the households (Baxter 1990: iii). The two primary causes of this invisible transformation – the individualization of more exclusive property rights –are pastoral intensification and Islamic renewal. The data on property relations in Fulbe family herds was collected in a comparative study of three pastoral Fulbe communities during a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the Far North of Cameroon (Moritz 2003). All three communities represent different types of pastoral systems: peri-urban, agro-pastoral and nomadic. Here I limit my discussion to the peri-urban and agro-pastoral systems.1 In order to highlight the changes in property relations within peri-urban family herds, I make a comparison with property relations in an agro-pastoral village located in a more rural area about forty kilometres away from the peri-urban village. Twenty-five years ago, before the simultaneous processes of intensification and Islamic renewal brought about the individualization of livestock ownership, the peri-urban pastoral system was much like the agro-pastoral system is today (Moritz 2003). I will begin, however, with a brief introduction to Fulbe pastoralists in the Far North Province and the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol in particular.

Fulbe Pastoralists in the Far North Province The Far North Province has a semi-arid climate with one rainy season from May through to September, and an annual rainfall that ranges from 400 mm in the north to 1,000 mm in the south of the province. Two phytogeographic zones characterize the province: Sudanian (Sudano-Sahelian) in the south, including the Diamaré plains, and Sahelian (Sahelo-Sudanian) in the Logone flood plain (see Map 9.1). The traditional transhumance areas, the Diamaré plains and the Logone flood plain, form complementary resources in the pastoral ecosystem of the Far North, in which the former provide pastures in the rainy season, the latter in the dry season (RequierDesjardins 2001: 28).  

I would like to thank Leslie Moore, Karen Greenough and Kristin Loftsdóttir for their insightful comments. 1. The main corpus of data consists of an inventory of livestock ownership and stewardship of all members of a household, including children. I recorded data on the structure of the herd, e.g. sex, age, location of animals, and property rights over these animals. I also collected data on changes in the herd during the year 2000/2001 (e.g. births, deaths, sales, loans) and the livestock transfers people were involved in during their lifetime (Moritz 2003).

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    195

Map 9.1 The Far North Province of Cameroon. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Rangelands were never communally owned by pastoralists in the Far North Province. Fulbe pastoralists lived interspersed with agriculturalists of different ethnic

196  Mark Moritz groups (e.g. Zumaya, Giziga). In pre-jihad times, pastoralists would request permission from the local chiefs of these groups to access rangelands. After the jihad, which was initiated by Sheikh Uthmān dan Fodio in Sokoto in 1804 and resulted in the establishment of Fulbe emirates in the Far North a few years later, Fulbe pastoralists negotiated with Fulbe chiefs (laamiiBe) over access to rangelands and security, in exchange for tribute (Moritz et al. 2002). The Fulbe emirates provided pastoralists with relatively safe access to rangelands in the Diamaré. Access to rangelands in the Logone flood plain was arranged with Musgum and Kotoko sultans following the same principle of tribute in exchange for access and security. When the Europeans conquered northern Cameroon, they incorporated the traditional Fulbe authorities into the colonial administration. The Germans, and later the French, did not directly interfere with relations between traditional authorities and pastoralists, and the independent republic of Cameroon continued the hands-off policy whereby pastoralists negotiated access to rangelands with the traditional authorities (Moritz et al. 2002). Today the primary contacts of nomadic pastoralists continue to be the traditional authorities, that is to say, the Fulbe laamiiBe in the Diamaré, and the Musgum and Kotoko Sultans in the Logone flood plain. The governmental and municipal authorities, for their part, use the agents of the traditional authorities in their contact with and tax collection from pastoralists. No pastoralist is refused access to rangelands in the Far North as long as they pay taxes to the authorities. Requier-Desjardins (2001) has argued that there is some degree of regulation of rangeland access through the differential payment of taxes. Pastoralists pay taxes to governmental, municipal and traditional authorities in each municipal district. However, non-Cameroonian pastoralists and those from outside the district pay more than ‘resident’ pastoralists; in addition, there is a system of seniority whereby pastoralists that have practised transhumance to a particular area for a number of years pay lower taxes than recent arrivals (ibid.). Differential taxation is not necessarily a result of efforts by the authorities to regulate access to natural resources. As long as pastoralists pay, access is generally permitted by the authorities (and by fellow pastoralists); in practice, pastoralists have open access to rangelands with few restrictions. Fulbe are the main pastoral people in the Far North Province, living primarily in the Diamaré Division, while Shuwa Arabs live further north in the Logone-Chari Division. The majority of the Fulbe are descendants of the pastoral Fulbe conquerors from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nowadays, many Fulbe are only peripherally involved in pastoralism, while others are agro-pastoralists and live in multiethnic villages. Fulbe identity in the Far North is based on Islam and their pastoral heritage. The Fulbe believe that they are the only true Muslims in the Far North, and the only true pastoralists. Many of them, including those in the cities who no longer deal with cattle on a daily basis, own animals, which they have entrusted to their families, friends or salaried herders. The Fulbe believe that they are the people chosen to own animals. This conviction is expressed in a number of proverbs, such as, waagaare Pullo waalde maccuDo a yaalan a yaaltata (a Pullo’s [singular of Fulbe] sheaf of sorghum stalks, a slave’s corral, you pass it on your way, you will not pass it on your return), meaning that Fulbe should stick to raising cattle and leave agriculture to others

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    197 (and vice versa). Cattle are not only of symbolic importance; for many of the Fulbe in the Far North they are still a vital economic resource. The peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol, the focus of this chapter, is a community of Fulbe, RiimayBe (former slaves of the Fulbe) and Kanuri households, located about ten kilometres from the centre of the provincial capital of Maroua. The area has high population densities ranging from 100 to 149 inhabitants per square kilometre (Seignobos and Iyébi-Mandjek 2000). Over the years, the village has been incorporated into the conglomeration of Maroua, the population of which has grown from approximately 50,000 to 400,000 inhabitants in the last twenty-five years. Most household heads earn part of their income with commercial activities in Maroua, dealing in a wide range of commodities (e.g. cattle, smallstock, cereals, groundnuts, cloth, dried fish) and crafts (e.g. bicycle repair, tailoring, watch repair), or providing services as religious specialists (maraboutage). All peri-urban pastoralists cultivate sorghum for auto-consumption and cotton for cash. Several of the wealthy pastoralists in Wuro Badaberniwol have entrusted part of their cattle herds to nomadic Fulbe pastoralists. Other, less prosperous inhabitants have entrusted a few head of cattle to friends or their families in neighbouring villages. Here I will focus my discussion on the six pastoral households that had a daily involvement with cattle. This excludes the six households that have entrusted cattle to friends and families in neighbouring villages, and the fourteen poor households that have no cattle at all, ko wicco (not even a tail).

The Effects of Intensification The Far North Province has some of the higher population densities and growth rates in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa. The population grew from 1,395,231 inhabitants in 1976 to an estimated 2,467,000 in 1995, or about 65 inhabitants per square kilometre (Seignobos and Iyébi-Mandjek 2000). However, densities in the traditional transhumance zones are much lower (10 per square kilometre) than those in the Diamaré plains (70 per square kilometre). The population growth in the Diamaré has led to a rapid expansion of agriculture and subsequent disappearance of the bush. In the densely populated peri-urban areas around Maroua there are practically no pastures left today. This expansion of the city and subsequent pressure on pastures is the main cause for the ‘indigenous intensification’ of pastoral systems in the peri-urban area of Maroua (cf. Tiffen et al. 1994). Forage is almost non-existent in the peri-urban area. A biomass study showed that the grazing capacity – the number of animals that can live off the forage available in a determined period – is extremely low: 11 animals per day per 100 hectares in the dry season (Moritz 2003). Cattle in the periurban area cannot survive without supplementary feed. Since the 1980s, pastoralists in the Far North Province have used cottonseed cakes and hulls, by-products from the Sodecoton refineries, as supplementary food for exhausted or malnourished animals. Today, however, peri-urban pastoralists use these products as natural forage substitutes for all their animals. The extensive use of these feeds represents an intensification of the peri-urban pastoral system. Intensification refers here to the transition from a pastoral system that relies on free natural forage to a capitalintensive system that relies on expensive cottonseed cakes.

198  Mark Moritz In recent decades, the overall costs of the pastoral production system have increased almost eightfold in the peri-urban area. This is due for the most part to the supplementary feed of cottonseed cakes and hulls, which constitute 62 per cent of the total cost of the pastoral production system in the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol, compared to 23 per cent in more extensive, agro-pastoral systems in the rural areas. Consequently, total costs per animal are significantly higher in the peri-urban area than in the more rural areas (Moritz 2003).2 The use of cottonseed cakes has also radically altered the daily management of cattle in the family herd. Animals are fed individually and twice daily in the dry season, once in the morning before the animals go to ‘pasture’ and once in the evening upon return. Feeding cottonseed cakes to cattle is thus a more labour-intensive form of production. In the rainy season, the animals are sent on transhumance to the Mindif-Moulvoudaye region to avoid crop damage in the periurban area during the growing season. Unlike the agro-pastoral village, where production costs concerning the family herds (including animals of outsiders) are covered by the household head, in the periurban village of Wuro Badaberniwol the household head covers some but not all of the production costs. The latter have increased to such a dramatic extent that household heads have distributed some of the costs to individual owners (adult children, wives, and other resident kin). Costs covered by the household head are ‘collective costs’, independent of the number of animals in the herd (e.g. herding wages). ‘Individual costs’ can be directly traced to individual animals (e.g. veterinary care and cottonseed cakes), and are covered by their owners (Moritz 2003). The highest individual costs are those for cottonseed cakes and hulls. Each owner has to cover these costs for his or her own animals and is also responsible for the purchase and storage of cottonseed cakes for their own animals. Most men cultivate cotton because Sodecoton pays for their harvest in the form of cottonseed cakes at a reduced factory price. As a rule this is not enough, so they are forced to buy additional sacks at the markets in Maroua. Men use their income from trade or the sale of smallstock and cattle to buy additional sacks of cottonseed cakes. Women use their income from petty trade, the sale of smallstock or part of their dowry (e.g. enamelware, jewellery). There is a growing reluctance on the part of the household head to cover the collective costs for the animals of others, including those of their kin. Household members increasingly treat their animals as personal rather than ‘collective’ property, using revenues from the sale of animals solely for personal expenditures. Moreover, they do not compensate the household head for his expenses. Outsiders who have entrusted animals generally compensate the household head for taking care of their animals by giving him a percentage of the sale price. Peri-urban household heads feel that the collective expenses they incur for the family herd are taken for granted by other household members. Consequently, they are unwilling to relinquish control of   2. Cottonseed cakes cost FCFA (Franc Communauté Financière Africaine) 7,552 (U.S.$ 10) per animal in the peri-urban village and FCFA 401 (U.S.$ 0.50) in the agro-pastoral village. The total costs per animal amount to FCFA 12,555 (U.S.$ 17) per year in the peri-urban village versus FCFA 1,868 (U.S.$ 2.50) in the agro-pastoral village.

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    199 the animals in the family herd by transferring ownership titles to other members of the family. Individual owners of animals in the family herd, on the other hand, no longer regard their animals as serving collective household needs. They are disinclined to let the household head sell their animals to meet these needs, since they are already paying for the cottonseed cake fed to their animals in the family herd. When a woman sells items from her dowry, her ‘security’, to feed her animals, she is unlikely to let the household head sell them for collective household needs. This is particularly an issue in polygynous households, in other words, in all peri-urban pastoral households. Although it is not clear whether individualization of ownership initially led to a redistribution of the cottonseed cake costs within the household or vice versa, both phenomena reinforce each other today. Intensification and the subsequent redistribution of costs to individual owners of animals in the family herd have strengthened the individualization of livestock ownership. This process has been further underpinned by a simultaneous process of Islamic renewal in the peri-urban areas of Maroua.

The Effects of Islamic Renewal The spread of Islam in West Africa has been associated with the development of trade, the promotion of private property and the accumulation of wealth (Last 1979; Levtzion 1979; Lovejoy 1971). Islamic traditions have also affected economic behaviour in the domestic sphere of Fulbe households and family herds. The stricter adherence of periurban pastoralists to the codes of Islam plays a critical role in the individualization of livestock ownership in Fulbe family herds. It belongs to a movement of ‘Islamic renewal’, an umbrella term incorporating numerous changes, all of which involve an increasing commitment to a more orthodox form of Islamic practice (Watts 1999: 70). The recent Islamic renewal movement in northern Cameroon began with the change of presidency in 1982, when the Catholic Paul Biya succeeded the Muslim (and Fulbe) Ahidjo and introduced policies aimed at breaking the power of the northern Islamic bloc. The Fulbe compensated for the loss of political power and influence with a renewal movement in the religious arena, which Seignobos and Iyébi-Mandjek (2000) refer to as the ‘birth of an Islamic Renewal’. For most Fulbe, who have been Muslims for centuries, Islam is a defining feature of their ethnic identity. Each and every aspect of their society is so heavily imbued with Islam that pulaaku (Fulbe-ness) and Islam have merged into a single cultural ideology (see also Boutrais 1984a; Bovin 1990; Buhl 1999; VerEecke 1989). The pursuit of piety is an integral part of the Islamic renewal, and refers to the continuous endeavour of individual Fulbe to become better Muslims by actively studying, observing and applying Islamic codes to everyday life (Moritz 2003). Koranic education and Arabic literacy provide greater access to religious knowledge, which in turn affords greater piety. There is a direct link between greater access to religious knowledge and stricter adherence to the codes of Islam. This is evident in the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol, which had more educated Muslims (mallum’en), mosques and Koranic schools than the agro-pastoral villages in the

200  Mark Moritz rural areas. Peri-urban pastoralists also follow the rules and traditions of Islam more rigorously than agro-pastoralists. Stricter adherence to the codes of Islam played a critical role in the individualization of livestock ownership in a number of ways. First of all, Islamic legal traditions define individual rights more clearly. Islamic inheritance laws, for example, favour individual ownership, including female ownership, whereas previous pastoral Fulbe traditions prioritized the continuity and integrity of the family herds. Only sons could inherit in the past, and patrilocal residence rules ensured that sons continued to live together after the death of the household head. This meant that the family herd would remain a viable economic unit and not be divided among the inheritors (cf. Hopen 1958; Stenning 1958). Islamic inheritance codes prescribe that property must be immediately divided among the survivors, that is to say, the children, spouse(s) and parents. Sons inherit twice as much as daughters, while spouses inherit a quarter or an eighth (depending on the number and type of heirs). In the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol, pastoralists followed the Islamic codes rigidly, even when this meant breaking up the family herd into non-viable parts. Not doing so would have been a flagrant violation of the religious norms in the village and marked the individuals as more interested in pastoral wealth than religious observance. Secondly, stricter adherence to the codes of Islam also indirectly promoted the individualization of livestock ownership through the widespread adoption of the ‘urban Islamic family model’ in the peri-urban area (cf. van Santen and Willemse 2004). This model is characterized by seclusion of women, polygyny, stricter separation of spouses’ income and property, and shifts in the rights and responsibilities of spouses. Although the seclusion of women is the most visible change associated with the adoption of the urban Islamic family model, the impact on the economic organization of pastoral households is minimal, as Fulbe women continue to market dairy products from their compound to itinerant dairywomen (VerEecke 1989). The increase in polygyny rates and polygynous households had a greater impact on the economic organization of peri-urban pastoral households due to the associated institutional changes. The income and property of a husband and his wives is kept strictly separate in polygynous households and not pooled in a common household fund (cf. Buhl 1999; Regis 2003). This division of property also extends to livestock ownership in the family herd. In addition, peri-urban household heads are now solely responsible for provisioning the household; women no longer contribute revenues from dairy marketing to the common household fund but instead use them for personal expenses (e.g. soap, wedding gifts, travel costs) and investments (enamelware, jewellery) (see Holtedahl 1993). This has led to a shift in the domestic economy. Fulbe men rely on the sale of animals to provide for the household, now that dairy revenues are no longer available. One consequence is the re-allocation of milk from marketing to calves. Although milk continues to be the female domain, a woman’s supply of milk is still controlled by the household head, who milks and decides whether to allocate milk to nursing calves or to women. In the past, when dairy marketing revenues still contributed to the common household fund, it was in the interest of the household

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    201 heads to allocate sufficient milk to women for dairy marketing in order to avoid having to sell animals. Although peri-urban women retain their traditional usufruct rights over milk, these rights have become weaker as household heads make decisions in favour of overall herd growth by allocating more milk to nursing calves (Moritz 2003). This corresponds to another change in usufruct rights; whereas in the past women had the right to milk from specific cows (BiriteeDi, singular Biriteenge), they now have rights over a proportion of the total milk yield from the family herd.

Fulbe Family Herds The Fulbe do not have a direct translation for the term ‘family herd’. The word in Fulfulde fuunaangeere, the dialect of the Diamaré, that best covers the animals managed but not necessarily owned by a household, is waalde (Noye 1974). Waalde is the corral where the animals are regrouped and rest at night. In everyday use, waalde also refers to the animals in the corral, which makes it a good equivalent of family herd (Moritz 2003). Fulbe also use the term saareeji to refer to the family herd. However, this term is ambiguous since it can refer to the animals in the corral regardless of who owns them, as well as to those owned by members of the saare (household, family), as opposed to yaasiiji (animals owned by outsiders).3 Fulbe family herds are always amalgamations of animals over which both members of the household and outsiders have a variety of property rights and obligations.4 Some animals are owned by outsiders, others by individuals within the household, or by non-resident consanguineal or affinal kin. The fact that a family herd consists of animals owned by multiple people with different, often overlapping, rights over the animals is reflected in a number of sayings. Waalde Pullo reedu waynaare (a Pullo’s corral is like a cow’s third stomach [which has numerous folds]) expresses the norm that Fulbe family herds are never owned by one person only but always contain other people’s animals hidden in the folds. Waalde Pullo boo bana tummude kilaajo (a Pullo’s corral is like a blacksmith’s gourd). Blacksmith gourds contain several items; some are useful, others are not, meaning that not all animals in the family herd can be used to meet household needs, since usufruct rights over the milk of animals belonging to outsiders does not imply the right to sell the animals (or dispose of them in other ways). Dam balo non Dum luggay (the water is dark but not deep) means the size of the herd does not indicate the wealth of the household (head). Someone might appear to be wealthy because he has a sizeable herd, but could in reality be poor because the animals do not belong to him (Moritz 2003).   3. Depending on the closeness of kin ties, cattle from non-resident kin are generally regarded as saareeji (cattle owned by the family), in particular when they are owned by women (daughters, sisters, mothers or aunts) or young sons. Cattle bought on the market (coodaaDi) are not regarded as saareeji. As a rule, household heads have more control over inherited animals (tawtwaDi) than animals brought into the herd from outside through market or other exchanges.  4. Dupire and Bonfiglioli also give detailed descriptions of property relations in Fulbe and WoDaaBe family herds (Bonfiglioli 1988; Dupire [1962] 1996; 1970). Throughout West Africa, however, there are as many differences as there are similarities in the property relations of Fulbe family herds (see also Diallo and Pelican in this volume).

202  Mark Moritz Customary property rights over cattle in Fulbe family herds are complex (Bonfiglioli 1988; Dupire 1962, 1970; Stenning 1959; see also Diallo and Pelican in this volume). Different people can have different property rights over the same animal. Members of a patrilineage have moral claims over a cow called helooye because she is a descendant of a cattle lineage (jabbere) that has been in the human lineage for generations. The household head with a cow of this kind in his family herd cannot simply take the animal to market and sell it; other lineage members have the right to buy it first. The wife of the household head has use rights over the milk from this cow (Biriteenge), which was assigned to her by her husband’s father at the birth of her first child. Her son was given ownership rights over the same animal when his father assigned it to him as sukkilaaye (gift of a heifer from parent to child). However, the son’s ownership rights only become effective on the death of the father, who up until such time has the right of disposal over the animal. Finally, a number of animals in the herd may have been loaned or entrusted by outsiders and/ or non-resident kin (nanngaaji, goofalji, kalfiiji), so that the household has usufruct rights over these animals but not the right of disposal. Livestock ownership in Fulbe pastoral societies is an excellent illustration of the complexity of property described aptly by anthropologists, drawing from Maine, as a bundle of rights that can be ranked (Hann 1998a). Property rights over livestock can be held by individuals, families, households and lineages, and all these different corporate units can have simultaneous and overlapping rights over the animals. Owners never have absolute rights over an animal; neither are rights wholly specified or enforced (cf. North 1990: 33). In studying property rights, it is thus important to attend to ideals as well as to the practical outcome of institutional arrangements of property rights (Carrier 1998; Gulliver 1964; Hann 1998a). These property rights can also be regarded as property relations in that they govern the conduct of people within the household with respect to the use and disposition of cattle (Hann 1998a: 4).5 The parallel processes of indigenous pastoral intensification and Islamic renewal have significantly affected property relations in peri-urban family herds in multiple, interrelated ways. I have already touched upon a number of these changes above, but will discuss them in more detail below in a comparison of livestock ownership and transfers in peri-urban and agro-pastoral family herds, examining both the principles and practices of property rights over cattle.

Livestock Ownership The increasing costs of pastoral production, their distribution from household head to individual cattle owners, and the institutional changes in the economic organization of the household have affected property relations in the peri-urban family herds. In the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol, household heads own the majority of the cattle in the family herds (78 per cent), followed by their wives (7 per cent), resident children (6 per cent), resident kin (5 per cent), non-resident kin   5. And, as discussed above, these property relations are not only affected by larger economic and cultural processes, but also have implications for pastoral production within the household, i.e. a shift from milk to ‘meat’ production (Moritz 2003).

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    203 Table 9.1 Comparison of livestock ownership in two villages (in percentage)  

Peri-urban Pastoralists

Agro-pastoralists

Household head

78

37

Family 0 (undivided inheritance)

14

Wives

7

3

Children (resident only) 6

4

Resident kin

5

6

Non-resident kin

2

31

Outsiders (non-kin)

2

5



100%

100%

Livestock ownership in this table concerns nominal ownership (i.e. ownership in name only). The table does not reflect property relations in the family herd; in the agropastoral village, for example, the household head has the right of disposal over animals owned by children, which is not the case in the peri-urban village (for a discussion on the predicament of comparing livestock ownership, see Moritz 2003). The category ‘non-resident kin’ also includes children of the household head who no longer live in the village. The large discrepancy between the two villages with regard to the category ‘Family (undivided inheritance)’ is indicative of differences in the observance of Islamic inheritance codes, which prescribe that inheritance must be divided among the heirs within three to seven days of a person’s death (see Moritz 2003).

(2 per cent), and outsiders (2 per cent) (see Table 9.1). Peri-urban herds contain very few animals of non-residents (4 per cent compared to 36 per cent in agro-pastoral herds). Livestock ownership in the peri-urban village is concentrated in the hands of the household head to a greater extent than in the agro-pastoral village (78 per cent versus 37 per cent). There are several reasons for this. First, household heads are unwilling to take in animals from others, including those of their wives, because they frequently end up covering the collective (and sometimes individual) costs of animals over which they no longer have the right of disposal. Secondly, household heads are reluctant to transfer ownership rights to their children for fear of losing the right of disposal over these animals. The patrilineal and patrilocal nature of Fulbe society makes the position of wives in Fulbe households ambiguous. Women continue to remain members of their fathers’ families and households after marriage, while their children are members of their fathers’ households. As a rule, a woman first becomes invested in her husband’s and children’s family when her sons have come of age and are old enough to defend both her and their future animals against her husband’s claims. Only then does she transfer her cattle from her father’s herd to that of her husband. The majority of animals owned by women remain in the family herd of their fathers. When a woman keeps her animals in her father’s herd, she does not have to contribute to the cost of cottonseed cakes, since her animals are part of the family herd (haa nder saare). However, this also means

204  Mark Moritz that her animals are more likely to be sold by her father (or brothers) to provide for the household. When a woman keeps animals in her husband’s herd, on the other hand, they are regarded as outsider animals or na’i yaasi, and cannot readily be sold by the household head. In this case she is obliged to pay for the cottonseed cakes. Many household heads in peri-urban villages refuse to take cattle from their wives into the family herd because they are unwilling to cover the collective costs for animals they cannot sell to meet household needs. Nevertheless, the percentage of cattle owned by women is higher in the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol than in the agropastoral village (7 per cent and 3 per cent respectively). This may be a reflection of the fact that a woman’s individual property rights are more protected under Islamic codes than under previous Fulbe traditions. Cattle are sometimes owned by multiple people. The animal is then referred to as nagge mardiinge (co-owned cow). Each owner possesses half (baŋnge), a quarter (kosngal, leg), an eighth (tayre, piece of meat), or a sixteenth (laasol, a hair) of the animal, depending on the number of owners. Animals generally have multiple owners when part(s) of the animal have been given away (as sukkilaaye, hokkaange or zakat), or sold. The transfer of animal parts occurs mostly within the household. Less than 10 per cent of the animals in the peri-urban village had multiple owners, compared to 20 per cent in the agro-pastoral village. The relatively low number of co-owned cattle in the former is another indication of increasing individualization of property rights over livestock. Very few animals in the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol are owned by non-resident kin or outsiders (2 per cent each), primarily as a result of high costs. Entrusting animals in the peri-urban area means that owners must reimburse all costs incurred by the household head (i.e. herd manager). Moreover, in many cases it means that owners have to purchase cottonseed cakes, hulls and sorghum stalks, and pass them on to the herd manager, since unreliable access makes purchasing supplementary feeds time consuming and stressful. Herd managers are loath to take on these responsibilities for other people’s animals over which they have no rights of disposal. For owners, on the other hand, it is simply cheaper to entrust animals away from the peri-urban areas, where the abundance of natural forage relieves them of the burden of having to buy cottonseed cakes. The entrustment relationship is inherently fraught with tension, even more so in the peri-urban areas. Owners are continually preoccupied with the question of whether the herd manager (or herder) is taking good care of the animals and not selling them without permission. Herd managers, on the other hand, are concerned with the effort and the costs they expend for other people’s animals. The fact that animal husbandry in the peri-urban areas is more capital and labour intensive merely aggravates the reluctance of herd managers to take in outsider animals. One way to safeguard the mutual trust indispensable to the relationship of entrustment is for the owner to have minimal contact with the herd manager, and in general avoid direct enquiries about the animals. The regular expenditure contributions or reimbursements owners have to make to the herd manager lead to more frequent contact, which is ultimately detrimental to the relations of trust between owner and herd manager.

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    205 The discussion on entrustment relations shows how livestock ownership and the changes therein are directly linked to the livestock transfers through which many animals come into Fulbe family herds.

Livestock Transfers In exploring property rights in Fulbe family herds it is equally important to discuss how property rights are transferred and property relations established. It is through the transfer of livestock and rights that the herd becomes the nexus of social relations within the household, and with other pastoral households in the community. Pastoral Fulbe in the Far North Province engage in a variety of livestock transfers within and between households.6 The main livestock transfers ‘within’ the household are the gift of heifer to children (sukkilaaye), indirect dowry (sadaaki – the gift of a cow to the bride from the groom’s family), and inheritance of cattle (donaaye). There is no system of pre-inheritance gifts among agro-pastoral or periurban pastoralists in the Far North Province. The main livestock transfers ‘between’ households are loans (nanngaaye), temporary loans of a milk cow (diilaaye), entrustment (goofalye), guardianship (halfiinge), gift (hokkaange), and purchase of an animal (soodaaye). These transfers can be categorized as three forms of change in property rights: ownership change (gift, purchase), nominal ownership change (gift to child, indirect dowry, inheritance), and change of holder only (loan, loan of a milk cow, entrustment, guardianship). The parallel processes of pastoral intensification and Islamic renewal have resulted in more individual and exclusive property rights over animals, and a decrease in transfers within the household, while the increase in production costs is primarily responsible for the disappearance of transfers between households. Here I will briefly discuss these changes by comparing livestock transfers in each category in the periurban and agro-pastoral villages.

Gifts to Children Sukkilaaye (plural sukkilaaji) is the gift of a heifer to a child from its parents, namesakes or kin, and is a livestock transfer from one generation to the next; it does not take place within generations. The sukkilaaji are generally given by parents to their children. Both mothers and fathers give, and both sons and daughters receive sukkilaaji, albeit sons more often than daughters. The child can be of any age. The sukkilaaye becomes the personal property of the child huunde maako tabitinde (his/her thing for sure), meaning that in principle the offspring of the sukkilaaye in the family herd are not taken into account when the inheritance is divided among the inheritors. Sukkilaaye is the livestock transfer that comes closest to what is described as pre-inheritance in other pastoral Fulbe societies (Bonfiglioli 1988; Dupire [1962] 1996). One reason why parents give a sukkilaaye to their child is to test the latter’s risku (luck, predestination). If the heifer reproduces plentifully and the child’s cattle holdings grow, it bodes well for the future economic success of the child, and means the latter   6. Following Hunt (2001), I use the term ‘transfers’ here because the concept of transfers covers both exchanges and gifts.

206  Mark Moritz has risku. The household head can profit from the risku of this child by giving multiple animals, which would consequently reproduce more rapidly than under the ownership of the household head. Sukkilaaye are given for a variety of other reasons as well – for example, the sukkilaaye might be born on the same day as the child; or the giver of the sukkilaaye is a homonym of the child; or the giver and the parent of the child are friends. In the past, the household head retained the right of disposal over all the animals in the family herd, including the sukkilaaji of his children. The household head could sell them to provide for the family. He retained this right of disposal in principle until his death, although he gradually lost this right in practice as he ceded the daily management to his eldest son. Today household heads in the peri-urban village (but also in the agro-pastoral village) frequently complain that they have lost the right of disposal over sukkilaaye, to which children previously only had a nominal title. Children now protest the sale of their sukkilaaye and its offspring. In response, many peri-urban household heads no longer give their children sukkilaaye, which is reflected in the low percentage of sukkilaaji in the peri-urban herds compared to the agro-pastoral herds (0.6 per cent versus 3 per cent) (see Table 9.2).

Indirect Dowry Sadaaki is the indirect dowry given to the bride by the groom’s family. The Islamic tradition of sadaaki compensates women for the loss of their virginity in marriage. In the past, a bride was given a cow as sadaaki by her father-in-law from the herd of her husband’s family. The gift did not involve the physical transfer of cattle but merely a change of ownership in the husband’s family herd. The gift of a cow as indirect dowry all but vanished in the peri-urban area in the early 1960s and among agro-pastoralists in the mid-1970s. Today, fathers-in-law prefer to give the bride cash rather than cattle. In this way, the household head remains in complete control over all the animals in the family herd. The monetarization of the dowry is one example of the gradual disappearance of livestock transfers and the growing concentration of livestock ownership in the hands of the household head. Women complained that the monetarization of sadaaki meant that they had less (re-)productive capital and were thus more dependent on their husbands. Cash, they argued, disappears more swiftly than cattle, and even more so when the bride’s parents take the money to finance her dowry. This does not necessarily mean that women had more control over their sadaaki in the past. In principle, the sadaaki animal only remained the property of the husband’s family if the woman ran away and the marriage was not consummated. In all other cases, the woman owned the animal(s). In practice, however, things were different. If a woman ran away or asked for a divorce, she lost the title to her sadaaki animal and its offspring (jabbere sadaaki). On the whole, it was considered reprehensible to ask for the return of a sadaaki animal, even if the husband had initiated divorce. In practice, a woman could only retake possession of a sadaaki animal when her husband died. In many cases, women did not even know they had been given an animal as sadaaki, or if so, which one.7   7. In some cases, the husband did not know which animal had been given to his wife as sadaaki either, since the latter was announced at a marriage ceremony at which neither groom nor bride were present.

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    207 Table 9.2 Comparison of livestock transfers in two villages

Agro-Pastoral Village

Peri-Urban Village

Livestock transfers

Households Livestock transfers Households involved involved in transfers in transfers



No.

%

No. %

No.

%

No.

%

Loan (nanngaaye)

23

6.1

6 38

0

0.0

0

0

Intergenerational gift (sukkilaaye)

1

0.3

1 6

0

0.0

0

0

Gift (hokkaange) 7 1.8 3 19 0

0.0 0 0

Loan milk cow (diilaaye)

0

0.0

0 0

0

0.0

0

0

92

24.4

10 63

8

1.5

3

50

Guardianship (halfiinge)

13

3.4

1 6

0

0.0

0

0

Purchase (soodaaye)

12 3.1 6 38 +/–100 19.2 6 100

All transfers (excluding purchase)

136

I Entrustment (goofalye) N

36.1

13 81

8

1.5

3

50

Total livestock/households 377 100.0 16 100 519

100.0 6

100

Loan (nanngaaye)

21

5.6

3 19

6

1.1

1

17

Intergenerational gift (sukkilaaye)

11

2.9

5 31

3

0.6

1

17

Gift (hokkaange)

1

0.3

1 6

1.5

0.3

2

33

Loan milk cow (diilaaye)

0

0.0

0 0

0

0

0

0

63

16.7

5 31

5

1.0

2

33

43

11.4 1 6

396

76.3

5

83

O Entrustment (goofalye) U T Guardianship (halfiinge)

All transfers

139 36.9 8 50 412 79.4 5 83

All transfers (excluding guardianship)

96 25.5 8 50 15.5 2.9 5 83

Total livestock/households 377 100.0 16 100 519

100.0 6

100

The table lists for the year 2000-2001 the number and percentage of animals that had come into the herd in each village via transfers (but not necessarily in that particular year). The number of purchased animals in the peri-urban village is an approximation; in some cases, the data is not conclusive on whether the animal in the herd or one of its ancestors was purchased. A few animals in the agro-pastoral village were counted twice, once as a loan given and once as a loan received. The peri-urban village includes both the village and the bush herd. ‘Guardianship’ is the largest category in the peri-urban village because it includes animals in bush herds entrusted to nomadic pastoralists. With the exception of the guardianship transfer, very few animals were transferred in the peri-urban village, only 2.9 per cent were given, and 1.5 per cent received (see Moritz 2003).

208  Mark Moritz Fulbe men were always reluctant to give animals as sadaaki, and some joked about how women were presented with a fictive animal named koobaaye, which comes from kooba (antelope), suggesting that women were given an antelope that had run away to the bush and disappeared (Moritz 2003).8

Loans The nannganaaye or haBBinaaye of the WoDaaBe is the quintessential livestock loan in the Fulbe literature, and its ideology has been admirably described (Bonfiglioli 1988; Dupire [1962] 1996; Scott and Gormley 1980; Stenning 1959). The following is the basic principle of the WoDaaBe nannganaaye: a heifer is loaned and only returned to the owner after it has calved three times. The recipient is allowed to keep the three offspring. Loans serve as an aid for young herders to set up their own independent household and family herd, and as a means of reconstituting a family herd after a disaster. The literature often contains an implicit assumption that the WoDaaBe nannganaaye is a common Fulbe tradition rather than that of one particular Fulbe group (Bovin 1990: 52; De Bruijn and Dijk 1995: 323). There is no evidence, however, to support these assumptions (Moritz 2002). In the nanngaaye (plural nanngaaji) tradition of Fulbe pastoralists in the Far North of Cameroon, for example, the recipient of the animal merely has usufruct rights over the animals, and no offspring are given.9 The nanngaaye does not involve a change of ownership. As one Pullo explained: an kossam kanko kussel (you [get] the milk, he [keeps] the meat). Hence the nanngaaye does not serve to support herders in setting up independent family herds since no offspring are given. The nanngaaye is given for an indeterminate period. Some owners may decide at a certain point to give a nanngaaye animal or one of its offspring to the recipient, that is, to transfer the ownership title. The recipient can then sell the animal he has taken care of as nanngaaye, and use the proceeds to cover household needs. There are several reasons why pastoralists in the Far North give nanngaaye. One of the main purposes is to assist poor people with food aid. But loans are also given for practical considerations on the part of the lender (e.g. weaning of calves, lack of corral space). I found out that an additional reason for loaning livestock to fellow villagers without animals of their own is to enable them to participate in the social life of the village (Moritz 2002). Animal husbandry is a major topic of conversation and entails a number of common everyday activities in the villages, such as herding and watering. Fulbe without animals are unable to fully participate in the social life of the village because they do not share common concerns or participate in socially meaningful daily activities. Finally, pastoralists give nanngaaye to reinforce and  8. Hoobaaye, on the other hand, is a genuine name for a cow. It comes from the same root, and means a cow with the colouring of an antelope. Men believe that women do not know the difference because cattle are not their domain. 9. Fulbe in the Far North Province of Cameroon use the terms nannganaaye (cow attached to someone) and nanngaaye (attached cow) interchangeably, as they both refer to the same thing, the loan of a cow. However, nanngaaye is also used for a variety of other animals because it literally means an attached cow (e.g. cows taken to the market are attached).

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    209 deepen friendships (enDindirgo). EnDam (love, affection) is a key component of the nanngaaye, even when it is given as food aid (waalinde nyaamdu). Today, there are practically no nanngaaye in the peri-urban village of Wuro Badaberniwol (see Table 9.2). The majority of villagers did not even know what a nanngaaye was. Only a few absentee herd owners with close ties to nomadic pastoralists and herders who still practise transhumance knew the tradition, although they do not practise it. The main reason for the absence of nanngaaye in the periurban village is the enormous cost of keeping the animals. Whoever is too poor to own animals is also too poor to feed them. If someone were to give a nanngaaye to a recipient who was poor, the owner would still have to provide supplementary feed, cover all the other expenses, and de facto continue to take care of the animal. This is incompatible with the idea of minimal contact between owner and recipient, where either loan or entrustment of animals is concerned. Some peri-urban pastoralists said that it was cheaper to sell animals than to loan them. Similarly, it was almost cheaper to buy milk at the local market than to take care of a nanngaaye cow. In short, increasing production costs have made livestock transfers more of a burden than a benefit for the recipient of the animal in the peri-urban areas. Another livestock loan is that of the diilaaye, which is a lactating cow temporarily loaned as a form of food aid. There is some overlap between the nanngaaye and the diilaaye. On occasion nanngaaye animals can effectively serve as diilaaye, but they are not presented as such. The main difference between a nanngaaye and a diilaaye is that the former is loaned for an indeterminate period, while the latter is given only for the limited period of lactation. Diilaaye are generally given to families in acute need of milk. Animals in the peri-urban village were no longer loaned as diilaaye for the same reason that nanngaaye were no longer given. However, one pastoralist regularly gave milk to a poor household with an orphaned infant.

Gifts In addition to livestock loans, Fulbe pastoralists in the Far North Province simply give each other animals with no strings attached, both within and between households. Wives give animals to their husbands and vice versa. Unlike other livestock transfers (e.g. sukkilaaye, nanngaaye, diilaaye), there is no specific term for this type of gift. Explaining these livestock transfers, the Fulbe simply said mi hokki meere non (I just gave [it] for nothing [or no reason]). They occasionally referred to the animal as hokkaange (the given cow). By and large, gifts within the household are primarily motivated by enDam (love, affection). Gifts presented to people from different households mostly serve to assist poorer kin or friends when sorghum stocks are low and/or corrals are empty. The recipient household could then either sell the animal and buy sorghum, or raise it to help rebuild a small family herd. On other occasions animals were given within the household as a form of pre-inheritance (similar to the sukkilaaye) or as compensation for work done in the household (e.g. feeding sheep, cleaning stables). Only one and a half animals were given in the periurban village, compared to seven in the agro-pastoral village (see Table 9.2).

210  Mark Moritz

Entrustment and Guardianship The last category of livestock transfers is the entrustment of animals. Entrustment is an umbrella term covering a variety of different livestock transfers – including goofalye, halfiinge, and occasionally nanngaaye – that involve a change of holder but not of ownership. Here I make a distinction between loans (nanngaaye), entrustment (goofalye) and guardianship (halfiinge), although I will also argue that there is considerable overlapping between loans and entrustment. Goofalye (plural goofalji) is the temporary entrustment of one or more animals and is similar in many ways to the nanngaaye loan. The recipient of the animal(s) has usufruct rights over the milk but is not permitted to keep any of the offspring. There are exceptions; in some cases the herder is given an animal, compensated financially, or receives a salary for the herding (Moritz 2003).10 In fact, Fulbe sometimes use the term for loan animals (nanngaaye) in referring to entrustment animals. In general, one could argue that loaned animals are transferred with the goal of supporting the receiving household head, while entrusted animals are transferred to relieve the owner of the care and management of the animals. However, in many instances, the transfer of animals, loaned or entrusted, serves both purposes, making it difficult to distinguish between the two. I have argued elsewhere that the difference between loans and entrusted animals is a matter of degree, rather than kind (Moritz 2002). In either case, the owners could be kin, friends, or both, but loans are generally associated with closer friendship and kin ties. When a large number of animals are transferred, it is most likely a case of entrustment. When the benefits for the recipient are greater than for the owner, it is more likely to be a loan. When the owner compensates the recipient household head for maintenance costs (by giving an annual amount or a percentage of the sale price when the animal is sold), the animals are entrusted. However, if there is no compensation, the animals could be either loaned or entrusted. This is not the case with peri-urban pastoralists, where costs for entrusted animals always have to be reimbursed. In both cases, the recipient household has usufruct rights over milk, and the transfer is for an indeterminate period. The owner can legitimately take back the animals at any time, although it would be frowned upon (by the larger community) if this were to happen without warning or provocation, particularly when the recipient household is dependent on the milk of the animal(s). There were few entrusted animals (goofalye) in the herds of peri-urban pastoralists (see Table 9.2). It was simply too expensive for non-pastoralists to entrust animals in the peri-urban area, although the costs were comparatively lower for them than for the peri-urban pastoralists, since they were not obliged to cover the total expenditure for their animals. As a rule they only paid the ‘individual’ costs, while the herd managers covered most if not all of the ‘collective’ costs. Owners were much better

10. This form of exchange is often associated in the literature with non-Fulbe farmers or absentee herd owners who entrust animals to impoverished herders (Thébaud 2002; Dijk 1994; White 1990). Among Fulbe pastoralists in the Far North Province the distinction between entrustment and more traditional loans is not always clear (Moritz 2002).

Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal    211 off entrusting their animals away from the peri-urban area, where cottonseed cakes were unnecessary for the survival of the cattle (Moritz 2003). The problem for many owners was to find a reliable herd manager there, who would look after the animals and not sell them without permission. This was only possible for livestock owners who had kin in the rural areas or enough animals (preferably an entire herd) to entrust to a kaliifa (guardian). The animals involved in these transfers are referred to as kalfiiji (plural of halfiinge). A halfiinge entrustment is more formal and institutionalized than a goofalye entrustment. The distinguishing feature of this exchange is the involvement of a guardian or kaliifa, who is responsible for the animals and supervises the herder. Pastoralists often spoke of ‘the book’ (the Koran) when they referred to this form of exchange. Some people argued that under the kaliifa arrangement, the owner always remains the owner, and that the kaliifa would guard the animals entrusted to him even against claims by the owner’s children. The kaliifa is an entrustment arrangement used when the owner is absent. In such cases, the kaliifa replaces the owner and oversees the herder and the everyday management of the herd.11 By invoking the Koran in the entrustment of cattle, where trust is essential, herd owners attempt to reduce the risk of livestock losses due to theft or sales by the herder. It is the common belief and observance of the rules of Islam, including those concerning guardianship, to which herd owners appeal to reduce the transaction costs of entrustment (see also, Ensminger 1992). Many peri-urban pastoralists split their herds, keeping one part in the village (cureeji, wurooji) and entrusting the rest to nomadic pastoralists in the bush (laddeeji). Most animals entrusted to nomadic pastoralists were further entrusted to a kaliifa, usually the leader of a nomadic camp. The kaliifa in turn entrusted the animals to herders, more often than not the kaliifa’s sons or other resident kin. The kaliifa has ultimate responsibility for the herd and is answerable to the peri-urban herd owners. The herders have usufruct rights over the animals and receive a monthly salary. Apart from small gifts (gooro, literally kola nut), there are no direct material benefits for the kaliifa. Most animals transferred in the peri-urban village were kalfiiji (see Table 9.2). The main reason why peri-urban pastoralists entrust their animals to nomadic pastoralists under the guardianship of a kaliifa is to reduce the cost of raising animals. It is clearly too expensive to keep all the animals in the village and feed them with cottonseed cakes. Of all livestock transfers, guardianship carries the least social significance; it is primarily an economic and temporary relation. A number of peri-urban pastoralists constantly changed herders and/or guardians of their bush herds because they were dissatisfied with their herd management. In other livestock transfers (such as the nanngaaye and diilaaye), social relations are more important than the quality of herd management, and owners would not withdraw their animals for this reason.

11. Others elaborated that the kaliifa arrangement is made by people before they travel when it is unclear when they will return. The kaliifa is then guardian of the cattle for the duration of the trip, regardless of whether it is two months or twenty years.

212  Mark Moritz

Purchases The individualization of livestock ownership was also strengthened by household members’ investment of personal income in the purchase of cattle. On the whole, Fulbe in the Far North consider income from economic activities involving capital and/or labour investments by members of the household other than the head as private income, and not as collective income for the household. Similarly, livestock purchased with personal income is considered personal property and not the collective property of the household. This means that household heads do not have disposal rights over animals bought by other members of the household. Thus, two types of property can be distinguished within the family herd: animals bought with personal income (coodaaDi, singular soodaaye) and animals that belong to the ancestral family herd (tawtawDi) (see also, Hutchinson 1992: 305; Kelly 1990: 86). The household, or more precisely the women in the household, merely have usufruct rights over purchased animals, which have a similar status in the family herd to those owned by outsiders (yaasiiji). The individualization of livestock ownership through the investment of personal income in livestock is a common phenomenon throughout the Far North; the effect was particularly strong in the peri-urban village because far more animals in the family herd had been purchased with the income from commerce and cotton cultivation, most of them by household heads and their sons.

Conclusion Overall, few animals in the peri-urban corrals have come there through livestock transfers (most transfers are of the guardianship type, which is primarily an economic rather than a social transfer). The disappearance of livestock transfers between periurban households is mostly due to the high cost and labour demands of raising animals. High production costs in the peri-urban village have rendered loans and entrustments more of a burden than a benefit for recipients and herd managers. The disappearance of livestock transfers within the households results primarily from the household heads’ reluctance to transfer ownership titles in the family herd for fear of losing the right of disposal over these animals. Finally, purchased animals are exclusively owned by individuals and do not represent social ties of any kind or obligations to others in the community. Unlike other transfers, market exchanges with ‘strangers’ do not create social relations (Gregory 1982). The increasing number of purchased animals in the peri-urban herds also means that the herds can be read less and less as social biographies of the respective households.

Chapter 10

From Cultural Property to Market Goods: Changes in the Economic Strategies and Herd Management Rationales of Agro-Pastoral Fulbe in North West Cameroon Michaela Pelican

Introduction Cattle play an important economic and symbolic role among the Mbororo (agropastoral Fulbe) in North West Cameroon, and are considered both the basis and the source of their livelihood, social status and ethnic identity. Property rights in animals and animal products thereby form an integral part of the socio-economic organization affected by economic, ecological and political developments in recent decades. In this contribution, property rights in animals are addressed in three ways: (a) property relations understood as social relations between people, (b) property relations as social relations between people and animals, and (c) property rights in the interplay of socio-economic change and socio-cultural models. Firstly, looking at property relations primarily as social relations (Hann 1998a), property is not so much the exclusive claim of a person over a thing as the relationship between people over that same thing. Property rights are hereby understood as a ‘bundle of rights’ (Gluckman 1965), whose components can be commonly held by different people. Applying this notion to animals, one could speak of a ‘mobile bundle of rights’ (Baxter 1975: 212). Property rights in animals and animal products as held by the Mbororo are multiple and overlapping. The Mbororo distinguish between usufruct rights, nominal ownership, and rights of allocation and alienation, often held by various family members. Gender and age play a significant role in the allocation and legitimization of different property rights. Secondly, extending Hann’s (1998a) interpretation of property relations as social relations, I argue that an additional capacity exists in the case of animals as property, which is not often present in other commodities, such as land. This second dimension is the relationship between people and animals, which contains symbolic

214  Michaela Pelican and social qualities. Fulbe agro-pastoralists in North West Cameroon do not regard cattle merely as a basic means of production, but as a symbol of Mbororo identity. They conceive of their cattle as being organized in matrilineages and entertain close relationships with individual animals. The third aim of this contribution is to deal with the diverse responses and adaptations of the Mbororo to economic and ecological pressure, and to look at their impact on property rights in animals. Here I will focus on two developments, the first of which is the transformation and coexistence of different herd management rationales and their impact on inheritance patterns and the human–animal relationship. Socio-economic and ecological conditions in North West Cameroon have supported meat over milk production, urging the Mbororo to adapt their economic strategies. They have reacted to these long- and short-term pressures with economic diversification (agro-pastoralism) and increased market production. In many families part of the herd is designated for social and economic reproduction, and part for market production; these two sections underlie different herd management rationales that ultimately impact on property relations. The second development I will concentrate on is the emergence of a new ‘milksales ideology’ among the Mbororo. As a result of the decline in the economic importance of milk sales, the increasing relevance of meat production, and a stronger focus on Islamic ideology in the last decades, the practice of selling milk has become stigmatized. A new form of milk sale that recently emerged, which is considered to be compatible with a remodelled Islamic identity, is scheduled sales of milk to enterprises instead of random sales to individuals. Islamic ideology is evoked to control women’s economic activities, affecting both their property rights in animals and their animal products.

Cattle as an Icon of Pastoral Identity The Fulbe of West and Central Africa are renowned pastoralists, although many groups no longer make their living entirely from cattle herding. In Cameroon, for example, the Fulbe population can be divided into three socio-economic groups: peri-urban, agro-pastoral and nomadic. All three groups practise different forms of pastoralism, whereby pastoralism constitutes the sole means of livelihood for the nomadic Fulbe. Although they may derive their income from other economic activities, the Fulbe typically emphasize their ‘original’ identity as cattle rearers. This is expressed in their myth of origin, where Fulbe ancestors received a gift of cattle from a water spirit requiring them to lead a pastoral life (Jeffreys 1946: 141). Cattle hence constitute a cultural property that symbolizes Fulbe pastoral identity (see Hopen 1958: 26–28; Riesman 1977: 93). The Fulbe of North West Cameroon call themselves Mbororo, a term generally used to refer to pastoral Fulbe. They are divided into two sub-groups, the Jaafun and the Aku, a distinction based on cultural differences rather than descent and which emerged in the course of different historic trajectories (see Dognin 1981). In the early twentieth century, when the Mbororo began to migrate to North West Cameroon, the area was sparsely populated. A first group of immigrants belonging to the Jaafun sub-group advanced from Adamoua in search of fertile, dry-season

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    215

Map 10.1 Fulbe migration into North West Cameroon.

216  Michaela Pelican pastures and met with the local population, who were mainly subsistence farming peoples, and a few Hausa village dwellers. While the farmers occupied the valleys, the Jaafun settled in the highlands that were favourable to their pastoral economy. The second Mbororo sub-group, the Aku, entered from Nigeria in the latter half of the twentieth century and established themselves in the lowlands across the border. With growing economic success, both sub-groups began to build permanent, rainyseason camps, adopting a settlement pattern of dispersed individual compounds far from the village centres, and occupying distinct grazing and transhumance areas. Nowadays, the Mbororo constitute between 5 and 10 per cent of the population in North West Cameroon (Boutrais 1984b: 231). The distinction between Jaafun and Aku is relevant to the Mbororo. Both groups are agro-pastoralists but rear different breeds of cattle.1 The herds of the Jaafun mainly consist of red zebu (mbodeeji), which are accustomed to a transhumant lifestyle and the ecological conditions of the highlands. The Aku, on the other hand, have white zebu (daneeji), which are more resistant to hunger, thirst and trypanosomiasis, and adapt better to grazing conditions in the lowlands. A third breed common in the area is gudaali, which were imported from northern Cameroon where they were developed to suit intensive grazing methods. These are mainly reared by non-Mbororo (wealthy entrepreneurs or government workers) who are interested in market production. Although there is a tendency towards interbreeding and mixed herds, ascribing cattle breeds to groups of cattle rearers is common, and valid in the sense of an ideological tool or symbolic means of identification. The different breeds not only represent distinct pastoral systems but function at the same time as ethnic and sub-ethnic identity markers (Pelican 2006).

Property and Social Relations in the Mbororo Agro-Pastoral Economy The Agro-Pastoral Household Model The Mbororo in North West Cameroon are agro-pastoralists, supplementing cattle husbandry with subsistence farming. Mbororo compounds often consist of only one family or two to three related families (mostly a father with his independent sons or brothers). Each family represents an independent household containing the married couple, their immature children and, occasionally, dependent relatives (e.g. old parents, unmarried female relatives). Applying Stenning’s (1958) model of the pastoral household economy to the agro-pastoral context, each household denotes a ‘domestic unit’, based on a balance of family size, herd size and agricultural Research leading to this contribution was conducted from 2000 to 2002 with the support of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale. Earlier versions were presented at the workshop ‘Collective and multiple forms of property in animals: cattle, reindeer and camels’, held at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany, 19–21 August 2002, and at the Ethnicity and Identity Seminar of the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology in Oxford, U.K., 7 November 2003. I would like to thank Anatoly Khazanov and Elisabeth Hsu for their critical comments.   1. For a detailed analysis of the capacities of the different cattle breeds, see Boutrais (1995/96: 377–430).

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    217 production. This simplistic model of the family or household as a primary Mbororo production unit serves as a starting point and will be refined in the course of the following descriptions. Farming is primarily intended for subsistence. Most Mbororo, especially the Jaafun, have a strong aversion to the physical constraints entailed in farming (see Botte and Schmitz 1994: 8; Boesen 1996: 193–95). Many households employ workers (local farmers) to carry out labour-intensive chores, such as tilling the soil. The rest of the work is done by men and children. Women are involved in planting and harvesting only, since their main preoccupation is to take care of the household and the children (Pelican 1999: 41–49). Farm sizes are limited, on the one hand, by the number of workers available, be it in terms of family members or paid labourers. On the other hand, the Cameroonian government controls farming activities within the grazing area by formally restricting the farm size allocated to Mbororo families to 0.4 ha (Boutrais 1995/96: 797). Thirdly, and most significantly, the amount of agricultural production is defined by the relevance and reputation attributed to farming within each household or family. Looking at the primary source of livelihood (and Mbororo identity), namely the herd, it is helpful to differentiate the socio-economic strata within Mbororo society. The Mbororo population in North West Cameroon is highly heterogeneous in terms of possession and wealth. While many of the early immigrants benefited from the favourable grazing conditions and prospered, some lost many of their animals in the course of conflicts and disputes with farming neighbours, others due to mismanagement or cattle diseases. Furthermore, there was an initial difference in terms of wealth between the Jaafun and the Aku. Most of the latter migrated to North West Cameroon in response to drought and pasture shortage, and had to build up new herds, while many Jaafun were already prosperous and well established. Nevertheless, the levelling factors of individual capacities and luck or misfortune (a concept stressed by the Mbororo themselves) have reduced the gap between Jaafun and Aku. Another important aspect is the increasing imbalance between herd and family size. While the limited carrying capacity of pastures adversely affects animal reproduction and herd sizes, the Mbororo aim at large families with four wives (following Islamic standards) and numerous children (Boutrais 1984b: 250–51; Boutrais 1995/96: 925–36). The impact of this imbalance between ecological factors and family ideology is now being felt by many Mbororo youths, who will inherit only a few animals or none at all. In consequence, there is a broad span from wealthy families with several hundred animals to very poor households with no cattle whatsoever. Bearing that in mind, the average herd size can be estimated at 30–50 animals for a household of five to ten persons.2 Family members share pastoral duties (see Boesen 1996; Pelican 1999: 41–50), with herding as the domain of youth. Over the last decade, Mbororo parents have recognized the need to send at least some of their children to school, albeit the first   2. Based on quantitative information collected among the pastoral Gwandu Fulbe in Northern Nigeria in 1953, Hopen (1958: 61–67) calculated an average herd size of 20–35 animals for a household of three to seven persons.

218  Michaela Pelican and second born are made responsible for herding the cattle. In wealthy families the herd is split into several groups, and herding duties are taken over by hired herdsmen. Milking is done by women, men and children. For the Jaafun, milking is a female chore. Men control their wives’ milking habits indirectly via the attribution of milking animals. In Aku families, on the other hand, milking is often carried out by men. However, milk sales are more common and acceptable among the Aku than among the Jaafun, and the control over property rights to milk and milk sales can take much more subtle forms than the question of who actually milks the cows (see Pelican 2004). Herd management is the privilege of the household head. He carries the responsibility for the well-being of the herd in terms of medical treatment, pasture improvement, transhumance, and so on. Furthermore, he is involved in all economic cattle transactions that belong to his household, including the animals of his wives and dependent children. As we know from several ethnographies (Hopen 1958; Dupire [1962] 1996; St. Croix [1945] 1972; Waters-Bayer 1988; Stenning [1959] 1994, to name but a few), pastoral Fulbe sustain their livelihood largely by barter or the sale of animal products.3 Among the Mbororo in North West Cameroon, sales of milk and milk products are limited (Pelican 1999: 106–31; Pelican 2004). Family subsistence is based on food products from the household farm and the sale of animals. Minor expenditures related to cooking (e.g. spices, kerosene, matches) might be covered by a woman’s limited income from selling milk or eggs. Large expenditures (e.g. clothes, school fees, building work, medical care, taxes) are financed by the sale of animals. Financial expenditures have increased over the years due to family enlargement, expansion of the market economy, rising living standards, and the emergence of new civic requirements. Consequently, constraints on the herd as the basic economic resource are considerable. Returning to the above model of the Mbororo family or domestic unit, we see that the balance between family, herd and farm is not so much defined in quantitative terms of a cyclical ratio as Stenning (1958) proposed for the pastoral Fulbe in Northern Nigeria. Instead, internal and external factors such as wealth, changing cultural and religious ideals, new requirements and economic niches have to be taken into account to understand the complex balance of the family-herd-farm triangle.

Multiple and Overlapping Property Rights in Animals Embedded in the socio-economic organization of the Mbororo are property relations that reflect, and at the same time create or reaffirm, social relations (Bonfiglioli 1988: 177). The following model illustrates the overall situation of multiple and overlapping property rights in an animal, a pre-inherited cow, and its products:

  3. For a critical assessment of the general relevance of milk sales and barter among Fulbe, see Buhl and Homewood (2000).

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    219

Figure 10.1 Model of multiple and overlapping property rights. Drawing by Günther Schlee.

Nominal ownership, usufruct rights and ultimate rights of allocation and alienation are vested in different people: the immature son in the above illustration is the nominal owner of the cow. Children are occasionally entitled to animals at birth. Boys most frequently receive at least one cow at circumcision. Girls are optionally given an animal at marriage or after weaning the first child. The son, as the nominal owner, is entitled to receive ultimate rights of control over the animal and its offspring in the future, that is when the household head agrees that he may build up his own family based on an independent herd. As long as the father does not hand over the ultimate rights of allocation and alienation, the son cannot legitimately make use of his ownership rights. Instead, it is the household head who is in charge of managing the cow as part of the family herd. In a case of pressing financial need, he may even sell the son’s cow. Although he is morally required to at least inform the latter and replace the animal as soon as possible, this obligation is often overlooked, especially if the family is already in financial difficulties. Similar to the situation of the immature son, women are entitled to usufruct rights to their own cattle and the animals of their children, but the final right and responsibility to allocate lies with the household head. It should be kept in mind here that the herd is the economic basis for the entire family or household. All three parties – the nominal owner, the holder of usufruct rights and the herd manager – are supposed to work towards the well-being of the family and the herd. Individual interests and rights come second. Male authority over females and minors is based on the Mbororo assumption – reinforced by ‘Islamic’ ideology – that men are intellectually superior to women (Hopen 1958: 104; Dupire 1963: 50; VerEecke 1989: 59; Riesman 1992: 85–86),4 and on the respective 4. The Fulbe concept of male authority over women and minors is similar to that of the Maasai, described and analysed by Llewelyn-Davies (1981), but differs in certain respects. The Maasai

220  Michaela Pelican division of labour. Men in their function as herd managers are in continuous contact with their animals and the wider environment, and are well informed about market opportunities and prices. Hence they know best when and where which animal can be sold at a profit. The structurally superior position of men, husbands and fathers enables the individual to abuse his authority to the detriment of his dependents. A possible reaction to such irresponsible behaviour might be the woman’s departure in search of a better husband (Hopen 1958: 107–8; Dupire 1963: 69–70; Stenning [1959] 1994: 181–93). The frequency of divorce among the Mbororo in North West Cameroon seems to have lessened with the growing relevance of Islamic values and procedures. At the same time, Islamic ideology emphasizes a husband’s responsibility for the well-being of the family, a moral obligation that weighs heavily on the household head. Minors likewise have strategies to challenge their father’s authority. They often ignore the advice of their elders. They ‘steal’ and sell animals from their father’s herd, hang around in village bars, engage in love affairs and fights, and disappear temporarily to explore the world as hired herdsmen (Boutrais 1995/96: 968). All this is considered improper for a Pullo (sing. of Fulbe), if not illegitimate. At the same time, it is excused and accepted as the typical behaviour of youth. Apart from retaining control over animals or resorting to legal prosecution, elders have in fact no practical means of punishing youths or reinforcing their authority over them (Riesman 1977: 205–6). The former is rarely applied since it is considered too severe a punishment, and humiliating for both the parents and the community.

Women’s Perspectives on Property Rights in Animals Detailed analysis of women’s property rights in animals and animal products is presented by Dupire (1963: 77–85) for the Wodaabe (nomadic Fulbe) in Niger, where women seem to enjoy greater economic independence than among the agropastoral Mbororo in North West Cameroon. Some Mbororo women own animals, for the most part smallstock and chicken, but also cattle. These are mainly daughters of wealthy families who are given cows by their parents, or inherit them following Islamic rules. The latter is quite exceptional, since Islamic inheritance patterns are often altered or ignored. One example is the case of the late Ardo Affang, who left four wives, forty-six close relatives and a herd of 380 animals. His mature children, one of whom acts as an assistant to the regional alkali (Islamic) court, decided to divide the animals in the following way: the elder brothers were given twenty-eight head of cattle each, the younger ones twenty-four; unmarried daughters received three animals, while wives and married daughters were given one cow each. This system of dividing the deceased’s property did not follow an Islamic inheritance pattern, whereby daughters are entitled to half the amount inherited by sons. On

notion of male and female is closely linked to their age-grade organization, whereby men are organized in three categories, women in only two. The fact that the third, superior category does not exist for women makes them subordinate to men, as expressed in the Maasai concept of property that entails commodities, animals and humans. Similarly, the Fulbe see women as subordinate to male authority, but do not have such a strong notion of ‘women as men’s property’, and nor do they believe that women should not own animals.

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    221 the other hand, the female relatives were at least considered.5 As Ardo Affang’s eldest son pointed out, the outcome was the result of internal family negotiations, and had they not reached a consensus the herd would have been divided according to Islamic rules. In most cases parents endow their children with nominal ownership rights in animals during their lifetime. Boys are given preference over girls, since the animals of the son form the economic basis for his future family. The daughter’s cows, on the other hand, serve as ‘social insurance’ to secure her well-being should the husband fail, and – to a limited degree – as a symbol of her social status (coming from a wealthy family).6 Giving cattle to sons is therefore an essential contribution to the reproduction of the family, while giving cattle to daughters is optional. In the past, the gift of a cow to the bride, known as fute in Fulfulde, was part of the dowry.7 Nowadays, it has been replaced by a relatively small sum of money (FCFA 5,000–10,000)8 for the bride’s personal disposal. Informants argue that the gift of a cow is problematic because disagreement on the question of whether the fute should be returned is likely to arise in the case of divorce. Money, on the other hand, is a transient gift and obviously soon a thing of the past. A wealthy or considerate husband may give his wife an animal, such as when she returns from her parents after spending two years there before weaning her first child. Another option is for a woman to invest in her own animals – a somewhat rare strategy pursued by wealthy women. Animals given to a woman by her relatives normally stay in the father’s or brother’s herd until she is considered to have finally settled, which can be decades after her marriage. Those received from her husband are integrated in the family herd. She can entrust any cattle she buys to a person of her choice. If she has a great number of them she might entrust them to her son or employ a herdsman. Generally, a woman has no direct control over her cattle property. It is only through the guardianship of her relatives or husband that she has access. They, for their part, are supposed to administer the woman’s animals in her interest. Only secondarily and circumstantially are they authorized to make use of her cattle to support the family, but on no account for their personal benefit. Although women may have an obvious interest in protecting their individual property and using it for their own purposes (e.g. to buy clothes, visit relatives, invest in cattle, pilgrimage), primarily – not unlike men – they are supposed to use their cattle for the reproduction of the social unit; to participate in social

 5. Similar to the situation described by Buhl and Homewood (2000: 215) for the Fulbe in Burkina Faso, Mbororo women are rarely aware of nor do they claim their rightful Islamic inheritance.   6. Bridewealth in the form of furniture, pans, calabashes, clothes, etc., is the primary indicator of a woman’s social background and is put on display in her house, where she receives guests and friends (see also Dupire 1963: 84–85). Cattle, on the other hand, cannot be displayed, and Fulbe strictly refrain from quantifying their animals (see Pouillon 1988).   7. Diallo (in this volume) lists the different categories of animal property for women, men and children in relation to context and source of acquisition. See also Dupire (1963: 81) and Moritz (in this volume).   8. Approximately €7.50–15.00. FCFA stands for ‘Franc Communauté Financière Africaine’.

222  Michaela Pelican activities (e.g. to buy bridewealth for daughters and nieces), to sustain the family in times of hardship, and to hand over cattle to their children.

Individual and Communal Property in Animals The distinction between individual and communal property – by communal property I mean goods that are supposed to serve the interests of a community – does not proceed along the male/female axis. Instead, it is dependent on the type of animal property involved. Cattle are communal goods that entail a system of multiple property rights. Smallstock (sheep and goats), chickens and horses, on the other hand, are individually owned animals, where the full bundle of property rights is vested in one person.9 They have no symbolic value for the Mbororo in terms of pastoral identity, but are primarily of economic importance (Spencer 1973: 79–80) and used in gift exchange. The owner of any one of these animals, be it man, woman or child, has the ultimate right over its allocation and alienation without control or mediation by another person. Chickens are mainly considered the property of women and children, and are sold occasionally at the weekly market. Men also own chickens, which are normally reserved as a delicacy for special occasions, such as entertaining guests. Horses are only common in the highlands, where climatic conditions support horse rearing. The men and youths who own them use them for transport. The Mbororo seldom rear goats, but every household has a herd of sheep looked after by children and youths. Sheep meat is part of most ceremonial occasions (e.g. the end of Ramadan, child naming, marriage). In many instances it replaces the slaughtering of a cow, which due to economic hardship is now a rarity. It is common for children (boys and girls) to receive sheep instead of or in addition to cows from their parents and relatives. Hence the social value and ritual utility attached to sheep places them between cattle, as communal and symbolic property, and chickens or horses as individual and secular property.

Women’s Rights in Animal Products Animal products can be categorized in the same way as animals, into communal and individual goods that entail respective property rights. The two principal animal products relevant for the Mbororo in North West Cameroon are cow’s milk and chicken eggs. Eggs are the private and exclusive property of the hen’s owner. The Mbororo are not used to eating eggs regularly, and so they are frequently sold, and the money used for personal or minor household expenditures. Eggs are one of the main sources of income for Mbororo women, especially those who are only involved in milk sales to a limited extent. ‘Fulbe women and milk’ has become a popular theme in the field of Fulbe gender studies (e.g. Waters-Bayer 1988; Kuhn 1994; Bruijn 1995; Shehu and Hassan 1995; Buhl 1999; Kameni et al. 1999; Buhl and Homewood 2000). Elsewhere I have engaged with authors’ contributions in more detail (Pelican 1999:   9. For a comparison of the functions and relevance of large and smallstock, see also Ingold (1980: 186).

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    223 75–77; Pelican 2004). At this point I will focus on the structural aspects of Mbororo women’s rights to milk and milk sales. Milk, like cows, is a communal commodity that entails multiple property rights and serves the needs of the family. The Mbororo often stress the nutritional and symbolic value of milk. Although its role is not as significant as in nomadic Fulbe societies (St. Croix 1972), milk is a central symbol representing female pastoral identity and featuring in self-identification and ascription by others. Despite the close link between women and milk, men play a significant role in controlling their access to it. It is the privilege and responsibility of the household head to allocate milk cows. He decides which animal should be milked and for how long. Furthermore, men are involved in the milking itself and have a say in how intensively cows should be milked. Overall, the rule applies that the milkman or -woman should create a balance between the calf’s need for milk and that of the people (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 23). The milk obtained is then handed over to the women, who decide on its further use. Women’s decision making is guided by social norms and moral obligations in the sense that milk first and foremost serves to satisfy the needs of the family. Each member is entitled to a share of the milk. In the case of scarcity, children are privileged over adults. Secondly, milk plays an important role in the symbolic reproduction of social relations. Women are supposed to provide milk for ritual or ceremonial use. Finally, only after the needs of family members, relatives or guests have been satisfied, is a woman free to dispose of the surplus at her own discretion. Women’s decision making over the use of milk and men’s management of the herd follow similar criteria. Both are guided by social norms and moral obligations to serve communal above individual interests. Family members’ entitlement and relatives’ limited rights in milk or animals represent a situation of multiple and overlapping property rights that at the same time reproduce social relations. At this point I will turn from looking at property rights in animals and animal products to relations between people and animals. The focus will thereby shift from social structure to actual relationships, implying a more actor-oriented approach.

Human–Animal Relations The theme of human–animal relations has mainly been dealt with in the context of hunter-gatherer studies (Ingold 2000: 61–76; Donahoe in this volume). Contributions focusing on the particular relationship between Fulbe and cattle are quite rare (Bartelsmeier 2001; Baroin and Boutrais 1999). In this section I will describe how the Mbororo perceive the social structure of their herds and the characteristics they attribute to their cattle. It is important to note that their relationship with other domesticated animals, such as goats, sheep or horses, is of a different, less personalized nature. One aspect that reflects the human–animal relationship is the naming system. Settled Fulbe (e.g. in the Far North of Cameroon) and pastoral Fulbe (e.g. the Mbororo in North West Cameroon) have distinct naming systems. The Mbororo perceive cattle as socially organized in matrilineages. Since the calf’s father cannot be clearly identified, descent is derived from the mother animal. All calves are given the same name as their mothers – in other words, they bear a lineage name. Settled Fulbe,

224  Michaela Pelican on the other hand, follow a different system in which calves are named individually with reference to physical features (e.g. fur colour) or social context (e.g. circumstances of acquisition) (de Wolf 1985). These naming systems are embedded in different economic backgrounds. The peri-urban Fulbe in the Far North practise an intensified pastoral system that includes feeding the animals with costly cottonseed cakes. Their pastoral economy, although primarily a subsistence economy, is immersed in market production (Moritz in this volume). Among the Mbororo in North West Cameroon the herd is perceived as the social and economic basis of their livelihood; their pastoral system is oriented towards social reproduction. This is clearly a simplified model of reality, since both perspectives coexist in the two communities (peri-urban and agropastoral Fulbe). It is largely a question of emphasis. Contemporary patterns of herd composition in North West Cameroon illustrate how the two herd management rationales and the respective naming systems coexist. Herds are normally made up of various cattle lineages. Most of the animals are transmitted within the family, that is to say, cattle lineages (a cow including her future offspring) are allocated to children. In addition to animals with lineage names, the herd includes cows with individual names and ones with no names at all. These animals are often purchased from cattle traders, and in the course of market transactions their lineage identification gets lost. The coexistence of the two naming systems is interpreted here as a sign of changing herd management rationales embedded in the context of increasing market orientation. The second aspect of human–animal relations I want to focus on is the Mbororo perception of animal individuality or personhood. The concept of the person in relation to animals was first discussed by Fortes (1987: 247–86). He reports that the Tallensi attribute personhood to crocodiles that live in a particular sacred pool and are thought to serve as ‘living shrines’ for the clan ancestors. Animals and crocodiles in general, however, are not perceived as ‘persons’ since they lack social organization and morality. Unlike the Tallensi, the Mbororo in North West Cameroon do not associate religious beliefs with animals. Yet, as we will see below, they attribute forms of social organization to their cattle. Ingold (2000: 69–75, 90–92) introduced the notion of ‘human and non-human persons’ in the context of hunter-gatherer communities and their perception of the environment. He argues that for huntergatherers the relationship between humans and animals is based on trust; both sides are seen as active parties who base their action on prior experience of mutual engagement in a shared environment. The pastoralist relationship with animals, on the other hand, is characterized by domination. Animals are disempowered and presumed to lack the capacity to reciprocate. In a second step, Ingold distinguishes between milch and carnivorous pastoralists, whose relationships with their animals differ significantly in terms of intimacy (1980: 114, 176). He argues, for example, that human–animal relations among the Tungus-speaking milch pastoralists are much closer and more intimate than among the carnivorous Chukchi, who may not even recognize all their animals (ibid. 114). Here it is vital to take into account that the size of herds among Chukchi and Tungus-speaking pastoralists differs considerably (Khazanov, personal communication July 2003). Basically I agree with Ingold’s categories, but looking at my material I tend to question his strong divide

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    225 between hunter-gatherer and pastoralist attitudes towards animals, and propose to see it as a continuum. As will be illustrated in the following, the Mbororo oscillate between dominating cattle by force and eliminating any unwelcome characteristics by selling the respective animals, on the one hand, and respecting the cows’ individuality or personhood, on the other.10 The Mbororo in North West Cameroon attribute characteristics of personhood to cattle. First of all, cattle are ascribed social relations and seen as organized in matrilineages, in contrast to the Mbororo, who follow a patrilineal descent system.11 It is also maintained that the red and white zebu breeds, analogous to the Mbororo sub-groups Jaafun and Aku, find it difficult to get along with each other when sharing the same environment. This is partly explained by different grazing patterns, and partly in terms of group aversion. Secondly, cattle are ascribed individual characters. Cows are seen as intelligent, wilful beings with individual preferences and needs (see also Riesman 1977: 255; 1984: 181; Boesen 1996: 197). Milk cows are said to recognize the milkman or milkwoman from their clothing and to have clear preferences in this respect. Also, if a cow does not like someone it could intentionally stop the milk flow. This comes very close to Ingold’s conception of animal–human relations within hunter-gatherer societies, where the hunter’s success is attributed to his good relations with wild animals (Ingold 2000: 71). Cattle are also claimed to be cunning and tenacious. A group of cattle passing an attractive farm during the day might silently sneak back there, feed themselves and return before dawn without leaving a trace. In addition, it is often argued that it is the cattle, and not the herdsmen, who want to go on transhumance. When the grass gets dry and scarce they recall better pastures in the transhumance area and take off. To stop animals from going on transhumance is said to be a difficult task and frequently requires a change of pastoral strategies from one animal generation to the next. Equivalent to human lineages, cattle are ascribed ‘lineage-inborn’ particularities.12 Some cattle lineages are said to exhibit characteristics such as stubbornness or a higher production rate. These can be partly explained by genetic predisposition. The Fulbe, however, conceptualize it in different terms. Looking at personal relationships with animals, Mbororo ideas about individual dispositions of both animals and people are integral. The central notion here of ‘having a good hand for cattle’ can be interpreted in two ways. On the abstract level, ‘having a good hand’ implies that someone usually has luck with pastoral activities. The contrary notion is frequently invoked in the context of abrupt or frequent loss of animals that cannot be explained in practical terms. On the other hand, ‘having a good hand for cattle’ also means that someone is ‘naturally talented’ in dealing with animals. Let us take the example of the brothers Idi and Egih. Both grew up with cattle and became experienced herdsmen and herd managers. But while Idi is 10. Spittler (1983: 68–72) argues similarly for the Tuareg. 11. Similarly Schlee (1997: 583) reports that Rendille and Gabbra in East Africa perceive their camel herds as reflecting human society. While camels are organized in matriclans, Rendille and Gabbra clans are patrilineal. 12. Schlee (1994b: 133–37) introduces the term ‘ethnobiological categories’, into which the ascription to humans of ‘lineage-inborn’ characteristics would fall.

226  Michaela Pelican integrated and fully accepted by the animals in his herd, Egih faces resistance and has to tie the animals down by force in order to remove ticks. Intimate relationships between young men and women and their animals are based on repeated interaction and familiarity with each other (Ingold 2000: 72). Some even pride themselves on being able to recognize their personal cow’s milk by its taste. Adult men, on the other hand, are not supposed to express feelings. They conceive their relationship with animals in social and economic terms rather than as a matter of personal relations. Finally, human–animal relations have a feedback effect on property relations. A cattle’s character or dislikes may hamper the exertion of property rights (e.g. a cow that stops its milk flow) and lead to expropriation, such as the sale of troublesome animals. At the same time individual predispositions can equally affect property rights, as in the case of one particular son, who is said to ‘have an unlucky hand’ and is therefore no longer given any cattle.

Pastoralists as Part of Wider Society: Impacts on Pastoral Economy and Property Rights in Animals and Animal Products In the previous sections I have dealt with property rights in animals and human– animal relations in an ahistorical and structural perspective. In this section, I will attempt to place pastoralist contemporary socio-economic strategies in the wider historic, economic and political context. My interest here lies in Mbororo reactions and adaptations to the demands of the market economy, and how these feed back into property relations. Colonial and postcolonial governments, as well as regional, national and international NGOs, have been influential agents in the realm of the pastoral economy. With their policies and programmes, they have aimed at inducing the Mbororo to change from extensive to intensive pastoral systems – to rationalize and optimize their mode of production in accordance with the principles of the market economy and ecological sustainability. As Moritz (in this volume) illustrates for the peri-urban Fulbe in Cameroon’s Far North, ecological conditions – influenced by the expansion of agriculture and the subsequent pressure on rangelands – made intensification necessary. Pastoral intensification is coupled with the Islamic ideology of private property, which ultimately supports the individualization of livestock ownership. Ecological and economic conditions, as well as the interpretation and instrumentalization of Islamic ideology, take different forms in North West Cameroon. In the following I will concentrate on two areas of the pastoral economy, namely herd management and milk sales, and examine the interplay of market incentives, Islamic ideology, and ‘traditional’ economic practices and property relations.

Market Economy in North West Cameroon North West Cameroon, with its modest climate and fertile soil, has long been a centre of commerce and market production. Long-distance trade was vital to the area even before colonialism (Warnier 1993). During the colonial period the British introduced cash crops to local farmers and put up cattle markets in the rural areas, encouraging farmers and herders alike to produce for the local, regional and national

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    227 markets. Today, the Mbororo are heavily involved in market production and cattle trade. Apart from civil servants and a few wealthy or enterprising members of neighbouring farming communities, the Mbororo are the main rearers of cattle in the area. They not only supply the local markets, but also respond to regional and national demands (Pelican 2004, 2006). Cattle trade is well organized throughout the country and controlled by the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries. In the North West Region, local demand for milk and meat is relatively low, taking into account that meat is considered a luxury and that farmers are not accustomed to milk consumption. On the national level, demand for meat is quite high since cattle husbandry is concentrated in the northern part of the country. The North West Region is one of the main suppliers of cattle to the urban centres in the south. Coexistence of Different Herd Management Rationales The Mbororo engagement in the market economy has impacted on their herd management rationales. Mbororo herds are now made up of inherited as well as acquired animals, as illustrated by the coexistence of different naming systems. Inherited cattle lineages, the females of which are not usually sold, still constitute at least half of the herd in most families. Individually named animals are mainly young bulls bought for the purpose of being raised, fattened and sold for profit. The turnover of animals in terms of sales and acquisitions has definitely increased in recent decades. Market production has been compatible with the ‘traditional’ pastoral practices oriented towards social and economic reproduction, in so far as both herd management rationales coexist; each is applied to the respective section of the herd. This system has been possible as a result of favourable ecological conditions enabling the Mbororo to build up their herds. They had successfully practised extensive pastoralism for quite some time before the long-term effects of the growing human and animal populations (such as severe resource competition, pasture deterioration, and frequent farmer–herder conflicts) came to bear upon them. Despite their engagement in market production, most Mbororo are reluctant to apply pastoral intensification methods. Attempts to alter pastoralist grazing patterns had already been made during the colonial period (Njeuma and Awasom 1988; Boutrais 1994/95: 772–802). Governmental and non-governmental organizations have introduced programmes and training to sensitize cattle rearers to pasture improvement (e.g. planting fodder grass) and selective breeding. At the moment these methods are mainly being applied by non-Mbororo cattle owners. Although the Mbororo are concerned about the effects of pasture deterioration, they are somewhat daunted by the labour constraints and financial expenditure involved in pastoral intensification. They prefer instead to supplement extensive pastoralism with additional activities, such as agriculture or trade, to secure and reproduce their ‘socio-economic capital’ (i.e. their herds). The two Mbororo sub-groups take a slightly different approach to economic diversification. The Aku had practised agro-pastoralism in their previous settlements in Nigeria and considered subsistence farming an integral part of their economy. The Jaafun, on the other hand, see their engagement in agriculture as contingent upon their economic situation and as an

228  Michaela Pelican activity of low esteem. Interestingly, it is the Jaafun women who state an interest in learning farming or gardening for their personal supply as well as for marketing. This is an exceptional case compared to most other Fulbe groups in West Africa. The women of the Jallube (pastoral Fulbe) in Central Mali, for example, whose herds were severely decimated in the course of the Sahel drought, refuse to engage in agriculture even in the face of hunger and death (Bruijn 1995). The Jaafun women’s interest in farming and especially gardening has to be interpreted against the background of NGO programmes and the local (farming) context of agriculture as being chiefly a female activity (Pelican 1999: 113–15). Summarizing the developments of the pastoral economy of the Mbororo in North West Cameroon, there is a clear trend towards market production and economic diversification. So far, changing herd management rationales and the shift to agropastoralism have been understood and justified within the frame of the ‘traditional’ pastoral economy. Islamic ideology has not been invoked to support individualization of animal property (Moritz in this volume) or to condemn female involvement in agricultural activities (as is common among the Muslim Hausa in the research area). The situation is quite different when it comes to the sale of milk and milk products. This area of the pastoral economy has become conflated with antagonistic interpretations of pastoral and Islamic ideologies, and is a key issue in the debate on what it means to be an ‘authentic Pullo’ (sing. of Fulbe) or a ‘good Muslim’. Local Milk Marketing, Regional Milk Industries and Islamic Ideology When the Mbororo arrived in North West Cameroon they encountered a favourable environment but were equally confronted with a lack of demand for milk products. The local farming population was not familiar with the consumption of milk. The colonial administrators and missionaries – along with a negligible Hausa minority – were the chief customers of the Mbororo. Subsequent colonial and postcolonial attempts by the government and NGOs to educate the population in the nutritional quality of milk products and to build up a regional milk industry were only partly successful, and generally benefited external investors. Most milk products available in North West Cameroon (e.g. powdered or canned milk) are imported from European countries or are regionally produced (e.g. sterilized yoghurt) on the basis of imported products. On the whole, milk products are still considered solely as supplementary food and valued by the educated urban classes, who put considerable emphasis on the sterility and quality of their nutrition. The customers who buy milk products directly from the Mbororo are mostly Hausa village dwellers and a few farmers who have come to appreciate milk as a snack for their children or as puppy feed. This lack of demand for milk products impacted on Mbororo economic organization. Similar to the issue of agricultural involvement, the two sub-groups developed slightly different strategies that likewise differ in the cultural or ideological frames of explanation and justification invoked. The economic success of the Jaafun coincided with sedentarization and the subsequent reinterpretation of their Islamic identity. Nowadays, they portray themselves as established cattle rearers and ‘modern’ Muslims who have achieved a comfortable lifestyle. Subsequently, the practice of selling milk by women going from household to household advertising

From Cultural Property to Market Goods    229 milk products became a rarity and was stigmatized as a symbol of backwardness, economic failure, and lack of Muslim solemnity (Boutrais 1995/96: 960–63; Pelican 1999: 120–25). The Aku, on the other hand, only arrived when the pastoral economy of the Jaafun had begun to decline as a result of overgrazing and increased population density. They see themselves as the ‘true’ bearers of Fulbe identity and Fulbe culture, and emphasize the integral social and economic role of milk. Many of the Aku prefer to be stigmatized as ‘bad Muslims’ than to abandon the complementary pastoral income sources of milk and cattle sales. The matter cannot be boiled down to the fact that Aku women sell milk and Jaafun women do not. There are families in both groups that accept – at least contingently – the notion of selling milk products. In others, the Islamic ideology that condemns the uncontrolled movement of women is placed above economic constraints, leading to the search for alternative income strategies, such as gardening. In fact, the problem is not the idea of selling milk but the practices it entails. In the 1990s, new attempts to build up a regional milk industry were undertaken in the context of increased NGO activities (Pelican 2004). A private internationally subsidized enterprise engaged a number of Mbororo families living near the regional capital, and negotiated the modalities of a regular supply, transport and payment. In most families women supply the milk and receive payment. The milk is collected from a central gathering point in the nearby village, so that many women can conveniently send their children or occasionally take the short trip themselves. Many Mbororo consider this system of milk marketing more profitable and also more suitable to their contemporary lifestyle. In practice it saves women time and energy that would otherwise be spent on going around from compound to compound. Ideologically it relieves them of having to ask for permission (a state of dependency inherently perceived as humiliating), and allows them to go about their economic business without contradicting Islamic norms. With increasing constraints on the pastoral economy – owing to ecological and demographic factors as well as to market production – women’s income from milk sales has once again become a strategy to be considered. Taking into account, however, that the structures and ideologies that dominate the national and regional economy encourage meat above milk production and support the import of milk products, the above-mentioned model of ‘focused’ milk sales is not feasible. Those who nevertheless rely on milk sales in the ‘old-fashioned way’ as a supplement to cattle sales have to bear the criticism of ignoring Muslim norms.

Conclusion Returning to the theme of property rights in animals, we can see that changes in herd management rationales and economic practices feed back into both property and social relations. Animals belonging to inherited lineages are preserved as family property for as long as possible, thereby reflecting and strengthening social relations between the various holders of property rights. Animals acquired for market production, on the other hand, do not serve to reproduce social relations but support the individualization of property rights. Such animals are only usefully handed over, for example from father to son, if the latter is given full ownership rights enabling

230  Michaela Pelican him to dispose of them whenever profitable. This conflicts with the pre-inheritance system and leads to prolonging a father’s control over the family property (Boutrais 1995/96: 969, and Moritz in this volume). The transition from milk to meat production and the perceived absence of convenient milk marketing facilities leads to a situation in which women’s usufruct rights in milk lose economic and subsequently social relevance. Women are relying more and more on other income sources or have become interested in owning animals, be it small or even large stock, over which they can possess full ownership, as well as usufruct and disposal rights. Finally, looking at property rights in the interplay of socio-economic change and socio-cultural models – in more abstract terms, the interplay of structure and agency – in the context of Fulbe agro-pastoralists in West Africa, I would agree with Buhl and Homewood (2000: 223) that outcomes are specific and generalizations highly problematic. Even comparing Fulbe strategies within the same country – North West Cameroon and Cameroon’s Far North (see Mark Moritz in this volume) – it is evident that historical and political backgrounds, ecological and economic conditions, and the broader social setting vary significantly. In the same way in which conditions differ and even change over time, pastoral practices and ideology remain in a state of continuous flux, offering a wide variety of potential strategies and alternatives (Burnham 1999).

Chapter 11

Fulbe Pastoralists and the Changing Property Relations in Northern Ghana Steve Tonah

Introduction Fulbe pastoralists have only lived permanently in Northern Ghana since the beginning of the twentieth century. Prior to this period they seasonally moved cattle from their settlements in the Sahelian and savannah regions of Burkina Faso to Northern Ghana. However, most of them returned to their home region with the arrival of the seasonal rains. In contrast to the Fulbe, most of the agricultural groups in Northern Ghana have a longer history of settlement in the area and consider themselves to be the autochthon population. Some, like the Mamprusi and Dagomba, are known to consist of groups that, similar to the Fulbe, moved from the savannah region to their current settlement in Northern Ghana about two to three hundred years ago. Having subjugated many of the indigenous groups they encountered, these migrants took over the leadership of the large territories they managed to bring under their control, and constituted themselves as the ruling elite amongst the vanquished population (Schlottner 2000). Many of these migrant agricultural populations thus settled in areas hitherto used by the Fulbe as dry season pasture or as a safe haven for their livestock during periods of drought and crop failure. Today, the Fulbe are regarded by all agricultural groups among whom they live in Northern Ghana as ‘strangers’ and/or ‘aliens’. The first categorization is one that the Fulbe share with other migrant groups that have only recently settled in Northern Ghana. The latter categorization is, however, peculiar to the Fulbe, many of whom are still regarded as non-Ghanaians. This chapter focuses on aspects of changing property relations in Northern Ghana with respect to land and cattle. It looks at land ownership and Fulbe pastoralist access to and rights over land in the area. The chapter also examines the mode of acquisition of livestock within the Fulbe household. Ongoing privatization of land and commercialization of livestock production has led to changes in property relations, especially in the transition zone between the savannah and the forest regions. The effects of these changes on the relationship between the autochthon farmers and the Fulbe pastoralists are explored in this chapter. I shall use the term ‘ownership’ in a very broad sense, in so far as the Fulbe of Northern Ghana are concerned. Ownership often means ‘to possess’, or ‘hold as

232  Steve Tonah personal, household or collective property’. It also implicitly connotes the ability to control and dispose of such property (at will). This, however, is frequently not the case in most parts of Northern Ghana. Individuals, households or lineages can possess land or cattle but have neither direct control over the property, nor in many instances the right to dispose of such property. This chapter attempts to establish that: 1. Individual and multiple ownership of property, especially land and cattle, exist in Northern Ghana. Multiple rights in cattle and land are also widespread. 2. Ownership and rights in land and animals are by no means fixed and absolute. The hold on certain property is seasonal and frequently subject to change. Ownership of property is also reversible. An individual or household may own land or cattle, but only for a specific period. Hence ownership of property within the household or the community can change.

The Fulbe in Northern Ghana – An Overview The Fulbe in Northern Ghana are semi-sedentary pastoralists who devote a considerable proportion of household labour to animal husbandry. In addition to rearing cattle, they keep smallstock (sheep and goats) and poultry (fowls and guinea fowls). As with other Fulbe pastoralists in the West African sub-region, livestock have economic, but also social and religious significance amongst the Ghanaian Fulbe. The seasonal cultivation of grain (mainly maize and millet) to meet household demand is also a major feature of Fulbe livelihood in Northern Ghana. The basic social unit of the Fulbe is the Wuro, which is a household consisting of an adult male (usually the head of the household), his parents and wives, and his married and unmarried brothers and their children, all of whom live together in a compound. The male members of the Fulbe household are responsible for the management of the herd and grain production, while female members, in addition to their numerous domestic responsibilities, are responsible for milking the herd and minor agricultural tasks. Elderly men and women devote a considerable portion of their time to caring for the children within the compound. With the exception of the extreme north-east, where the first Fulbe migrants to Northern Ghana settled, they almost always live on the outskirts of the settlement, leaving the centre to the autochthon farming population. Only very few settlements are exclusively settled by the Fulbe. This means that in spite of the spatial distance between the Fulbe and neighbouring agricultural groups, there is close contact and social exchange between the two groups. They share the available social and economic infrastructure, such as market, wells, mosques, schools, and video houses. Another significant feature of Fulbe livelihood in Ghana is the almost universal practice of caring for cattle belonging to the host population. All Fulbe households (including the richest) manage, in addition to their own cattle, those of neighbouring agricultural groups, and an elaborate social contract regulates economic relations between the two groups.

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    233 Fulbe cattle herds come from two main sources: cattle belonging to the Fulbe household and those entrusted to the household by local farmers and stockowners. Generally, the size of a household’s cattle herd differs considerably throughout Northern Ghana. It depends on the husbandry skills of its members, as well as on their ability to mobilize cattle from their neighbours. In the Mamprusi districts, for example, herd size ranged from a minimum of 26 cattle to a maximum of 425 cattle per household. More than 70 per cent of the households had between 100 and 200 cattle, while 10 per cent had less than 100 cattle under their management. The remaining 20 per cent of households had a herd size of more than 200 cattle (Tonah 2005). On the whole, the Fulbe regard households with less than 50 cattle under their management as poor and likely to have difficulty maintaining the household. Those with more than 100 cattle are considered to be in a position to sustain the household. Households with more than 400 cattle are seen as wealthy. Poor and impoverished Fulbe households often lack a sufficient number of cattle to meet the household’s milk, grain and cash requirements throughout the year. The long dry season puts tremendous stress on poor households. At the initial stage, the household might sell smallstock to purchase grain on the market, but as their stock numbers decrease, members have to go out in search of paid employment. Some may relocate to the bush area, where they can rely on fruits to survive the dry season. Households with between 100 and 400 cattle are able a good year, when the rainfall is plentiful and spread over several months. In a normal year (with adequate rainfall), household grain production is sufficient to meet the needs of its members throughout the year. However, a bad year (when drought prevails) can jeopardize the survival of the household. The cattle herds of these households fluctuate considerably over a period of time. Agricultural households that have entrusted them with cattle would be the first to withdraw their animals during a drought and sell them at the market. A decrease in the number of cattle under their management, and by implication, a reduction in their milk production, would force a household to sell part of their own herd for survival. Once the grain harvest improves, the agricultural neighbours would begin to invest in cattle, and the number of animals entrusted to the Fulbe would increase. The Fulbe view households with more than 400 cattle as wealthy. Very few such households exist in Northern Ghana. The wealthiest households tend to be those of Fulbe community leaders, including, as a rule, the group leader (amiru), the Fulbe chief (jooro), the religious leader (Imam), and heads of Koranic schools. These figures are able to utilize their leadership position, their access and control over a large, cheap labour force and the accumulated wealth of experience in herd management to increase the number of cattle entrusted to them. Wealthy households have access to more cattle herds since they are able to compensate for any loss of cattle and can pay compensation for damage to fields or crops. Farmers and other cattle owners prefer to entrust their cattle to wealthy Fulbe households (rather than to those that are poorer) since the risk of losing their entire cattle herds is deemed extremely low. Households that are more prosperous tend to own more than half of all cattle herds under their management.

234  Steve Tonah Virtually all Fulbe households in Northern Ghana own a few dozen smallstock animals and poultry. Their numbers rarely increase because they are frequently sold to meet pressing cash needs, to purchase grain or to meet other household expenditures. Any expansion in the size of smallstock during the wet season is immediately depleted by stock sales in the course of the lean season. Generally, smallstock and poultry are kept under a completely extensive system, whereby the animals are left to roam around the settlement and the surrounding areas, and to fend for themselves. Some Fulbe provide housing for their smallstock and poultry. Where available, this is usually a small mud cob placed in the middle of the compound. Otherwise, fowls and guinea fowls are allowed to sleep on shrubs and trees located in and around the compound, using their pens only when it rains. Fulbe cattle herding and farming practices are influenced by the seasonal weather changes and environmental conditions characteristic of the West African savanna region. The Fulbe generally differentiate between two principal seasons in the year – the dry season (cheedu) lasting from November to April and the wet season (ndungu) that begins in April/May and ends in October. The dry season is further classified into two periods, yamde and debunde. Yamde refers to the months of October and November, which mark the end of the wet season and the beginning of dry season grazing, while debunde, which includes the months of December, January and February, is the period of dry season grazing proper. The wet season, on the other hand, is subdivided into the early wet period (seeto) between April and May, and the wet season proper (ndungu) that lasts from July to October (cf. Awogbade 1983: 43–45). During the wet season (May–October), pasture and water are available in abundance. Cattle are kept overnight in kraals (hoggo) located around the compound. At dawn the cattle (excluding the calves) are sent to the bush area around the settlement to enjoy the ‘soft grass’. According to the Fulbe, night dew makes the grass soft and fresh, and thus stimulates milk production. These fields are usually between three and ten kilometres away from the settlement. Cattle are brought back to the settlement after about four hours of early morning grazing. During this period herdsmen have to ensure that cattle are sent to and from their grazing areas without damaging crops planted around the compounds or in the ‘in-village’ fields. When the cattle return, they are tethered and milked by members of the household. Milking is the responsibility of the women of the household, although they may be assisted by other household members to ensure that the task is completed quickly. The cattle are then returned to the grazing fields until dusk, when they are again brought back to the settlement. In the wet season, smallstock are tied with ropes during the day and tethered to pegs placed in abandoned or unfertile fields around the compound. This is to prevent the animals from destroying crops in the settlement. Smallstock are then intermittently moved from one part of the field to the other during the day as the quality of the pasture in each area decreases. In the evenings, the animals are released and allowed to go into their pens. This procedure is repeated daily until the harvesting of the main crop and the farming season ends. In most households it is the responsibility of children and adolescents to ensure that smallstock and

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    235 poultry that are around the compound are driven into their respective pens. A few Fulbe households provide supplementary feeding (mainly leftover food or grain) to their smallstock and poultry in the evening, but this appears to be aimed primarily at enticing the animals into their pens rather than as actual supplementary feeding. Labour bottlenecks are a common feature of the Fulbe economy during the wet season. Available labour has to be shared between cattle herding and the farm. Acute labour shortages are experienced during the peak demand for agricultural labour, especially during the time for weeding, harvesting and the shelling of produce. Men then alternate daily between the task of cattle herding and working on their farms. Ultimately, it is the farming activities that tend to be neglected as cattle herding enjoys priority in most households. The herding pattern changes at the beginning of the dry season (November) when all the crops have been harvested. Livestock is allowed to graze on the farm residue and rubble, and on available pasture on the outskirts of the settlement. During the entire dry season cattle depend on browsing dry grass as well as the new grass that sprouts after the herdsmen have burnt the fields in anticipation of the first rains. The household only provides livestock with water when there are no dams or pools nearby. As the lean season peaks and pasture around the settlement is depleted, the herding pattern is again altered in response to the changing ecological and environmental situation. During the peak of the lean season, the household herd is divided into two: the milk herd consisting of cows in milk and their calves, and the rest of the herd (that is, the bush herd), which includes all the male animals and the old female cows. The milk herd, which is usually the smaller part of the herd, is retained in the settlement while the rest of the herd is sent to the bush camps. As a rule, young men and boys accompany the bush herd to their dry season camps where they set up a temporary camp close to the water sources. These young herdsmen spend between one and two weeks in the camp until they are replaced by another crop of young men who take over the management of the herd. During the entire period that the herd is away in the dry season camps, the household head and the elderly remain in the settlement. However, the household head visits the campsite intermittently to check on the state of the herd. When not there, he would immediately be informed about any missing cattle and lead a search party to look for them. Other households relocate most of their members to the dry season cattle camps, leaving only the elderly and the children behind in the settlement. They build temporary huts at the campsites and organize most of their daily activities there. During this season, women are obliged to be constantly on the move, trekking daily from the campsites to the settlement and then to the market, walking up to ten kilometres each day. When part of the household relocates to the dry season camp, the women have to carry the daily milk produce to the rest of the household that remains in the settlement and to sell any excess milk in the settlement or at the market. They also purchase grain and other ingredients from the market and carry them to the camps, where they then prepare supper for the members of the household. In polygynous households, the women take turns in the execution of household duties. Some women also share these tasks with their daughters.

236  Steve Tonah Herding livestock at the dry season camps is a fairly easy task. The livestock are usually left on the free range and made to graze around the bush area and along the water points. The herdsmen, however, might dig shallow wells from which they can fetch water for their livestock. Throughout the entire dry season, the herdsmen allow their cattle to graze freely during the day while they spend their time resting under shady trees, chatting or playing games. During drought years, Fulbe households frequently relocate their cattle camps in search of water and pasture. The herdsmen and part of the household are forced to live far away from the settlement, which can mean separation from the rest of the household for several months. They are thus forced to live an austere and isolated pastoral life in the bush. As the rainy season approaches, Fulbe herdboys look forward to a season of plenty and their return to ‘normal life’ in the settlement. Kraals are repaired or new ones built adjacent to the compound in preparation for the return of the bulk of the household’s cattle. Cattle are finally brought home after the first rains, which ushers in the beginning of another season. On their return from the bush camps, the herdsmen usually take a break of several days from their herding activities. Overall, relations between the agro-pastoral Fulbe and their agricultural neighbours are quite varied. Most farmers consider the presence of the Fulbe a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they are happy that the Fulbe have come to take over the arduous task of managing their cattle herds, and cherish the contribution of the Fulbe to the overall expansion of livestock production, and hence wealth within their communities. However, relations between the autochthon farmers and the Fulbe are tense as a result of the frequent destruction of crops by cattle, the rising incidence of cattle rustling, competition for farmland and pasture, and the alleged anti-social activities of the Fulbe. Relations between the Fulbe and the cattle traders are, in contrast, extremely cordial. Cattle traders in Northern Ghana have been the traditional allies of the Fulbe for several decades. Due to the nature of their business, cattle traders are polyglots and have business relationships with different ethnic groups and across national borders. In Northern Ghana, cattle traders are of varied ethnicity, including Mamprusi, Hausa, Frafra, Grunshi and Bisa. The home of the cattle trader is often the first point of call for the newly arrived Fulbe. It is the cattle trader who provides the Fulbe with information on herding conditions and opportunities for employment as hired herdsmen. He occasionally houses a Fulbe for a couple of weeks until he is able to link him up with cattle owners seeking his services. Cattle traders maintain their links with Fulbe herdsmen even after the latter have settled in the area. They pay them regular visits in their settlements and occasionally offer them gifts to maintain existing cordial relations. The Fulbe, on the other hand, are expected to link up cattle traders with individuals who want to sell their animals or transport livestock to the main marketing centres. For cattle traders, establishing close links with the Fulbe is part of the network of social relationships they have to cultivate if they are to succeed in their business. The reciprocal relationship between cattle traders and the Fulbe, coupled with the fact that cattle traders tend to support the Fulbe in any conflict with the autochthon population, has resulted in the

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    237 development of strong interpersonal relationships between the Fulbe and the cattle traders (Rabbe 1998: 141–43; Rabbe 2004).

Land Ownership I shall now move on to a closer analysis of the different forms of hold on land in Northern Ghana and examine pastoralist access to and rights over land. All over Northern Ghana, land is a collective property belonging to particular lineages, extended families, and households. Land is viewed as a common resource bequeathed by the ancestors and meant to be passed on to future generations. Amongst most ethnic groups, land is considered sacred, and ritual ceremonies and sacrifices often accompany the cultivation of a piece of land. In certain areas, land belonging to the lineage or extended family was divided among the individual households constituting the lineage, and each household would have the right to pass on the use of such land to the next generation. In a patrilineal group, land is passed on from the father to the (male) children (cf. Basset 1993). A typical settlement therefore embraces varying forms of ownership of land and its natural resources. This would include communal, divisional/sectional, lineage and household land. Communal land is land that belongs to the indigenes of a particular settlement, and is often held in trust and administered by an appointed leader (usually the chief or earth priest). It includes, in the broadest sense, whatever trees, water bodies, pasture, minerals and other resources that are found there. Settlement land can also be divided amongst the various lineages or sections of a settlement in such a way that a particular area allocated to a lineage/section would then be administered by the head of that lineage/section. In areas with a high population density, such as in north-eastern Ghana, communal land has been fragmented and given to the various households as a result of population pressure. In this case, ownership and control of land rests with the head of the various households. Individual members are entitled to a piece of the household land for farming, no matter how small this may be. These different forms of ownership and control of land in Northern Ghana are by no means a permanent fixture. Communal land belonging to the entire group can be allocated to specific households and individuals, and thereafter, such land becomes their respective property. However, land allocated to an individual or a particular household may also be retrieved and converted to collective ownership if conditions governing the use of such land are trespassed against. This is the case, for example, when an individual allocated a piece of land gives it to another person without the authority of the household head or the earth priest. Those who refuse to make the required payments or perform rituals sanctioned by the earth priest may also lose the right to a particular piece of land. Similarly, when lineage land is divided among its members, it thereafter becomes the property of the respective individuals. Not infrequently, the continued cultivation or use of a particular piece of land eventually leads to the acquisition of the ownership of this land. Land that is left idle by a household for several seasons can also be reverted to collective ownership and reallocated to another household by the earth priest.

238  Steve Tonah Irrespective of the form of ownership, the actual power and right to dispose of a piece of land rests for the most part with an individual holding a specific position. This person subsequently exercises these rights on behalf of the community, lineage or household. At the highest (communal) level, the right to dispose of land (allodial rights) in Northern Ghana often rests with the chief (the Na, Naba, Pio) or the earth priest (Tindana, Tegatu). At the lineage and household level, this right is in the hands of the lineage and household heads, respectively. Those in whom group rights to allocate land have been vested hold this land in trust for the group and are expected to divide available land among the different households, based on need. They are also obliged to ensure that each (male) member who requires land to settle or farm is given a piece of land, regardless of how small it may be. Another significant feature of land ownership is the fact that use rights over specific portions of land are regulated by group norms and rules, even when ownership rights to the land are beyond dispute. Households have the exclusive right to cultivate crops on a particular piece of land during the farming season. Residents who allow their livestock to destroy crops after the official beginning of the farming season are liable for damages and must pay compensation. However, as soon as the harvest has been completed and the farming season comes to an end, ownership of such compound and in-village land is suspended. Farmlands used by individual households during the farming season are again open to collective use, thus limiting the rights of the owners of such land. In this case, farmers whose crops are destroyed by livestock during the dry season do not receive compensation. Livestock are thus free to graze on all available land without restriction during this particular season.

Pastoral Access and Rights to Resources The last two decades have seen a growing discussion on pastoral rights to land and other resources within the largely agricultural populations of the savannah zones of West Africa. This discussion differs somewhat from those concerning the rights of nomadic pastoral groups in the colonial and postcolonial states of East and North-East Africa. In East Africa, the situation involved pastoral groups struggling to recover land that had been confiscated from them or from which they had been unjustly expelled during the period of colonial rule (Raikes 1981; Schlee 1991). In West Africa, the increasing migration of pastoralists to the humid savannah zone and the fringes of the forest region have brought to the fore the issue of pastoral property rights among the largely sedentary agricultural population. The discussion in West Africa has therefore centred on the rights of pastoralists to pastoral resources (land, pasture, water, and so on), the security of tenure and their right of stay in their ‘new homeland’ in the coastal states (see Hagberg 1998). The principal developments in the sub-region with far-reaching implications for pastoral livelihood include the increasing individual ownership and control of land and other resources crucial to the pastoral sector, the commercialization of livestock production, and the intervention of the state in the pastoral economy, especially with respect to land issues (see Shipton and Goheen 1992; Tonah 2002). Unlike the autochthon population, pastoralists in Northern Ghana are ‘latecomers’ and perceived almost everywhere as ‘strangers’, with no guaranteed

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    239 access to resources. Fulbe pastoralists typically require land in different locations for various purposes. They require plots within the settlement to construct their homestead and bush fields to be used as farmlands, cattle camps, and pasture. They constantly have to negotiate access to each of these fields with the different landowners. A growing scarcity of in-village plots results in competition for the best farming areas. These plots are often in the hands of individual households and lineages. Bush fields, on the other hand, are controlled by the earth priests and/or chiefs. Generally, the best plots are reserved for indigenes, while strangers have little or no chance of obtaining farmlands close to the settlement. When the autochthon population requests for more land it is common for landowners to demand the return of part of the farmland given to the Fulbe. The latter have had to change their places of residence repeatedly and to relocate their compounds away from those of their agricultural neighbours to avoid damaging farmer’s crops and enable them to access their farmlands in the wet season. In Northern Ghana, it is quite common for two or more pastoralists to jointly offer livestock to the landowner (the chief, earth priest, household/lineage head) as rent for settling in the area and making use of available pasture and water resources. The fresh migrants would normally then proceed to construct their huts and kraals and carry out their pastoral activities. After a period of acclimatization when the task of organizing their daily herding routines has been completed, newly settled pastoralists would typically request the landowners to allow their wives and kinsmen (such as brothers and in-laws) to join them and assist in stock herding and milking. Unlike indigenes, Fulbe pastoralists cannot acquire allodial rights to land but are given use rights on the land. A use right, otherwise referred to as a usufruct right, is generally limited to the right to farm or pasture animals on the land. This does not include the right to sacred trees or products of fruit-bearing trees. Neither does it include anything that is found on or strays onto the land (e.g. livestock) or is found in the soil (e.g. minerals). Trees on land allocated to the Fulbe, especially those of economic, cultural or religious significance, cannot be cut or used. Other trees of no great significance to the community may however be used for firewood, building or furniture. All items found on the land belong to the landowner or chief/earth priest and must be delivered to him (Kasanga 1998). Other pastoralists move from one settlement to another looking for opportunities to work as hired pastoralists. Information on indigenes seeking the services of the Fulbe can be obtained from the chief, livestock traders or other established Fulbe. Pastoralists who find employment with a stockowner are allocated land to settle on by the latter – who later becomes their ‘landlord’. It is the stockowner who negotiates land from the chief, the earth priest or the appropriate landholding family. In this case, permission to use the land is given to the stockowner, and not to his hired pastoralist. The stockowner is at liberty to employ other pastoralists if he is not satisfied with the services provided by ‘his Fulbe’. He is also expected to assist his herdsman in building his huts and kraals. During the rainy season the stockowner is expected to help plough the compound farms of ‘his Fulbe’. Particularly generous stockowners might even mobilize communal labour to weed their fields. Pastoralists and other migrant farmers are usually the first to lose their farmlands when

240  Steve Tonah sections of the local population are in need of land for farming. Pastoralists, who normally reside on the outskirts of the settlement, frequently utilize land around their compound as farmlands. As in-village plots become more and more scarce, pastoralists are the first to lose their land to autochthon farmers. Grazing rights in Northern Ghana are of a common character and apply in equal measure to autochthones and migrants. This means that all stockowners can graze livestock unrestricted, except on farms where crops are actually growing. In areas with limited grazing opportunities, grazing areas may be reserved for the exclusive use of the stockowners within a certain number of settlements. This practice became widespread with the increase in stock rustling. Stockowners allege that prior to the reservation of grazing areas and its limitation to specific settlements, it was easy for cattle that stray from the settlement to be stolen by other pastoralists. Similarly, the right to water is common. Anybody can use water from the rivers and streams, and from wells built by the local administration. However, individualized right to water is recognized where water is the result of individual efforts, as in the case of wells constructed by individuals. Just as all migrant groups, the Fulbe frequently have great difficulty in accessing fields within the settlement for farming. Competition for them has intensified as a result of the rapid population growth in the last two decades. It is a widespread practice in Northern Ghana for descendants of the autochthon population to demand the return of land (especially the compound and in-village fields) given to Fulbe pastoralists several decades ago so that it can be used by the members of their expanding households. Pastoralists who no longer utilize land acquired from autochthon residents, and those who decide to leave the settlement, are obliged to return such land to their original owners. Pastoralists may not transfer land given to them by the chief or an autochthon household. Throughout Northern Ghana, all groups categorized as non-autochthon, such as the Fulbe, are forbidden to hold allodial rights jointly with the members of the landowning group unless and until they have become assimilated by the latter. The assimilation process, however, takes several generations and is effected primarily through interethnic marriage and a long period of residence in the area, coupled with the willingness to respect the culture of the autochthon population and accept their traditional leaders. The Fulbe have never been fully integrated in the communities in which they have settled in Northern Ghana, and therefore have difficulty accessing land.

Ownership of Livestock I will now examine the ownership and control of livestock, especially cattle, within the Fulbe household, and establish the nature of multiple rights in animals amongst Fulbe pastoralists in Northern Ghana. As already indicated, it is common among the Fulbe of Northern Ghana for each member of the household to own cattle, smallstock and poultry. This includes the household head (jewuro), his parents, his younger brothers, and his wives and children. Quite often, adult males own a much larger share of the household’s livestock than their parents, siblings or wives, unless the latter have inherited a sizable number of livestock, which they brought into their matrimonial home. Irrespective

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    241 of ownership, all the household’s livestock are jointly herded and managed by the males within the household. Adult sons also have a direct share in the household’s cattle herd, partly because they are future heirs but also because of the common practice for sons to acquire cattle of their own, which they add to the household herd even before they become independent of their parents. Fulbe children (both male and female) are usually given smallstock or cattle at birth. During this traditional ceremony referred to as suukame, women also receive livestock from their husbands or parents as a result of going through labour and successful child delivery. Livestock received during childbirth belong to the children of the women, which they take with them when they leave their parental home upon marriage, or when they establish an independent settlement of their own. Similarly, Fulbe parents commonly give their children livestock on the occasion of their marriage. During the marriage ceremony (dewgal), wealthy parents would typically donate a cow or a sheep (in the case of poorer households) to their child. This animal is again added to the newly married man’s herd of livestock, and managed together with the household herd until he leaves the parent’s home. Upon marriage, the groom’s parents are expected to pay the bride-price (foute) to the bride’s parents. However, if the groom has been able to accumulate a sizeable number of livestock before marriage, part of the bride-price is usually transferred from his own livestock herd. Among the Fulbe of Northern Ghana the bride-price typically consists of cattle or sheep, clothes and some cash. How many of these items are transferred depends on the economic strength of the individual household. It is common for parents to transfer part or all of the bride-price directly to their (female) children. Livestock obtained during this ceremony remain the property of the woman, who can take them with her when she moves to her matrimonial home. Day-to-day farming and herding activities give each member of the household ample opportunity to acquire livestock, especially smallstock, which they can accumulate over a number of years. When grain harvests are particularly good, members of the household sell it and use the income to purchase smallstock. Smallstock are in turn sold, the proceeds of which are used to buy a heifer, which is then added to the household’s cattle herd. In this way, each member of the household is able to acquire a number of animals over a period of time. Similarly, the livestock herd of individuals in the household may gradually deplete during a period of recurrent poor grain harvests. Individual members of the household take turns to dispose of their livestock and use the proceeds to purchase grain until the next crop harvest. Another common method of acquiring livestock is through inheritance. On the death of parents, any livestock owned by the deceased are shared between their children and close relatives. According to traditional Fulbe practice, it is the eldest son (or sometimes daughter) who inherits the major share of the property. Younger sons and daughters receive fewer animals than their elder brothers and sisters. There is, however, a growing tendency among the Fulbe of Northern Ghana for household property to be shared according to Islamic law. As applied by the Fulbe of Northern Ghana, Islamic law provides for a fairer distribution of inherited property among the members of the household, including widows, younger sons, daughters, uncles and

242  Steve Tonah aunts. This contrasts sharply with the traditional Fulbe practice whereby the eldest son inherits the bulk of his deceased father’s property. When farmers entrust the management of their cattle herds to Fulbe pastoralists, a practice that is widespread in the West African sub-region (see Basset 1994; Bayer and Waters-Bayer 1994; Breusers et al. 1998; Diallo 2000 and Tonah 2001 for the situation in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Ghana, respectively), it often improves the latter’s access to and rights over land and animals. Unlike in neighbouring West African countries, the entrustment process is almost universal among the Fulbe of Northern Ghana. Even the richest Fulbe households look after cattle belonging to the autochthon agricultural population. Fulbe pastoralists entrusted with cattle are thus partly relieved of the difficulty of having to scour for farm and pastureland. This task remains the responsibility of their landlords, who negotiate with local landowners and chiefs to ensure that their hired herdsmen receive adequate fields for the survival and maintenance of the herd. Landlords would usually stand in for ‘their Fulbe’ and provide them with the initial security that is required of migrants. Fulbe pastoralists working as hired herdsmen are thus able to obtain access to land and pasture more easily, and their property rights are protected and guaranteed to a greater extent. However, the Fulbe are expected to look after the cattle herds entrusted to them diligently, and to ensure that their landlords do not incur costs through crop damage by cattle, loss of cattle to rustlers, or frequent calf mortality. Being entrusted with cattle also provides the Fulbe with rights in cattle that do not belong to them. They are entitled to every third offspring of cattle placed under their management and have full rights to the milk produced by the cattle. Of far greater significance to the Fulbe is the fact that the entrustment process makes it easier for them to build up a cattle herd of their own. Benefiting from the expansion of cattle belonging to as many owners as possible contributes to the growth of the herdsman’s own herd. This has not gone unnoticed by the autochthon agricultural population, many of whom frequently complain about their dwindling cattle herds, while the herds of their hired Fulbe herdsmen continue to expand. Furthermore, managing cattle herds belonging to the indigenous population also legitimizes the presence of the Fulbe and their stay in Northern Ghana. The entrustment process has now become institutionalized in Northern Ghana. Some Fulbe households have herded cattle belonging to particular farming households for several generations. When they get older, Fulbe herdsmen entrusted with cattle leave the day-to-day management of the cattle to their eldest sons. It is they who will take over the management of these cattle after the death of the Fulbe to whom the cattle were originally entrusted. The Fulbe have in this way been able to keep cattle belonging to their agricultural neighbours and hosts in their herd for several generations. Close relations lasting over a period of several decades can develop between the two households. This makes it easy for the neighbours to continue keeping their cattle with the Fulbe. However, frequent losses of cattle entrusted to a Fulbe household or allowing cattle to destroy crops may lead to the cattle being withdrawn from that particular household and assigned to a more diligent keeper. As already indicated, the household cattle herd is always kept together and herded by adult males. One exception is when a herd grows to such an extent that it becomes

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    243 difficult to manage. In this case, each member of the household manages his own cattle herd or leaves them under the management of young boys from the household. Women who have a considerable number of cattle also separate them from those of the household herd, placing them under the management of one of their adult sons. Households with large cattle herds would thus separate their herds and leave them to be managed by the adult males in the household. It is the household head (jewuro), usually after consultations with his brothers, who takes overall decisions concerning the management, control and disposal of the household’s cattle herd. This is the case even when the day-to-day tasks of cattle husbandry have already been handed over to his adult sons. Members of the household have the right to dispose of their livestock as they wish. Men may sell livestock to purchase grain for household consumption, to buy clothing for their wives, or purchase goods, such as bicycles, radio, batteries and kerosene. Women commonly sell livestock to purchase household items or consumer goods for themselves and their children. While individuals may sell smallstock to purchase the goods that they desire, the decision to sell cattle has to be discussed with the household head. It is the duty of the household head to ensure that individual members do not engage in the frivolous sale of cattle to the detriment of the household. Disagreement about whether to sell cattle or not is a major reason why men leave their elder brothers in order to establish their own compounds.

Multiple Rights in Livestock As already indicated, irrespective of the ownership of livestock within the household, the responsibility for the well-being of the cattle herd rests ultimately with the household head. Likewise, the Fulbe of Northern Ghana differentiate between the ownership and usufruct rights that members of the household have in the herd. Livestock are used for several agricultural tasks and all members of the household have equal rights to utilize available bullocks for ploughing and manuring their fields. Donkeys may be used to fetch water for domestic purposes, to feed animals, and to transport produce to nearby markets. It is culturally forbidden for the owner of a particular animal to refuse other members of the household the use of an animal required to complete an agricultural task. All women in a Fulbe household have the right to milk from the household cattle. The household cows are divided equally among the women, and each woman milks the cows allocated to her on a daily basis. The milk produced by the household herd is the exclusive preserve of the women. The women may use milk obtained from the herd in preparing meals for members of the household. Income obtained from selling surplus milk is retained by the women for their exclusive use. Among the Fulbe, it is culturally forbidden for the men to request that income from the sale of milk be used to purchase goods for the household. A woman may however purchase minor items such as kolanuts or tea for her husband or her brothers. A Fulbe informant elaborating his views on this practice had this to say: It is because of poverty that we sometimes do not adhere strictly to these rules but our culture forbids the man to say that I have given these cattle to my wife so she must provide me with clothing and other items. The woman

244  Steve Tonah can use the income from the sale of milk to buy even livestock for herself. However, if you have a loving and kind woman, she can sometimes buy kola and other things for you after selling the milk. But some of the women do not do it. They prefer to buy things for themselves and their children. That is not the man’s business. The exclusive right of women to milk from the household cows is one that is accepted and taken seriously by the Fulbe in Northern Ghana. The ownership of cattle, and in particular the availability of milk, is one of the criteria used by women when they accept entering marriage. Should they have no cattle of their own, women expect their husbands to provide the cattle that will serve as the basis of their social and economic livelihood. Fulbe women in Northern Ghana cherish the selling of milk more than any other profession. Most of their social relations develop around milk production and marketing, and their social status and prestige in the community depends on the quantity of milk available for household consumption and the income obtained from the sale of surplus milk. Multiple rights in cattle do not only apply to living livestock but also extend to slaughtered animals. According to Fulbe custom, slaughtered livestock belonging to a member of the household must be shared among the various members of the household. Certain parts of slaughtered animals have to be given to specific individuals.

Changing Property Relations? This section explores the incipient trend towards the commercialization and privatization of property (land, labour, livestock) significant to the pastoral economy. It is argued that this trend is likely to lead to changes in existing property relations, and would in the long run alter the nature of pastoral production and Fulbe livelihood in this part of Northern Ghana. The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the population of the Fulbe in the Middle Belt of Ghana, otherwise referred to as the transition zone between the savannah and the forest region. The bulk of these pastoral migrants come from the savannah regions of Northern Ghana and from Burkina Faso. This phenomenon is reminiscent of the southerly movement of the Fulbe towards the forest zones of Ivory Coast, Benin and Nigeria in West Africa (see Blench 1994; Schneider 1997). As in the neighbouring West African countries, the gradual eradication of the tsetse fly, the use of crossbreed cattle, the recurrent drought and poor crop yields in the Sahelian region, the increase in the demand for livestock and livestock products in the rapidly expanding coastal towns, and the availability of pasture in the destination zones have all combined to create an enabling environment for the expansion of cattle husbandry in Ghana’s transition zone. In addition to these factors, the transition zone offers favourable conditions for livestock production. The area remains sparsely populated and has extensive pastureland. Besides, the residual plain of the Lake Volta basin provides pasture and water during the long dry season. With the exception of the Dagomba, for whom livestock ownership and husbandry constitute a traditional economic activity, most of the other ethnic groups are mainly farmers who have little knowledge or

Pastoralists and Changing Property Relations    245 experience of livestock production. Prior to the arrival of the Fulbe in the transition zone, the livestock population in the area was low. The arrival of the Fulbe and the opportunity of entrusting them with their livestock increased the number of farming households that invested in livestock. The presence of the Fulbe therefore offered numerous farming households the opportunity to own large numbers of cattle, and provided the Fulbe with access to land and pasture (Tonah 2001). However, the growing presence of the Fulbe and the expansion in pastoral production in a hitherto thinly populated area has resulted in the commercialization and privatization of land and cattle, in an area where property was previously owned collectively and/or communally. The growing number of Fulbe pastoralists in the transition zone has increased the demand for farmland and pasture. This has lured traditional leaders and those with the power to dispose of collective and household property (such as the chiefs and family elders) to enter into informal agreements with individual Fulbe pastoralists. These agreements often bypass community rules and regulations on the ownership of property. The informal agreements guarantee the Fulbe the right to settle on communal and/or household land for a specific period. It provides them access to farmland and pasture. The Fulbe, who had hitherto lived at the fringes of the community, frequently without rights over land, have thus been able to secure their tenure with guaranteed rights. Currently, the fees for such agreements are unspecified and depend on the negotiating skills of both parties (that is, the leaders and the Fulbe). Payment for such agreements is made in animals, and ranges from two to four cattle per pastoral household for the right to settle on a particular piece of land and the right to farmland and pasture in the surrounding area. It is not clear, however, whether these informal agreements between individual and community leaders and the Fulbe pastoralists can be sustained and formalized. Protests and resistance by youth groups, farmers’ associations, commercial farmers, community leaders and local government officials have already begun to surface. These individuals and groups with varying goals and interests are opposed to changes in existing property relations and the privatization of collective property. Most youth groups are concerned about the reservation of fields for the Fulbe and their exclusive use as pasture. They fear that the Fulbe, given their wealth in cattle, may be in a better position to acquire the more fertile lands, thereby depriving young people of a future in agriculture. These youth groups frequently have the support of commercial farmers, many of whom are concerned about the damage livestock could cause to their crops. Commercial farmers often compete with pastoralists for the use of water resources, especially during the dry season. As a rule, pastoralists allow their cattle to wander along the entire river plain in a bid to secure access to the best pasture and to prevent the spread of commercial farms along the floodplains. It also appears that some local government officials (that is, members of the District Assembly) are interested in having a share of the lucrative rent the Fulbe pastoralists pay for the use of pastoral resources (mainly farmland and pasture) in the transition zone of Northern Ghana. Many local government and public officials at the district level believe that such payments should be made to the state rather than to individual chiefs. Land in Northern Ghana is vested in the chiefs and earth priests, and any revenue accruing from its use or lease goes directly to them. The local governments

246  Steve Tonah only benefit in terms of the cattle tax that they levy on individual cattle in their area of jurisdiction. However, the amount obtained from cattle tax is negligible compared to that obtained from renting out land. Hence, while the chiefs are becoming richer, the local administration is stifled by lack of funds for development. The influx of Fulbe pastoralists into the transition zone has also pushed up the value of land. Prior to the arrival of the Fulbe, farmers paid only a token fee (consisting of a bottle of schnapps and a small amount of money) for the use of the largely abundant land. However, with the presence of the Fulbe, many of whom are wealthier than the smallholder farmers of the area, there is stiff competition among the landowners to attract the Fulbe to their traditional area. The possibility of earning additional income by renting out land to the Fulbe has resulted in conflicting claims for land that has been lying idle for several generations. Chiefs and landowners are now competing with each other to rent out land to the Fulbe. The result is an increase in disputes in the area. Those who have managed to attract the Fulbe are now wealthy, leaving those who have not benefited from their presence in the area embittered (see Ghanaian Daily Graphic 12 June 2002). Local governments have been compelled to intervene in communities in the transition zone to resolve the rising number of conflicts between the various interest groups. In the Fanteakwa District, local authorities have abrogated pacts signed by Fulbe pastoralists and local landowners guaranteeing the Fulbe the right to stay in the area and to use its pastoral resources. This followed repeated clashes between the herdsmen and the farmers over the ownership and use of land in the area (see Ghanaian Daily Graphic 12 June 2002). The numerous conflicts over pastoral resources in the transition zone are commonly cited by several interest groups to justify the participation of the state in the management and allocation of resources and the control of pastoral activity in parts of Northern Ghana. There can be no doubt that the migration of Fulbe pastoralists to the transition zone has set the stage for changes in property relations in the area. The general trend has been towards the commercialization of resources and the privatization of land. These trends are bound to alter the nature of pastoral production. Fulbe pastoralists have so far been given priority in the allocation of communal property, largely because of their willingness and ability to pay the fees demanded by chiefs and landowners in the area. However, in the long run, it is likely that the privatization of communal property will be detrimental to the pastoralists, whose pastoral activities require being able to move livestock from one region to another within a short period.

Chapter 12

Multiple Rights in Animals An East African Overview Günther Schlee

Introduction: Why ‘Multiple’ Rights? Four times a year at specific lunar dates, the Rendille of northern Kenya and their Boran-speaking neighbours, the Gabra, hold domestic sacrifices known as sooriyo. There is ‘song and dance’ and the mood is festive. Sooriyo is also a propitious time to brand camels. The latter are held forcefully to the ground with their feet bound, while the red-hot iron is applied. The seasoned moviegoer’s experience of cowboy films might lead one to expect people to proudly mark their camels with their own brand, and be surprised to find that a Gabra or Rendille1 man would mark various camels in his herd with different brands. Brands are not a sign of individual ownership but belong to clans. A man would mark the camels that descend from camels originally owned by his clan with his own clan mark, and those that descend from camels lent to him or his father or ancestor by a friend from another clan, with a different brand. This may or may not have been the brand of the said friend’s clan but could be that of the clan to which the borrowed camels originally belonged. If a man in clan A lends a camel to a man from clan B, and the latter or one of his descendants lends an offspring of that camel to a man from clan C, who later lends an animal of this pedigree to a man in clan D, the man from clan D would apply the brand of clan A to any unbranded young animal of that particular strain. Although East African pastoralists have a patrilineal bias on almost everything, tracing the descent of a camel is matrilineal.2 In a way, camels can be said to belong to camelid matriclans named after human patriclans. If a she-camel belongs to one clan as full property, any daughter of the daughter of a daughter of that camel will bear the brand of that clan, no matter how often this strain of camel has changed hands in the meantime by being passed on as a loan. In the case of such loan chains, a borrower (or his heir) owes the camel (or its female offspring) to the immediate lender (or his heir) only. The man from clan D in the above example of camel branding would have to know to whom he owes the   1. Closely related customs can be found among the Sakuye and the Garre-Somali. 2. This is extremely widespread, since property in animals is also determined by ownership of the mother of the respective animal, and sires can rarely be identified with certainty in the animal husbandry forms practised on the open range. The most extreme among the rare counter examples I can think of, are horse breeders in the West who name the horse’s sire and that of its mother without naming the mother herself in their brief versions of pedigree.

248  Günther Schlee

Map 12.1 East African pastoralists. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

camel in clan C, because the respective person could claim gratitude and, if denied, reclaim the camel. He would not have to know the earlier holder of this strain of camel in clan B. This is for C to worry about because C owes the camel or its ancestress to B. However, the man from clan D would still need to know that the original owner was from clan A in order to apply the right brand.

Multiple Rights in Animals    249 The ‘vocabulary’ used for these distinctions can be found in the appendix to this chapter, where camel brands of Rendille and Gabra lineages are depicted. A comparison of these brands reveals that they cannot only be used for tracing camels but also for tracing people. To have the same or similar property marks for their camels is one of the characteristics by which people identify clan brothers in another ethnic group. Due to the fact that some clans are older than the present ethnic formations and the processes which led to the emergence of these ethnic groups have cut across clans, and due to interethnic migrations of clan fragments, the phenomenon of people of different ethnic groups being of the same clan is not infrequent in the region (Schlee 1989a). In Figure 12.27 the ear clipping of the subclan Elemo of Gaaldeylan (Rendille) is depicted, and in Figure 12.29 the brand of that subclan. In the Gabra part this information did not need to be reiterated, because these property marks are identical to those of the Maasa lineage of Galbo (Gabra) from which the Elemo among the Rendille originate. In another case (Tubcha [Rendille], Quchabúr [Gabra] in Figures 12.31 and 12.38) the brand is identical but a diacritical mark has been added for distinction. Camel brands are thus not just an entry point into property relations but also into history. A camel can be ceremoniously passed on as a formal loan or given for a lactation period or any number of such periods to a household in need of milk. This is merely a form of usufruct and would not entitle the holder to property of any kind, while the holder of a formal loan can dispose fully of any male offspring of the borrowed camel. In a given case, it might thus be necessary to distinguish and correctly recall four kinds of holders/owners of camels, namely: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The head of the household that milks the camel. The person who holds the animal as a full loan. The person who has a claim in the animal as a creditor of that loan. The person who is the original owner of the respective strain of camels and whose clan brand the camel bears.

These four types of ownership are merely at the level of the household and above. Below that level we can, in a given case, distinguish up to two further types of claims: 5. In a polygynous household, a man can allot the milk of a camel to a particular wife. 6. That wife might use the milk exclusively to raise one particular child. That child will say ‘aytey a dama’ (R)3 – ‘I drink my she-camel’, not knowing that he or she is number six in a chain. This count does not comprise latent claims and hopes for the future such as the expectation to inherit an animal, to be given an animal at circumcision, or to receive an animal as a reward for killing an enemy.   3. I will use R for Rendille (language) and B for the Boran-Oromo language spoken by the Gabra.

250  Günther Schlee It is cases like this that we4 had in mind when we invited contributions on ‘multiple rights in animals’ from a wide range of geographical areas and when we pointed out that these complexities of ownership in large livestock, apart from modern industrial societies with different types of ‘stock’ holdings, find their sole parallels in land rights. Land could be tilled by the vassal of a vassal, or be owned by both a lineage and an individual in different ways, and at the same time be said to belong to the state or the king or God. In no other class of objects do we find the same diversity of claims. Most objects of personal use such as weapons or tools or clothing are individually owned and not subject to much legal reasoning. Personal effects are personal effects. Even in the most patrilinear of societies, household items and anything else belonging to the female sphere are silently passed on from mother to daughter without an ethnographer even mentioning the fact. Property in personal items is simple and borders on the uninteresting. Compare this to the complexities of land rights and the amount of literature on land! Although much has been written on shared rights in large animals, in comparison to land this subject is under-researched. Another gap is that these different forms of multiple ownership – in animals and in land – have not been systematically compared with each other. In this context, I have taken over the task of summarizing the ethnography about East African pastoralists on this subject. Paul Spencer would have been better at it, but he was unable to come.5 I shall first present the case of the Rendille and the Gabra in a more systematic fashion, and then move on to the literature on the Kipsigis, Turkana, Gogo, Barabaig, Samburu and Karimojong. In the case of the Pokot, I rely on Michael Bollig’s findings (Bollig 1990, 1992, 1998, 2000, 2006). In earlier publications I treated this topic both from an ecological and a development-oriented perspective. I addressed shared rights in animals and the widespread lending of animals as a means of insuring individual households against environmental hazards and human predators (raids, extortions). Development workers have always been interested in increasing animal marketing and integrating nomads into the national economy. For this reason I referred to these shared rights   4. The ‘we’ refers to Anatoly Khazanov and Günther Schlee. 5. The bulk of the material and most of the conclusions presented here go back to an earlier publication in English, albeit published in a rather inaccessible place (Schlee 1989b), and to two even earlier articles in German, Schlee (1982) and Bundt et al. (1979). The latter was the joint work of a group of anthropology students at Hamburg University in the 1970s, to which I had the pleasure of belonging. In the meantime Paul Spencer has written a book-length study (Spencer 1998), the first chapter of which in particular covers much of the same ground, with the exception that he does it so much more eloquently than we could ever have done. The similarities of our findings are no surprise, since our earlier work is partly based on his earlier work, and because everyone, of course, had read Evans-Pritchard. His findings are nevertheless remarkable, since our databases, both our ethnographies and our reviews of the literature, only partly overlap. That different anthropologists can come to similar conclusions suggests that there is at least some empirical reality in what we are doing. In 2002, Paul Spencer was invited to two workshops at the Max Planck Institute, one on ‘Multiple Rights in Animals’ and one on ‘Friendship, Descent and Alliance’. In spite of our insistence that he would be welcome at both, he turned down the first invitation but accepted the second. There is, of course, some overlap in the ‘stock associates’ and ‘friendship’ themes.

Multiple Rights in Animals    251 in animals as ‘binding’ forces that tied animals to their owners and limited their rights of disposal. I also discussed alternative means to balance risks and overcome obstacles to marketing. Even then, in the 1970s and 1980s, I was not alone with this position, although it was useful to draw attention to it, since development agents and officialdom were still keen to attribute ‘irrationality’ to the marketing behaviour of nomads, following a selective reading of Herskovits (1926), or hearsay about what he was believed to have written. Herskovits’ famous phrase ‘cattle complex’ was, of course, meant as a complex of cultural features, but was frequently understood as a complex in the psychological sense, implying that the nomads were crazy about cattle. Herskovits’ own insistence on psychological factors may have contributed to this misunderstanding. By now these debates are over, and only people who stubbornly ignore the state of the art still adhere to the positions against which these earlier writings were directed. In the present contribution I therefore treat the problem from the position of a theoretical interest in property rights, and ignore the applied aspects. I shall browse the literature in three rounds, picking out information on three broad categories of property transfers: (1) gifts to friends, who thereby become stock associates, (2) bridewealth and other transactions between affines, and (3) allocation and inheritance. These themes could also have been explored in a wider range of ethnic groups, including Boran, Maasai or the many smaller groups of the Lower Omo, but only at the expense of reducing the level of detail. The nine cases discussed here provide insight into different types of systems of multiple rights in animals, and allow us to see variation and co-variation in the elements which make up these systems. They can therefore be regarded as sufficient for the present purpose.

Stock Associates Rendille, Gabra The Rendille say that when camels get lost, they have a tendency to go east. An entire herd can stampede for no apparent reason. The herders and the helpers they may have succeeded in alarming follow the footprints for days. From afar they might catch sight of the herd but not be able to retrieve it, either because they have run out of water and are forced to return, or because the camels have fallen into the hands of their eastern neighbours, hostile Somali. Much has been said about drought, epidemics, predators, and other risks to which nomadic livestock holdings are exposed. What needs to be emphasized here is that animals need no specific reason to get lost. They simply get lost. The Rendille have a proverb that says ‘hoola a oosin ti saahet ichow ti gelebeet’ – ‘Livestock is like the shade in the morning and the shade in the evening’ (Schlee and Sahado 2002: 82). Under a large tree, those camping to the west of it benefit from the cool shade in the morning and those to the east in the evening. Not unlike the shade, livestock and all other forms of wealth increase and decrease, and benefit different people at different times. If a Gabra or Rendille loses his herd, it would typically comprise alaal (from the Arabic halaal) camels – his full property and that of others in the form of one type

252  Günther Schlee of loan or another. In a case of loss, borrowed camels would not be reclaimed by the creditors. Risk is a fact of life, commonly accepted as inevitable. Herd loss would, however, be a good reason for a man to claim some of the offspring of the camels he or his forefathers had shared out to others. Hence loans in both directions, those received and those given, somehow alleviate the loss. The only camels that represent a total loss and a loss to him alone are the alaal camels in his own possession. The full, ceremonial, formal loan of a camel is called maal (R), dabarre (B).6 While no etymology of the term dabarre (B) is known to me, the Rendille word maal is derived from a maala – ‘I milk’, and a maalda (autobenefactive) – ‘I milk for myself’. For example, aytoo maalda – ‘I milk a she-camel for myself, have a shecamel milked for me’ (i.e. milked for my household, by whoever does the actual milking).7 As a rule, a maal camel needs to be asked for, formally applied for, or begged for (a daaha, e.g. aytoo daaha – ‘I ask for a she-camel’; inantoo daaha – ‘I ask for a girl in marriage’; shiling’koo daaha – ‘I beg for a shilling’). The applicant, after a long introduction emphasizing the positive relationships between himself and the owner, as well as between their respective kin groups and ancestors, will carefully and respectfully approach the subject, since he is the interested party and in a weaker position. Once the camel transaction is agreed upon, a certain amount of time elapses before the herds are in the nomadic settlement rather than a satellite camp. Typically this would be around the time of the sooriyo festivals. Actually collecting a camel, however, is only possible on the appropriate day of the week.8 The morning the recipient comes to collect the promised camel, he carries a twig of gaeer (R), madeer (B) (Cordia sinensis Lam)9 in his hand. On leaving and driving his camel away – most often a recently weaned calf or a young heifer – he deposits the twig on the house of the donor as a ritual payment.10 Although a loan, this camel would normally never be recovered by the original owner. It would even be slightly embarrassing if the latter were too inquisitive about the animal’s health or reproductive history. The prestige gained by sharing out the animal would certainly be diminished by taking such an active interest.11 The male offspring of a maal camel is the full property of the holder, that is to say the borrower – in other words, it becomes alaal. Because the Rendille do not follow the Islamic rules of slaughter, they have no notion equivalent to the meaning of alaal/halaal in the context of food. One meaning of this term for them (as for Muslims) is ‘rightful, legal’, as in ‘rightful’ wife as distinct from ‘mistress’ – in Rendille and Gabra with an undertone of irony, since their marriages are not exclusive and extramarital affairs that meet certain conditions are accepted. Unlike in Islamic societies, where a legal document establishes a   6. Such as the loans the Boran give to each other, which mostly consist of cattle. Cf. Baxter 1970.   7. Only males who abstain from sexual intercourse are allowed to milk camels. 8. On the calendar and propitious days. Cf. Schlee 1989a. 9. The diverse symbolic uses of this tree and other ritual items are discussed in the chapter on the comparison of symbolic contexts in Schlee 1979: 440 ff. 10. The procedure for collecting a camel given for ritual services, such as best man at a wedding or a godfather at circumcision, is the same. 11. Cf. Spencer 1973: 37–40.

Multiple Rights in Animals    253 woman’s status, in the Rendille case a woman becomes alaal in the sense that her progeny belong to her husband, via payment of the bridewealth. A woman that lives with another man remains alaal, in that her husband would benefit from the bridewealth paid for her daughters, while her sons would be counted as his legal descendants. In the present context of camels, alaal can best be translated as ‘own’ in the sense of full property. Female offspring of a maal camel, however, belong to the original owner, at least nominally. This nominal ownership by the original maal giver cannot be actualized at all times to the full extent. If he asks for repayment of a female calf of the maal strain, he might be told that there are still too few camels, that the holder is in trouble, and that he should try again a few years later. To forcibly extract a camel from the holder would be considered a breach in the relationship. To have numerous people indebted to him as maal takers gives a man prestige and influence, which is what he would forego if he were to retrieve an animal by force without good reason. If a Rendille wants to assert his independence and ward off criticism, he can say gaal a kaa khaba? – ‘have I got camels of yours?’ or ‘do I owe you any camels?’ – which is tantamount to saying: ‘Leave me alone! I can do what I want.’ This rhetorical question would only be asked, of course, when camels are not owed to the interlocutor. He might add a provocative ii ka dow gidé – ‘Then drive them away from me!’ In one case, a Rendille elder who had asked for a girl in second marriage was reminded of having withdrawn a maal camel by force from a clansman of the girl years ago. He was made to pay a fine in excess of the bridewealth to soothe the anger of his future in-laws, and was only then promised the girl in marriage. The camel that caused this turmoil, N.B., had his brand, and was known to be ‘his’ property. Nobody contested that it was his. It was simply bad style to reclaim the animal. And now that the balance of power was reversed and he had come as a supplicant, advantage could be taken of his blunder. On the other hand, as we saw in the opening paragraphs, a maal holder can easily give a female calf or heifer from the maal herd to a third person. In doing so, chains of second, third, and further degree maal are established. The principle that a man owes a loan of this kind solely to the person who immediately precedes him in the chain is coined by the Rendille as gaal et lamma ma lakakhabo – ‘camels are not owed to two people’. It is difficult to see the advantage of giving a maal camel, since the benefit is plainly on the side of the taker. Spencer (1973: 38) is right to draw attention to the prestige function. As the economic advantage lies with the taker, the action of giving a camel is considered generous and contributes to making the giver appear mejel (R), nam d’iira (B) – ‘a worthy man’. His economic disadvantage, however, should not be exaggerated. If he has good reason, he can always reclaim a calf from the maal herd. Circumstances such as the imminent marriage of a son or his own second marriage, where a sudden need for alaal camels as bridewealth arises, would dictate such a move. The security function of the widespread, latent rights in camels originally shared out by a man, or even by the ancestor from whom he inherited these rights, has already been mentioned.

254  Günther Schlee Another incentive to share out a camel may lie in the human–animal ratio of a given household. A wealthy man with only a few sons and not many other junior patrilineal relatives is forced to hire herdsmen to handle his vast property. The latter would customarily be provided with tyre-shoes, clothes, and smallstock for slaughter, and be paid a female calf every other year. A camel given to a hired herdsman is one that has changed from the side of benefits to the side of costs and remains there, while camels given as maal to an associate may diminish the need for hired labour, establish claims on camels if at a later time the human–animal ratio changes, and may at the moment not be necessary for subsistence anyhow, since at present the human–animal ratio is low. A man whose sons are either too young to herd camels or not yet born might thus prefer to share out camels so that he can claim back some of their offspring when his sons are grown-up, and especially when they marry, instead of spending camels on hired labour and hence most certainly depriving his sons of them. The rules for the second type of loan – kalaksimé (R), kalassime (B) – are completely different. The kalaksimé animal is always an adult female camel that has just given birth, and is given to a household short of milk. After the lactation period, the camel is normally given back to the owner. The latter can now say nyirakh kagoy! (R) – ‘cut the calf away [from the mother]’ (i.e. ‘keep the calf!’), or he can take both animals back and limit his gift to the milk. Hence kalaksimé is the preferred form of helping a pauper without necessarily establishing a long-term relationship. Yet another form of stock transfer is darnán (R), which means ‘adding to’ someone else’s herd. The verbal forms are a ka-dara (R), iti-dara (B) – ‘I add to’. Here, the giver rather than the recipient is regarded as the beneficiary of such a transaction. It means giving stock for someone else to herd, as a result of a labour shortage. With the exception of the usufruct of the milk and the usual gifts for herdsmen, which are in proportion to the number of animals of diverse owners and their respective generosity, herders have no rights. Darnán is therefore a service to the owner, not to the holder. A much more flexible and less ceremonial form of creating relationships makes use of smallstock rather than camels. One method is to slaughter a head of smallstock for someone or to give him a gift of a live animal and express the wish to be his friend – aal (R), jaal (B). At some later date one might visit this friend or even go from friend to friend, enjoying their hospitality and collecting gifts of smallstock or other items. Rendille, for example, appreciate the Gabra milk containers that are woven from pant fibres more artfully than their own. Journeys to ask for gifts have a special term in both languages: sulhaal (R), himaltu (B). Individual Rendille and Gabra maintain relationships of mutual exchange, which even survive periods of mutual raiding at group level. The range of friendship is not restricted by ethnic criteria. Gifts of smallstock are also used to warm up relationships with Somali traders or European anthropologists. Kipsigis This contribution is about the logic of forms of property. Examples that illustrate this logic can stem from different places or periods of time. The picture of Kipsigis society

Multiple Rights in Animals    255 drawn in the following paragraphs does not reflect recent change, but this is of no concern here.12 The Kipsigis, unlike the other groups in our sample, live in an area that has enormous potential and can be used for other systems apart from pastoral nomadism. Correspondingly large portions of their land were appropriated by the British in the colonial period. Today, the Kipsigis are one of the most ‘developed’ tribes of Kenya and fully integrated in the national economy. With the recent construction of a wider ‘Kalenjin’ identity, they form part of a category of people that became dominant in politics under President Daniel T. arap Moi (van Nahl 1999). The ethnographies, on which our accounts are based, predate these developments. Sharing out cattle is called kimanagan by the Kipsigis. Relationships of this kind are mostly built up by age-mates or relatives (Manners 1967: 233). The prospective recipient takes the initiative and asks for a calf – sometimes yet unborn. If a promise is made, he will return and collect it after it has been weaned. A bull calf thus acquired can be exchanged for a heifer two or three years later. Herds are kept constant by replacing animals given out with a kimanagan calf from a friend. Direct reciprocity, however, is not common. A calf not for use as kimanagan is marked on the nose, as when calves are weaned. Kimanagan transactions are kept strictly secret from women, since wives might in a time of need attempt to induce their husbands to perform the shameful act of withdrawing an animal once shared out. The progeny of a kimanagan cow of the third or fourth generation can be given as kimanagan to somebody else without consulting the original owner. Half of one’s possessions could be distributed in this manner to various partners who live at a great distance from each other. Should animals in the herds allotted to the often widely dispersed wives of a household head be available in excess of those needed to provide milk and blood for domestic consumption, they too are at the husband’s disposition for kimanagan transactions. By locally dispersing the herds, kimanagan serves as a precaution against raids and epidemics. In principle, kimanagan relationships are formed between equals. A wealthy man, however, is more likely to obtain kimanagan because he can provide higher ‘collateral’, as he may still be in a position to show gratitude after suffering a loss. A person generous in sharing out will gain prestige, while a reluctant giver of kimanagan will be regarded as a ‘mean and unpleasant being’ (Péristiany 1939: 151). 12. Monetization, globalization, market integration, the new political and administrative order, and other recent (twentieth century to present) factors of change are interesting topics which we have dealt with elsewhere. Here we explore the difference between regimes of property, and these differences may become more clearly visible if we focus on ethnographies which date from the period before unifying forces blurred them. In the Eurasian cases discussed in this volume, socialism and the experience of collectivization and decollectivization cannot be ignored, because they shape property rights. The main finding the comparative analysis of the contributions to this book (cf. Introduction, this volume) on the intercontinental scale arrives at, however, is a basic difference in the organization of property rights between Eurasian and African pastoralists, which is much older than postsocialism and socialism and postcolonialism and colonialism. For the present purpose, therefore, the older literature is as interesting as the newer literature, or more so. No excuses are made for not being up to date on recent changes, because these have been dealt with extensively by us and others elsewhere.

256  Günther Schlee Looking at the side of the receiver (and diverging from the equality of benefactor and recipient postulated by Péristiany), Manners states that the aim of kimanagan is to provide subsistence for the poor by giving them usufruct rights in cows, such as milking and bleeding. If a kimanagan animal dies, the holder has the permission to eat it. The owner, on the other hand, receives the hide as fulfilment of the only obligation towards him. After a long period of loan, the owner may cede a number of the progeny to the holder as full property. Demanding the return of kimanagan stock must be governed by dire economic circumstances, the occasion of marriage of the owner’s son, or the death of the owner himself, upon which his heirs can put forward their claims. Such claims to cows shared out by the deceased, however, are regarded as a disgrace and should, if possible, be avoided. A recipient can give back a kimanagan cow if he is not happy with her or if her calves continue to die young. Karimojong Apart from balancing economic risk, exchange relations among the Karimojong serve the purpose of building up friendship with non-relatives. ‘Any adult with reasonable cattle assets expends them in part on creating formal bonds of mutual friendship and assistance with non-relatives … Men so bound … are obliged to assist each other as if they were close kin and express the tie by repeated reciprocal stock gifts’ (Dyson-Hudson 1966: 85). The fewer the affinal relatives a man has gained through bridewealth as potential helpers, the greater his need to form such relationships. The Karimojong bridewealth is not fixed (see below), and rich men who can afford to pay a large bridewealth are thus able to create more obligations on the part of their affines. Poorer people try to compensate for this by creating alternative bonds, once they are in a position to do so. These bonds are preferably tied between equals, since imbalance would lead to one-sided demands. Rich herd owners tend to avoid having less prosperous friends, as the latter have the potential to become people in need, without the prospect of being able to reciprocate gifts shared out. A relationship between stock friends ‘is reciprocal and either roughly keeps pace over the years or the contract breaks down’ (DysonHudson 1966: 85). Turkana The relationship between stock associates is defined by the ‘reciprocal rights to claim gifts of domestic animals in certain socially defined circumstances’ (Gulliver 1955: 197). These might be ritual occasions, such as the spearing of an ox for feasts or when compensation needs to be paid for some misdemeanour. No man would use animals from his own herds for such purposes. Stock friends are also called upon to contribute to bridewealth payments. Turkana bridewealth is not fixed and tends to be high, as everyone pays as much as they can afford (below). Numerous people are mobilized to contribute to these payments. At the same time, new relationships of exchange are created by the distribution of stock among the bride’s relations.

Multiple Rights in Animals    257 Gulliver divides stock associates into two classes: (a) those with whom the relationship is lifelong and longer, since it is likely to be extended to the heirs and involves claims on cattle; and (b) those with whom the bond is more relaxed and therefore fragile, and involves smallstock only. The first category is preferably composed of those agnatic and matrilateral relatives (MB) and affines (WF, ZH),13 but also of non-relatives, with whom a close friendship is then formed and maintained. The second category consists of more distant relatives and ‘minor bond-friends’. In his review of the literature, Spencer (1998: 37f.) stresses that among the Turkana the extended family and the age organization have lost some of their binding force. As a result, one can speak of a high degree of individualism. In the precarious environment of the Turkana, this does not mean that an individual household head can forego the help of others, but he has more freedom than members of other pastoral societies ‘to choose those with whom he will share his chances’. Spencer emphasizes the need to cultivate these relationships constantly, and claims it is the well-connected man engaged in active exchange who can expect considerable assistance should disaster strike. He does not take up Gulliver’s distinction between constant and fragile relationships. Relationships in need of permanent renewal via subsequent exchange form a marked contrast to the maal/dabarre loans of the Rendille and Gabra, which are as eternal as humanly possible and even marked by a certain avoidance and social distance. Care would be taken not to harass the maal debtor in any way or show too much interest in maal camels. The minor bond friends described by Gulliver find their parallels among the friendships cultivated by Rendille, Gabra and many others on the basis of smallstock gifts. Samburu Stock friends are ‘those who develop a relationship based on mutual help in times of need’ (Spencer 1965: 27). They are recruited from the following groups: At first, a man turns quite naturally to his closest agnatic kin for support. He has formed his earliest social ties with them, and they are and remain his stock friends almost by definition … As he grows older, he looks further afield and turns to more distant clansmen for additional help. Again this is natural since he has certain vaguely defined rights in their stock. (Spencer 1965: 27) Stock friends rarely come from outside the clan. Formal friendship is constituted by asking for and receiving a head of livestock. Both partners can subsequently ask each other for help as the occasion or need arises. The continuity of the relationship depends on their mutual generosity. ‘If a stock friend proves to be mean, then his requests would be treated with diffidence and the relationship would dwindle’ (Spencer 1965: 28). 13. MB stands for mother’s brother, WF for wife’s father. Most such abbreviations for kin types are self explanatory. One only needs to know that Z stands for ‘sister’, because the S is used for ‘son’.

258  Günther Schlee Gogo The Gogo (cf. Rigby 1962) conclude formal friendship contracts in the presence of witnesses. These contracts can be terminated by both sides, again in the presence of witnesses. All herd owners are eligible as stock friends, with the exception of agnatic relatives, who might refuse to restitute animals in the case of a contract termination. Affinal relatives are the partners of choice. The close vicinity of affines facilitates performance of the multiple obligations that accompany affinal ties. Although affinal relations at the beginning of a marriage tend to be distant, they warm up with time, especially after the birth of children. The relationship between WF and DH, apart from stock exchange among the semi-pastoralist Gogo, also includes helping on the farm, an activity that is reciprocated by occasional gifts in kind, such as beer. The cooperative relationship between affines forms a marked contrast to the relationship between agnates, which tends to be competitive. One aspect of sharing out animals to affines might be the removal of the latter from the grip of the agnates. Rights of usufruct on the part of the holder of shared cattle comprise the milk and part of the meat. All of the meat is at the disposition of the holder if his residence is too remote from that of the owner. The progeny of shared stock, however, remains the property of the original owner, unless he decides to give calves to the holder as a sign of friendship. On average, three to four cows are shared out in this way. The prosperous, however, may share out up to twenty animals. Pokot Pokot property rights in livestock are highly complex, and at the same time fuzzy and the subject of much negotiation. Harold Schneider (1953: 263) argued that ‘the obligations involved show the absence of any idea of absolute ownership of property and the difficulties of any attempt to accumulate a surplus’. While at face value all the livestock of the homestead is owned by the household head, a closer analysis shows that livestock ownership and use rights are transient categories which occasionally merge into each other. Pokot are quick to state that all animals within a homestead are owned by the male household head. Any closer inquiry, however, will reveal that the owner is tied in a number of diverse obligations. Within the household several people, men and women, old and young, can claim rights in specific animals. Pokot also frequently talk about how certain relations to livestock relate them to others beyond their homestead and vice versa. Social relations are created through livestock exchange and the presence of social relations necessitates such exchanges. The Pokot claim that it is beneficial for every herder to have as many livestock exchange partners as possible in as many different locations of Pokot land as is feasible. In order to understand Pokot concepts of livestock ownership it is necessary to look into the process through which such rights are obtained: Pokot obtain livestock either through social exchange (inheritance, bridewealth, gift), through trade and/or through theft. Only the first option will be discussed here in some detail (for the other trajectories, see Bollig 1992). Harold Schneider (1953: 255f., 263), in his studies about the Pokot in Kenya, emphasizes the importance of stock friendship for social relations. He reports that

Multiple Rights in Animals    259 ‘a true best-friend relationship is apparently not sealed unless one presents an ox or cow to the other without immediate repayment. This indicates a trust in the other which he reciprocates when the need arises’ (ibid. 255). The Pokot create social bonds between non-related or distantly related actors through stock friendship, whereas bridewealth exchange and bridewealth distribution (as we will see later on) include kin and create kin relations (Bollig 2006: 286). Stock friendships are frequently initiated by neighbourhood-based rituals and celebrations of the age- and generation-sets. These rituals and celebrations imply donating and spearing an animal. The donor selects a person out of his guests to spear the animal he is offering. As Schneider also has observed, this person will be chosen with great care and economic interest. ‘There is little doubt that exchange between best friends, as with other ties in which stock are transferred, involves an exact accounting of what has been given and how much one is in debt to the other’ (Schneider 1953: 256). In establishing stock friendships through donating and spearing an animal at rituals and celebrations, Bollig speaks of a highly prestigious act. In the political discourse one is frequently treated to an enumeration of where and when the speaker speared an ox. The spearing of a famous ox may be incorporated into one’s own songs of personal aggrandisement. It is mentioned in the same breath as more ferocious deeds such as killing enemies and stealing livestock from neighbouring pastoral groups. (Bollig 2006: 286) Spearing an animal is bound to the obligation of reciprocality at a later time; this can be after a couple of years or even after some decades. The debt which will be imposed on the person who has been chosen for spearing an animal is called ‘ghosyö’ (ibid. 287). The requirements for the settlement of the debt will be stipulated by the donor. He will decide on the kind of animal and on the number of animals he wants in return for what he has given. And the donor can even ask the heirs of the recipient for the reciprocal exchange. Such a reciprocating gift may be postponed or given in instalments, but I have never heard of a debt being refused outright. If the person asking for the settlement of an outstanding debt obtains a heifer, which, of course, has a higher reproductive value than the ox he gave, he is entitled to use its milk and, after some years, its meat. However, he has to return at least some of its calves. This form of stockfriendship ties households together for several decades. (Bollig 2006: 287) Besides this form of reciprocal exchange there are various other institutions among the Pokot for engaging in reciprocity to establish stock friends, such as the initiation of young men (sapana). This initiation implies the slaughter of an ox. Bollig’s findings (ibid. 289) show that in about 70 per cent of all cases observed (from approximately 180 initiations) this ox is rarely taken from the initiate’s father’s herd. Instead, the ox is borrowed from a father’s friend. And, as we have seen in the case above, this loan will result in an obligation for the initiated. He has to pay back

260  Günther Schlee the ox at a later date. Also, the circumcision of young men results in a reciprocal exchange relation (Bollig 1990). Here, the loan is a woman’s dress from a befriended elderly woman which has to be worn during the period of seclusion. Later on, the dress will be returned by a female sheep. This sheep is again a token, since one day it has to be returned for a cow or a heifer to the new initiate by the woman’s husband (Bollig 2006: 289).

Summary: Stock Associates Shared rights in animals are constituted by animal loans and gifts. Holder and owner both have rights in an animal given as a loan, and these rights vary among the different societies of our sample and between different types of loan. A straightforward gift also creates a shared right, namely to a yet unspecified animal or object as a counter gift. These transactions form bonds between the partners and tie them to the animals concerned. The right of someone to dispose of an animal, for example by selling it on the market, is limited by the rights others may have in it as well. It is easy to imagine that shared beasts can rarely be sold. It would after all require at least two people (owner and holder) to agree to the sale, and the ensuing division of revenue or compensation could cause numerous difficulties. How the two men continue their relationship, of which the shared beast was both the substance and the visible expression, would pose a further complication. The custom of sharing animals, however, is not only adverse side to the sale of animals shared already, but also to the sale of those not, or not yet, shared. This is evident in a number of ways. Someone reluctant to share out an animal to an applicant would normally excuse himself by stating that he does not have sufficient animals for the subsistence of his own household or that he cannot dispose of them because other people have claims on them. If, however, he were to sell some animals, he would belie such excuses. (Apart from this, relatives of all sorts might converge on him to beg for money.) Someone who wishes to borrow animals and at the same time sells his own might encounter similar obstacles. His need for a borrowed animal would in this case not be acknowledged. Shared animals have a number of advantages that cash does not. They create friendship where money creates envy, they strengthen cooperation and can help to gain political influence. By establishing claims for the future, they form an effective insurance.

Bridewealth As ideal types, we can currently distinguish two kinds of bridewealth, which correlate with two different types of post-nuptial relations between affines. The first is the bridewealth of fixed quantity, which can be paid immediately. The relationship between affines tends here to be characterized by a number of avoidances, such as name-avoidance, reservation about asking for favours, and general politeness and formality. In our sample, this category is represented by Kipsigis, Barabaig and Rendille. The second type is open bridewealth, in some cases pushed up by the suitor himself, who wants to win over as many affines as he can possibly afford, with

Multiple Rights in Animals    261 cooperative post-nuptial relations between affines similar to those of stock associates. This type is represented by the Turkana, Karimojong and Gogo. The Samburu constitute a mixed type, where relations between affines seem less characterized by distance and respect or by friendliness and cooperation than by tension hovering beneath a thin layer of good conduct. Among the Pokot, bridewealth is not strictly fixed but can vary. It is, however, generally lower than among the neighbouring Turkana. Both affinal relationships and stock friendships are cooperative and expected to be accompanied by positive feelings, but are conceptually kept apart from each other. Rendille Bridewealth among the Rendille consists of camels only. Their number and sex is fixed by custom, with no room for negotiation. Four female and four male camels are given to the closest patri- and matrilateral relatives of the bride. ‘The father of the bride is given two of each, her mother’s senior brother one of each, and a member of the father’s lineage group is given the fourth female camel. The fourth ox-camel is the birnan killed on the third evening of the ceremony’ (Spencer 1973: 54). Negotiation thus depends on the age and condition of the animals. Younger she-camels that can still have numerous calves are preferred both to older ones and immature ones. But even this is often left to the discretion of the groom, since ‘counting’ the bridewealth only takes place after the bride has been circumcised and marriage is therefore irreversible. Only one or two animals are named on this occasion, while other camels to be transferred at a later date might not yet have been born at the time of the marriage. When the bridewealth is finally handed over, it frequently consists of newly weaned calves, although rich people may decide to give more prestigious beasts. More relevance for the decision of whether or not the bride will be given to the suitor is attributed to gifts such as tobacco, clothes, tea and sugar (called fain from English: fine) brought weeks or months earlier to win over the elders of the girl’s clan. If they consider the gifts inadequate on this occasion, the elders can make further demands or simply accept the gifts and give the bride to someone who is more generous. The relationship between the affines is later characterized by politeness and reserve. Affines would not ask each other for smallstock or money, a normality within the exogamous clan. We will see that in other societies affines are an extension of the cooperation network between clan brothers and stock friends. Among the Rendille they are a completely different category. Further payments to the wife-givers are delayed by one generation. It is fully acceptable and generally practised to extract gifts from the real and classificatory sons of sisters. The Rendille say: Eysim jit lakamaala – ‘A sister’s son can be milked on the way’. Uterine links are of crucial importance to the Rendille and a substantial share of a person’s identity derives from the clan affiliation of his or her mother (cf. Schlee 1994a), a topic that is beyond the scope of this chapter.

262  Günther Schlee Kipsigis One bull, two heifers, three cows and two calves plus twenty-three head of smallstock make up the bridewealth of the Kipsigis. Variation is possible only in the case of smallstock, which can be bargained for to the tune of two or three more. When the parents of the couple have agreed to the marriage, the bull is named but not yet transferred. In five subsequent visits to the settlement of the bride, the rest of the bridewealth is likewise agreed on. The actual transfer takes place later, sometimes even after the marriage. Livestock received as bridewealth cannot be used for just any purpose. If the bride’s father is alive, he keeps it for his unmarried sons and uses it later on for their bridewealth payments. Even if the bride has no full brothers and her mother is beyond childbearing, the bridewealth is used for some other marriage in order to ‘strengthen the hut’ – in other words, the progeny of the mother. The bride’s mother ‘marries’ a girl, who is then accessible to a son of the bride’s father by another wife, or to a younger brother of the bride’s father, so that she can bear children in the name of the bride’s mother. If the father is dead and the brothers are already married, the bridewealth is added to the share of their herds taken as booty from raids. Only in this case can the bridewealth be used for purposes other than further marriages, although there are no restrictions on using it for marriages either. Under no circumstances can the bride’s father use this stock himself to marry another wife. Marrying with one’s daughter’s bridewealth would be considered tantamount to sleeping with her (Manners 1967: 257; Péristiany 1939: 205 f.). As among the Rendille, the relationship between affines is marked by reserve and avoidance but is by no means emotionally negative. Female affines, such as a man’s sister and his wife, cooperate in farming (less important in the traditional economy than it is today, but nevertheless practised) and help each other with problems of all kinds. Barabaig At the lowest extreme of the fixed bridewealth scale lies that of the Barabaig. It consists of one heifer. The bridewealth for a first marriage is paid by the groom’s father. The heifer has to meet certain requirements – she has to be plain-coloured, irrespective of the colour itself, two to three years old, and must turn out to be fertile. A barren cow will be sent back and replaced. If no animal matching these characteristics is at hand, it can be procured by exchange from other members of the groom’s clan, or the payment postponed. This, however, may have serious legal consequences, since children born prior to the payment of the bridewealth can be claimed by the clan of their mother, without the possibility of appeal by the father. The heifer is transferred to the eldest brother of the bride. If there is none, the heifer will be kept in trust by the bride’s father. The brother may not use this heifer for his own bridewealth, nor sell it, give it away or exchange it. Her progeny, however, are not subject to any such restrictions. Another type of stock transferred on the occasion of marriage is the dowry given by the agnatic relatives of the bride to the new household. The dowry, however, does

Multiple Rights in Animals    263 not take the form of a quasi-groom-price as it did in traditional Europe, since it will not become the legal property of the husband but of his first legitimate son, namely the son born after the transfer of the bride-price. The relations between a woman and the parents of her husband, particularly the father, are marked by a number of avoidances. The relationship between the husband and his in-laws, especially his mother-in-law and his eldest WB, tends to be friendly. Brothers-in-law frequently take neighbouring residences. Samburu The relationship of Samburu affines is quite different from the corresponding relationship among the Rendille. Although the nominal bridewealth is fixed in a similar way to that of the Rendille, de facto payments will be continued for the rest of the husband’s life, and beyond. The bridewealth consists of: eight cattle, but there is no convention as regards further gifts, and throughout his lifetime the husband is plagued by a wide range of affines who are constantly begging cattle from him and holding their power to curse his children over him if he should refuse them unreasonably. Even after his death, these affines may approach his children as ‘mother’s brothers’ and expect yet more gifts. (Spencer 1973: 75) We can therefore consider this a combination of open and fixed bridewealth, or a mixed type. Hence among the Rendille, it is the members of one’s own clan who have claims on the livestock and thereby (not to mention potential claims that have not yet been uttered) limit the rights of the owner to dispose of his herd. Conversely, affinal and cognatic relatives among the Samburu produce the same effect, albeit via different mechanisms. Clanship is not based on any fiction of descent from a common ancestor, it is based on social obligations of mutual help and trust, so that the stockowner, far from being quite independent and autonomous, is in reality enmeshed in a web of diffuse ties that are expressed in a complex set of rights over cattle. Between these clans where there tend to be strains kept alive by disputes over existing and proposed marriages, the uneasy relationship can be expressed in terms of the undefined ritual claims they have in one another’s herd for further marriage payments, and the ultimate sanctions they have in their power to curse. (Spencer 1973: 78) Cattle among the Samburu are thus tied into social relationships between the human elements of the multispecies system of pastoral symbiosis in two ways: the trustful expectation of agnates obliges the owner not to sell the animals, and the fear of being cursed by affines and cognates achieves the same result. His property rights in the sense of full rights of disposal suffer constraints from two sides. The sale of cattle and cattle products is correspondingly low: about three steers per year per herd owner, plus a few superfluous hides. The total value, according to Spencer

264  Günther Schlee (1973: 26), amounted to 390 Kenya Shillings, which at the time was probably equivalent to the monthly wage of a qualified manual labourer or three bags of maize meal. Turkana With the Turkana we come to the groups that practise open bridewealth. Gulliver (1955: 299), gives an average of fifty head of large stock (camels or cattle), with a margin of variation from five to eighty. In addition, smallstock are usually transferred, up to three hundred head and more. Collection and distribution of bridewealth involves a large number of people. Gulliver (1955: 231, 136) gives an example of each in the form of charts. The largest contributions are made by the groom, in this case an elder and wealthier man who is marrying a second wife, and his brother (groom: 22 cattle, 4 camels; brother: 3 cattle, 1 camel). Further contributions are made by two of the groom’s first wife’s full brothers, one of whom contributes two head and the other one head of cattle. In-laws thus make substantial contributions; in addition to these two WBs, an affine of the inverse relationship, ZH, gave one camel. Other contributors were a halfbrother, an FB, a half-brother of F, a half-cousin and an MB, and six bond friends (i.e. unrelated stock associates). Altogether, the groom can collect stock from up to forty or even fifty people. Those who do not belong to the closer circle of consanguinal and affinal relatives would contribute goats or sheep. (The origin of the approximately one hundred head of smallstock transferred was not listed by Gulliver.) Generally, the lineage of the bride’s father profits most from the distribution of the bridewealth, he himself taking the lion’s share and his agnates following suit (FB, FBS, FBSS of the bride and others). Cognates of the bride (MB) and possibly the bride’s BWF participate as well (which has the semblance of a continued brideprice for the BW). The Turkana regard affines as the most important category of relatives. Intensive reciprocal exchange – not one-sided, as in the Samburu case – is established with them, involving both loans and gifts (Gulliver 1955: 203–7). Even more so than to agnates and stock associates, this is the group to whom a victim of severe loss would turn for assistance in rebuilding a herd. Karimojong According to Baker (1967: 27), the Karimojong, who are closely related to the Turkana, pay twenty to a hundred head of cattle as bridewealth. Dyson-Hudson gives a wider range.14 The distribution key among the closer relatives of the wife is not affected by the amount of bridewealth. A high bridewealth, however, would be distributed beyond this circle to a wider range of relatives, thus opening up 14. Unfortunately, most authors only give extreme values or averages or both, but rarely a standard measure of variation. Dyson-Hudson (1966) gives comparatively detailed information on the Karimojong, according to which the total span is 5 to 200 head of cattle and the average 30 to 50. It would, however, be gratifying to know the approximate percentage of cases that fall into the category of 30 to 50.

Multiple Rights in Animals    265 more friendly contacts for the groom. Since every groom wants to pay as high a bridewealth as possible, one can conclude that the affinal relations constituted by the bridewealth have a positive meaning for him, as among the Turkana (DysonHudson 1966: 50, 84). Gogo The Gogo practise a mixed economy and are less exclusively pastoral than other groups in this sample. However, their bridewealth transactions are quite high, especially in relation to their smaller possessions. Bridewealth can amount to eleven or fifteen head of cattle. Collection and distribution of the bridewealth here too involves a large circle of relatives. The relations between affines are positive while agnatic relations tend to be strained and competitive (Rigby 1969: 225–35). Pokot There is a constant swapping of ownership rights in animals from one person to the other among the Pokot. It is remarkable that most transactions only include two or three animals at a time. Property rights in animals are continuously divided and redistributed. Bridewealth payments are paid over a period of ten years and more. A young man will rarely take all the animals which belong to him out of the paternal herd at once. He is perfectly satisfied with taking out a few animals and to know that he has a claim to further animals in the paternal herd in the future. Next to the sharing of ownership rights in existing animals, promises of livestock are handled in a similar way. Fathers promise livestock to their sons and their wives, and kin promise animals to each other as do close friends. Due to this constant redistribution of ownership rights in livestock, it is not difficult for a man to obtain ownership rights in a few animals. However, it is difficult to accumulate large herds. There is a constant pressure on those owning livestock to distribute their property. Bridewealth exchange, bridewealth distribution and stock friendships stand out as the major institutions of reciprocal exchange (see Bollig 1998). Bollig states that ‘[m]arriages can only be legitimised through the exchange of animals (kanyoy) … At a formal meeting (aloto), the bride’s and husband’s male kin fix the amount of bridewealth to be paid’ (Bollig 2006: 283). The payment will be settled in two parts. The first one – up to half of the total bridewealth – will be transferred before the bride follows her husband to his home. The remaining amount will be paid by instalments in the subsequent years. A ritual (koyogh) constitutes the payment of the last instalment. It designates the discharge of the debt and removes the bride-taker from further obligations. Once the brideprice has been accomplished, the relation between affines ‘is now regarded as “heavy” (nïkïs) and both men involved, the bride’s father (plus his closest agnatic relatives) and the son-in-law (plus his closest agnatic relatives), may now exchange livestock voluntarily’ (ibid. 284). The bridewealth payment, though not specified, averages of about twelve head of cattle, two or three camels and thirty goats, plus some sheep (ibid.). In the case of a marriage of a rich herder, or of the son of a rich herd owner, the bride’s kin may

266  Günther Schlee hold discussions over a higher bride-price. But, should the bridegroom be poor, the bride-price may also be reduced. However, regardless of how wealthy one person is, no more than fifteen cattle will be paid according to Bollig’s findings (ibid.). Bridewealth payments are the only transaction in which large numbers of female stock are given away. Next to a lactating cow (tepa pokïr, the cow of the mother-in-law) and a huge ox (egh pö papo, ox of the father), most cattle included in a bridewealth payment are heifers (46 per cent) and young steers (33 per cent) … The entire bridewealth comes from the herd of one family. (Bollig 2006: 284) It is rare that major contributions to bridewealth payments come from the outside. In cases where contributions from the outside were made, it normally came from brothers. In this livestock–women exchange, well-off herders are under pressure to swap their surplus livestock for women. Also, it entails a dwindling of large herds. But this side effect is seen as natural among the Pokot. Transfers of livestock are carried out to initiate long-term relationships between two herder families. And this includes further exchanges of livestock and leads to emotional ties and social support. The bridewealth payment accomplished by the bridegroom or by his father will be distributed throughout the personal network of the recipient. Bollig explains that ‘[t]here is a moral obligation not to keep large numbers of livestock received as bridewealth payment for one’s daughters or sisters. Instead bridewealth animals should be distributed to relatives and friends generously’ (Bollig 2006: 284–85). Most animals stay within the patrilineage, the bride’s father and his brothers and sons being prime recipients. The distribution of the brideprice has great importance ‘for reinforcing kinship networks of mutual obligation’ (ibid. 285). Bollig (2006: 286) states, that ‘[a] herder who distributes incoming bridewealth generously is highly regarded, while somebody keeping bridewealth payments selfishly for himself is ridiculed in public meetings’.

Summary: Bridewealth Paying bridewealth means converting bovines and other animals into humans. As a means of acquiring wives, livestock gains significance for domestic, emotional and sexual life, and for human reproduction. Wealth that exceeds the requirements for the acquisition and maintenance of one nuclear family in these polygynous societies15 can be converted to more wives and more children, providing additional labour for managing even larger herds. In addition to this, the relationships between affines in societies with open bridewealth, such as the Turkana and the Karimojong, tend to be positive, friendly and cooperative. They provide an incentive for the groom to initiate numerous relationships of this kind by paying a high bridewealth, which is distributed to many

15. Polygyny rates differ greatly. Spencer (1998: 51–92) lists numerous polygyny rates and discusses their implications.

Multiple Rights in Animals    267 people who thereby become his affines. The social and economic interest of the groom is (within the limits of his capability) to maximize, not minimize, bridewealth. Continuous payments to the wife’s group of origin, if not reciprocated by other types of transaction, can lead to aversions on the side of the wife-taker, which can only be checked by the ritual powers of the wife-givers. This is the case with the Samburu. Such conflicts are circumvented in other societies by a fixed bridewealth and a code of respect and detached politeness between affines, which excludes the demanding of gifts. Competition for stock between affines is thus eliminated and the way paved for a bearable or even enjoyable relationship. We can summarize this in the form of a chart. Table 12.1 Chart of bridewealth Case Bridewealth

Kind of postnuptial transaction of stock

Relationship between affines

Rendille fixed

none respectful

Kipsigis fixed

none respectful

Barabaig fixed

none friendly

Samburu mixed type

one-sided from wife-taker to wife-givers

tense

Turkana open both ways

friendly and cooperative

Karimojong open both ways

friendly and cooperative

Gogo open both ways

friendly and cooperative

Pokot open

friendly and cooperative

both ways, but because of the deferred bridewealth payments, primarily from wife-taker to wife-givers

In societies with open bridewealth, especially where it tends to be high, such as among the Turkana and Karimojong, animals circulate at a high rate. Anyone at any moment must be prepared to receive a share of bridewealth or contribute to someone else’s bridewealth.

Allocation and Inheritance Two other forms of transfer of possession, property or other rights in livestock are allocation and inheritance. These two forms can be closely interconnected, but not necessarily. In some societies, usufruct rights have nothing to do with the likelihood of inheriting an animal; in other cases, splitting a herd and allotting it to different wives or uterine families prejudges inheritance.

268  Günther Schlee Allocation that implies usufruct, and usufruct only, means that the owner retains all rights of disposition, including sale. The Rendille, for example, allot lactating animals to different households or individuals – one camel always being milked for one particular baby. This occurs on an ad hoc basis, however, according to need and to the availability of lactating animals. Allocations do not involve claims of inheritance. The firstborn son inherits the herd, while his junior brothers and uterine half-brothers might get camels at circumcision, as a reward for killing an enemy in a raid, as hired herdsmen, or as gifts from their senior brothers. The maal system above is also a means of partly overcoming the disadvantage of being a junior brother. Allocation, however, does not figure here. The Karimojong, too, do not combine the mechanisms of allocation and inheritance (Dyson-Hudson 1966: 52, 50). In all other cases in our sample, including that of the Barabaig and Gogo, there is a link between allocation and inheritance. Among the Gogo, conflicting rights or claims of disposition over allotted herds tend to lead to tension between fathers and sons, and between brothers (Rigby 1969: 250–59). Here we will examine three other cases more closely where allocation involves expectations of inheritance and property rights beyond mere usufruct: the Turkana, the Samburu and the Pokot. Allocation and Inheritance: Turkana In monogamous unions, the herd of a man remains undifferentiated. On the marriage of a second wife, however, the first wife retains the bulk of the herd, including male stock, in her enclosures, while the second receives an allocation of mostly milking stock, plus loading donkeys, according to the subsistence and transport needs of her household. Subsequent wives are dealt with accordingly. Gulliver (1955: 128) stresses that the large portion remaining with the first wife should not be interpreted as her person allocation, over which she has rights, but as the residual herd – in other words, the property of the husband that has not (yet) been allotted to a particular uterine household. The demands on the residual herd made by other wives and possibly adult daughters are so heavy that the residual herd in poorer families tends to disappear over time. The portion with which a first wife is left could well resemble the allocation to a junior wife. Unmarried daughters receive similar allocations if they stay with their families of origin. Any children they might have belong to their – the children’s – MF and are under his authority.16 Inheritance strictly follows allocations. On the death of a household head, each uterine family becomes autonomous and keeps its allocation as inheritance. Sets of full brothers separate only gradually. At first, the eldest acquires the paternal role of nominal owner of the whole herd and has to consent to marriages and bridewealth payments. His rights of property do not extend to selling and slaughtering without consulting his brothers. The distribution of any residual herd that might still be in existence at this point of the cycle can produce friction. 16. To the eastern neighbours of the Turkana, i.e. the Samburu, Rendille and Gabra, the idea of girls having children and thus of descent groups enlarging themselves by uterine links would be nothing short of an abomination.

Multiple Rights in Animals    269 Allocation and Inheritance: Samburu ‘When a man first marries he takes a portion of his total herd, allotting it to his wife (her allotted herd) and retaining a smaller portion (his residual herd)’ (Spencer 1973: 76). The bride can refuse her allocation if she believes that the residual herd is still rather large. She may then get two to five cattle more and, if she accepts, one more cow after entering the ‘gate’ of her husband’s settlement. Once this is over, she has no further claims on her husband. In the case of a second or subsequent marriage, she gets one heifer from each of her co-wives’ allocations. The co-wives can agree to cede more stock to her in the following months. Further potential contributors are her husband’s agnates and married sons. In polygynous marriages, certain rules prevail. These are as follows: (a) no one save the husband can alienate any beast from the total herd; (b) the husband cannot take an animal from the allotted herd of any wife and give it to any other wife or return it to his own residual herd; (c) offspring of any female cattle in a wife’s allotted herd remain in her allotted herd; (d) a wife can give any cattle from her allotted herd to any of her sons and these cattle remain effectively in her allotted herd as far as these rules apply, and of course they remain effectively inside the total herd. (Spencer 1973: 76) A man who wants to build up his residual herd can do so by adding to it animals given to him by outsiders, and taking animals he wants to give – such as to his wife’s relatives – from the allotted herd of his wife. (Members of the wife’s clan thereby come under moral pressure not to be too excessive in their demands on their ‘sister’.) When the father dies, the sons remain with the herd they extracted from their mother’s allocations. The residual herd is inherited by the firstborn of the first wife. When a woman dies, the youngest son inherits the share of his mother’s allocation that has not already been given to his older brothers. This is a form of compensation for the disadvantage of having had less time to extract gifts from his mother during her lifetime. These transfers contain a certain degree of collective control, and justice can be achieved in a number of ways: On the one hand, the inheritance of stock is defined by custom, and custom is controlled by the local clan elders who are prepared to intervene in any matter. On the other hand the division of the mother’s allotted herd, where custom does not determine the outcome, is primarily controlled by the mother and her sons among themselves: where they fail to arrive at a satisfactory solution, the father may indirectly affect the outcome by alienating cattle from the herd of one son and giving gifts from his residual herd to another, more distant kinsmen may affect it by begging from one and not from another. (Spencer 1965: 65)

270  Günther Schlee Pokot Habitually, the head of a Pokot household obtains his first animals from his father. He takes these animals from the very part of the herd his mother administers within his father’s homestead. Like his father did to his mother, he will give them (or at least most of them) to his wife to take care of. These animals may be seen as an advance on his future inheritance. However, many men only leave their father’s homestead after marrying a second time. The household ideally grows in people and in livestock during the following years. The household head will attempt to convince friends and/or relatives to present him livestock and he will make sure that he participates in the distribution of bridewealth. Animals he obtains through such social exchange he will usually allot to one of his wives. She makes full use of the animal and feeds her children and herself from the milk without the obligation to share continuously with other wives. If the animal is sold, she will definitely receive a major proportion of the money generated, whereas the other wives have to content themselves with smaller parts of the sum. In order to prevent conflict within the household, a household head may entice the wife who obtains an animal to promise the first offspring of this animal (or the first female offspring) to another wife. Hence relations via livestock do not only pertain to factually existing animals but also promises in livestock play a major role, and define the quality of social relations. If the head of the household has to procure an animal himself (e.g. for a festivity, or even for a bridewealth payment) he will ask one of his wives and then take whatever type of animal he needs from one part of the herd, frequently with the promise that the first incoming animal will replace the animal he has taken. After some two or three decades the first sons will be married off. Bridewealth payments will be mainly (but not totally) paid from that part of the herd allotted to the mother of the groom. This prevents direct competition of half brothers for animals of the household herd, but to some extent exacerbates competition between full brothers.

Conclusions Many of the factors affecting pastoralists and their property rights, including some of their strategies to acquire and secure rights in animals, have not been dealt with in this chapter: diversification through education and labour migration, commercialization, encroachment of agriculture on pastoral lands, privatization of land, the establishment and the decline of states, and marketing and animal health policies. These omissions are deliberate, because all of these topics have been extensively discussed elsewhere (Dahl 1979; Schlee 1989b; Spencer 1998). This chapter goes back to the 1970s and evaluates even older ethnographic literature. Since it was never the intention to reflect the most recent state of social change where this occurred, I make no apologies for it not being up to date. The ethnographies evaluated here are of a high standard. Some recent work of similar quality could have been incorporated had time and space permitted. This cannot be said for all recent work. The literature consulted here reflects an earlier stage of pastoralism in many places, before the setting in of the recent transformation, frequently viewed as a decline. It describes several rules that have fallen into oblivion

Multiple Rights in Animals    271 since then, and some obligations that are no longer binding. For the present purpose this may even be an advantage. To illustrate our point that pastoral societies have developed systems of rights in animals that rival land rights in feudal societies and property rights in the corporate enterprises of modern societies in their complexity, the still thriving pastoralists of the 1950s and 1960s may well provide better material than their impoverished descendants.

272  Günther Schlee

Appendix Camel Brands and other Property Marks (drawings by Günther Schlee) Rendille Figure 12.1 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Wambile.

For white (dakhán) and whitish (boróg) animals: dakar (m) (‘the camel fly’).

Figure 12.2 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Wambile.

For all other colours.

Multiple Rights in Animals    273 Figure 12.3 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Wambile.

Ear clipping: fur ti nuchul (‘small opening’), right ear.

Figure 12.4 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Bulyarre. Ear clippings: left ear: gagab (only for male camels); right ear: Fur (ti nuchul) ([small] opening). Brand: like Wambile (neck).

274  Günther Schlee Figure 12.5 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Gudere. gurum (f)

The ear clipping of Gudere is a small fur in the right ear.

Figure 12.6 Sanchir and Gaalbooran (in the Subclan Gudere). Ear clipping: a small fur in the right ear.

Multiple Rights in Animals    275 Figure 12.7 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Mirgichán.

Brands: gurum, left side; neck, right side. Ear clipping: small fur, right side.

Figure 12.8 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Dokhle.

The common Dubsahai brand on the neck and a small fur in the right ear.

276  Günther Schlee Figure 12.9 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Teilan.

The common brand on the neck plus fur ti balladan (the wide fur) in the right ear.

Figure 12.10 Clan Dubsahai: Subclan Asurua.

Ear clipping: a small fur in the right ear; brands: neck (right side), shoulder (left side).

Multiple Rights in Animals    277 Figure 12.11 Clan Rengumo: Subclan Batarr.

batarr (‘thigh’)

Figure 12.12 Clan Rengumo: Subclan Ongom.

Ear clipping: gagab like the subclan Bulyarre of Dubsahai.

278  Günther Schlee Figure 12.13 Clan Matarbá: Subclan Gaalgidele

Ear clipping: small fur (cf. Dubsahai); brand: right side of the neck, much lower than Dubsahai.

Figure 12.14 Clan Matarbá: Subclan Feecha.

No ear clipping, togog (‘upper foreleg’).

Multiple Rights in Animals    279 Figure 12.15 Clan Nahagan: Subclans Machán and Durolo.

Ear clippings like the Bulyarre subclan of Dubsahai.

Figure 12.16 Clan Nahagan: Subclans Gaalgorowle and Bahai-Yeito.

Ear clippings like Machán, Durolo and Bulyarre (cf. above).

280  Günther Schlee Figure 12.17 Clan Uiyám.

The brand on the foreleg is for both sexes, the one on the body only for males.

Figure 12.18 Clan Uiyám: Subclans Basele and Gaalhaile.

Basele subclan cuts the tips (bir) on both sides.

Subclan Gaalhaile: chában (m).

Multiple Rights in Animals    281 Figure 12.19 Clan Saale: Subclans Nebei and Gooborre.

No brand, ear clippings: left ear: Furrakhach; right ear: nebei.

Figure 12.20 Clan Saale: Subclan Elegella.

hajir

282  Günther Schlee Figure 12.21 Clan Saale: Subclan Kimogol.

Ear clipping: nebei. (s. Figure 12.19)

Figure 12.22 Clan Saale: Subclans Gaabanayó and Gaaloroyó.

Gaabanayó: ear clipping nebei. (s. Figure 12.19)

Gaaloroyó: ear clipping nebei. (s. Figure 12.19)

Multiple Rights in Animals    283 Figure 12.23 Clan Urawén: Subclan Jaale.

Figure 12.24 Clan Urawén: Subclans Silamo and Ogóm.

Ears: both tips are cut.

284  Günther Schlee Figure 12.25 Clan Urawén: Subclan Tirtiri.

Figure 12.26 Clan Gaaldeylan: Subclan Keele.

Multiple Rights in Animals    285 Figure 12.27 Clan Gaaldeylan: Subclans Keele, Elemo and Madacho.

Ear clipping: choos.

Figure 12.28 Clan Gaaldeylan: Subclan Burcha and Farlai, Lengima and Naaricha (Lineages of Gaalora Subclan): chában like Gaalhaile (Uiyám, s. above). Burcha has no brand. Elemo:

286  Günther Schlee Figure 12.29 Gaalora, Madacho: ongom.

Figure 12.30 Clan Tubcha: Subclan Bolo.

This semicircular brand results from a straight line which is burnt on the tied hindleg above the bent knee.

Multiple Rights in Animals    287 Figure 12.31 Clan Tubcha: Subclan Deele.

No ear clipping.

Gabra Figure 12.32 Gaar Phratry: Karbayu. No brand. An incision is made on the nose and the skin is left to form a small convulsion, shilmam. Ear clipping: surre.

288  Günther Schlee Figure 12.33 Gaar Phratry: Kobola.

Kobola (idiimo).

Figure 12.34 Gaar Phratry: ‘Ule.

Multiple Rights in Animals    289 Figure 12.35 Gaar Phratry: Rerwalan.

Galbo phratry Maasa: identical with Elemo (Rendille, Gaaldeilan, cf. above).

Figure 12.36 Galbo Phratry: Lossa Moiety.

alif

290  Günther Schlee Figure 12.37 Sharbana Phratry: Bahae.

sharom

Figure 12.38 Sharbana Phratry: Quchabúr.

gubba kalle

Like Deele (Rendille, Tubcha) with an additional diacritic mark on the right kidney (kalle).

Multiple Rights in Animals    291 Figure 12.39 Sharbana Phratry: Different sublineages of Quchabúr. Ear clipping: surre of Haldér and Korolle.

Figure 12.40 Sharbana Phratry: Different sublineage of Quchabúr.

Ear clipping: bong ‘kors of Barre.

292  Günther Schlee Figure 12.41 Sharbana Phratry: Eilo. Herár.

Lineage Eidamole: like Bahae (cf. Figure 12.37) plus a little mark on the right upper lip.

Figure 12.42 Sharbana Phratry: Oomo.

Multiple Rights in Animals    293 Lineage Matarbá: like Feecha (Rendille, Matarbá), Figure 12.14 Lineage Worr Geiya: alif like Lossa of Galbo (cf. above, Figure 12.36). Figure 12.43 Odoola Phratry: Some Lineages.

Figure 12.44 Odoola Phratry: Meilan.

alif

294  Günther Schlee Figure 12.45 Alganna Phratry: Yaabar, Noles and Helmalle.

Yaabar: sharóm

Noles.

Nucleus of Helmalle: gólole

Figure 12.46 Alganna Phratry: Jalle (Arsi Immigrants in Gabra).

Notes on Contributors Hugh Beach (Ph.D. 1981) is Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University in Sweden. He has lived among Saami reindeer herders for many years in Sweden and has studied Saami herding systems in Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. He has worked as a reindeer herder in Alaska with the Inuit NANA Regional Corporation herd, and studied herding forms in different parts of Russia, in Chinese Inner Mongolia and in Canada. In general he has specialized in the study of indigenous circumpolar peoples and been chairman of the Swedish Minority Rights Group and expert advisor on Saami affairs to the Swedish ombudsman against ethnic discrimination. He has led and leads a number of inter-disciplinary and international research projects, for example: ‘Effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster for Saami Herders’; ‘Managing the Wilderness and the Dilemmas of Cultural Ecology: Laponia-Saami Landscape and World Heritage Site’; the Swedish part of the project ‘A Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic’; ‘PostSoviet Political and Socio-Economic Transformation among the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Russia’; and ‘Circumpolar Land Use and Ethnicity’. His publications include ‘Political Ecology in Swedish Saamiland’, in Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North, D. Anderson and M. Nuttall (eds) (Berghahn Books, 2004); and ‘Self-Determining the Self: Aspects of Saami Identity Management in Sweden’, Acta Borealia 24(1) (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2007). Youssouf Diallo (PD Dr) is lecturer in Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Competencies at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Hamburg. He was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (1999–2004) and he held a Postdoctoral Fellowship and taught at the University of Bielefeld (1993–1999). His main publications are Les Fulbe du Boobola (Rüdiger Köppe, 1993), L’ethnicité peule dans des contextes nouveaux with Günther Schlee (Karthala, 2000) and Nomades des espaces interstitiels (Rüdiger Köppe, 2008). Brian Donahoe (Ph.D. Indiana University, 2004) is an independent researcher, writer and editor living in Kyzyl, Tyva (Russian Federation). From 2004–2010 he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. His research interests include the dynamics of constructing, maintaining and asserting ethnic identity and indigeneity, and different approaches to guaranteeing indigenous rights to land. Recent publications include ‘On the Creation of Indigenous Subjects in the Russian Federation’ (Citizenship Studies, 2011), and ‘The Law as a Source of Environmental Injustice in the Russian Federation’, in the edited volume Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the

296  Notes on Contributors Former Soviet Union (MIT, 2009). He is also co-editor of two recent volumes: Law against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations (Cambridge, 2012), and Reconstructing the House of Culture: Community, Self and the Makings of Culture in Russia and Beyond (Berghahn Books, 2011). Peter Finke is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Zurich. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Cologne (1999) and a postdoctoral degree (Habilitation) from the University of Leipzig (2006). Since 2000 he has been on the research staff at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, where in 2005 he became the head of a research group on ‘Conflict and Integration in Central Asia’. He was also a visiting professor at the University of New Hampshire (2002–2003) and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara (2004–2006). His major regional interest is Central Asia, where he has been working on a wide array of topics including economic and social change during the postsocialist transformation process, the reconfiguration of ethnic identities, and the consequences of large-scale migration movements. Patty A. Gray is Lecturer in Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1998, followed by a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, studying post-socialist property relations in Russia, and was Coordinator of the Siberia Project Group. Her book, The Predicament of Chukotka’s Indigenous Movement: Post-Soviet Activism in the Russian Far North is published by Cambridge University Press (2005). She has published on Chukotkan reindeer herding in Polar Research and Nomadic Peoples, and in the book Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: Knowing and Managing Animals in the Circumpolar North, edited by D. Anderson and M. Nuttall (Berghahn Books, 2004). Anatoly M. Khazanov is Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. From 1985–1990, he was Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Corresponding Member of the UNESCO International Institute for the Study of Nomadic Civilization, and Honorary Member of the Central Eurasian Society. He has received a lifetime achievement award from the IUAES Commission on Nomadic Peoples ‘for outstanding contribution to the study of nomadic pastoral societies’ (quote from the award statement). He has published and edited 19 books and volumes and is the author of over 200 articles and other scholarly publications. Among his monographs is Nomads and the Outside World (2nd edition: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) also translated and published in South Korea, Kazakhstan, Russia, and partially in China. He spent many years doing extensive fieldwork, mainly in Central Asia and Russia. His current research interests include pastoral nomadism, ethnicity and nationalism, and post-Communist societies.

Notes on Contributors  297 Mark Moritz is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the Ohio State University. His research focuses on the transformation of African pastoral systems. He has published in Agriculture and Human Values, Human Ecology, Human Organization, and World Development. He has conducted long-term research in the Far North Region of Cameroon and examined how pastoralists have adapted to changing ecological, political and institutional conditions that affect their lives and livelihoods. His current interdisciplinary research projects examine pastoral systems within the analytical framework of coupled human and natural systems, using a regional approach that situates the Far North Region within the larger Chad Basin. Michaela Pelican is Assistant Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. She was a doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), and received her Ph.D. from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg with a thesis on interethnic relations and identity politics in North West Cameroon. She subsequently moved to the University of Zurich where she started a new research project on transnational relations of Cameroonian Muslim migrants. She has published on Fulbe agropastoral economy, farmer-herder relations, interethnic friendship, citizenship and minority rights, indigeneity and autochthony, new forms of Fulbe mobility and South-South migration. Günther Schlee is a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. Until 1999 he was Professor for Social Anthropology at the University of Bielefeld. His Habilitation thesis (Bayreuth, 1986) has been published as Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya in the series of the International African Institute (1989). In his department, Integration and Conflict, he directs research in Africa, Central Asia and Europe. Florian Stammler is the coordinator of the anthropology research team at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, and an Institute Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. As a social anthropologist he specializes in the study of human-animal-environment relations among pastoralists, the impacts of the extractive industry on remote indigenous communities, and human mobility and locality among industrial labour migrants. He has lived and worked with different groups in the circumpolar North, e.g. Nenets reindeer pastoralists on both sides of the Ural Mountains. Among his publications are Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market (Lit, 2005) and several edited volumes such as Good to Eat, Good to Live With: Nomads and Animals in Northern Eurasia and Africa (co-edited with H. Takakura, CNEAS, Japan, 2010), and ‘Humans and Reindeer on the Move’ (co-edited with H. Beach, Nomadic Peoples 10, 2006). Steve Tonah is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana. He worked between 1993 and 1997 as Research Coordinator for the Christian Council of Ghana and managed the Ghana office of the Ecumenical Church Loan Fund (Ghana ECLOF). He has also considerable experience in development work,

298  Notes on Contributors as he has worked for several Ghanaian and international organizations. His main research interests are interethnic relations, chieftaincy and the integration of Fulani pastoralists in West Africa. He has researched and published extensively, on chieftaincy and traditional rule in Ghana and the Fulani in Ghana, in several journals. Tonah’s main publications include The Development of Agropastoral Households in Northern Ghana (1993); Fulani in Ghana. Migration History, Integration and Resistance (2005); Ethnicity, Conflicts and Consensus in Ghana (2006). Aimar Ventsel is an external Lecturer at the Department of Ethnology at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and visiting academic of the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, U.K. He was a founding member of the Siberia Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. He received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His academic interests are identity and property relations in the East Siberian music business, nomadism, and subcultures in Siberia and Germany. His publications include Reindeer, Rodina and Reciprocity: Kinship and Property Relations in a Siberian Village (Lit, 2005); ‘Punx and Skins United: One Law for Us, One Law for Them’ (2008, Journal of Legal Studies 57: 45–100); ‘Consumption and Popular Culture among Youth in Siberia’ (with J.O. Habeck, 2009, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 134: 1–22); ‘Generation P in the Tundra: Youth in Siberia’ (2009, Special Issue of Electronic Journal of Folklore 41).

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Index A access, access to, 1, 12, 15, 36, 53, 56, 57, 59, 62, 63, 64, 96, 112, 115, 117, 122, 132, 137, 141, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 154, 155, 159, 160, 161, 173, 185, 196, 199, 204, 221, 223, 231, 233, 237, 238–40, 242, 245 acquisition, 179, 183, 186, 221n7, 224, 227, 231, 237, 266 of rights, 184, 185 affines, 251, 256–58, 260–67 agriculture, 21, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 60, 69, 126, 141, 142, 143, 155, 162, 196, 197, 226, 227, 228, 245, 270 agricultural enterprises, 53, 54, 68, 69, 86, 148, 149, 150n5, 157; see also sovkhozy agricultural policy, 49, 152, 153, 155 department of agriculture, 27, 35, 38, 40, 41, 65n2, 69, 76 mixed agriculture, 3 aibat, 73–74 Aku, 214, 216, 217, 218, 225, 227, 229 alaal, 251–53 alliance(s), 47, 75, 78, 81, 93, 186 alliance building, 6 allocation(s), 2, 7, 9, 13, 148, 153, 160, 171, 181, 184, 187, 190, 213, 219, 222, 246, 251, 267–69 Anabar (region), 47, 48, 51, 54, 58, 61, 63 Anabarskii (district), 45–46, 48–52, 54–55, 57–59, 61–62, 64 ancestor(s), 89, 207, 214, 224, 237, 247, 252, 253, 263 antler(s) (panty), 14, 18, 19, 29, 30, 51, 71, 76, 81, 93, 103, 118, 122

antler crop/cropping, 29, 30, 76, 121–23, 126–30, 132–33, 136 state Antler Company, 19, 121, 124, 126–28, 132, 136–37 appropriation, 17, 124, 126, 130, 136, 160, 165, 168, 169 association(s), 22, 85, 90, 94, 117n25, 122, 245 auls, 141, 142, 144, 145 authority, authorities, 8, 35, 107, 122, 123, 124, 137, 144, 150n5, 183, 186, 196, 219, 220, 237, 268 legal authority, 122, 180 local authorities, 21, 146, 153, 246 state authorities, 130, 137 award(s), 108, 144, 168, 171, 172; see also reward B Barabaig, 250, 260, 262–63, 267, 268 Basseri, 68, 73, 76, 84, 93, 97 benefit(s), 20, 33, 77, 84, 86, 87, 94, 127, 128, 130, 132, 137, 148, 157, 160, 188, 209, 210, 211, 212, 221, 242, 246, 253, 254 Bilibinskii District, 37–39 Bolshevik revolution, 31, 142 Boran, 68, 93, 247, 251 borders, 36, 49, 121, 124, 142, 216, 236, 250 brand(s), 77, 181, 182, 247–49, 253, 272–94 branding, 247 collective branding, 181 bride-price, 73, 74, 75, 93, 95, 241, 263–66 bridewealth, 9, 14, 187, 221n6, 251, 253, 256, 258, 259, 260–68, 270 brigade(s), 30–31, 34, 36, 38, 40, 41, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 63,

322  Index brigade(s), cont. 64, 73n6, 74, 80, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 95 hunting brigade, 49, 55, 57, 62 reindeer brigades, 40, 47, 49–50, 52–55, 57, 59, 60–62 British, 226, 255 brotherhoods, 48 C camp(s), 28, 39, 41, 47, 53, 68, 73, 74, 85, 86, 90, 91, 123, 129, 130, 132, 136, 171, 211, 216, 235, 236, 239 kin-based camp(s), 21, 30, 43, 87– 89, 124, 126, 133–34, 137, 172, 173, 180 satellite camp(s), 252 cattle, 2, 5, 8, 68, 74, 151, 162, 165, 196, 197, 198, 201n3, 203, 204, 205, 211, 212, 213–17, 220, 221, 222, 226, 231, 232, 233, 240–46, 256, 257, 258, 263; see also bridewealth, inheritance, livestock, ownership, pastoralism, sharing, relationship(s), rights categories of cattle, 183, 184, 186, 188 cattle complex, 251 cattle herding, 180, 218, 234–36 cattle husbandry, see under husbandry cattle lineages, 202, 223, 224, 225, 227 cattle trade, cattle traders, 227, 236–37 Central Asia, 15, 19, 21, 141, 146n3 cher eeleri, also cher eezi, 100, 101, 102, 106, 109, 113, 116, 117, 119; see also spirit masters of places chief, 165, 196, 233, 238, 239, 240, 242, 245–46 China, 18, 19, 99, 121, 122, 124, 128, 137, 141, 142, 169 China’s minority policy, 121, 126

Chukchi, 10, 17, 18, 19, 28, 29, 30, 31, 80, 224 Chukchi pastoralism, see under pastoralism circulation, 61, 62, 179, 180, 184 circumcision, 219, 249, 260, 268 coexistence, 214, 224, 227–28 collective farms, 16, 32, 48, 53, 101, 107, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150; see also kolkhozy, kolkhozes collectivization, 10, 15, 16–18, 22, 30–33, 35, 48, 66, 101, 107, 115– 16, 117, 118, 142, 144, 151, 159, 162, 168, 255n12 de-collectivization, 10, 17 re-collectivization, 17 Soviet collectivization, 28–29 colonial period, 6, 226, 227, 255 colonial rule, 142, 238 commercialization, 231, 238, 244, 245, 246, 270 commodity, commodities, 6, 52, 59, 71, 73, 74, 93, 96, 180, 197, 213, 223 commodity use, 72, 76–77, 96, 97 non-commodity, 71 community, communities, 28, 29, 47, 54, 69, 83, 122, 180, 193, 194, 197, 205, 212, 220, 222, 224, 232, 233, 238, 239, 240, 244, 245, 246 kin-based nomadic communities, see auls tundra community, 93, 94 competition, 31, 110n20, 117, 142, 227, 236, 239, 240, 246, 267, 270 conflict(s), 14, 46, 93–96, 129, 142, 187, 188, 190, 217, 227, 230, 236–37, 246, 267, 270 control, 7, 17, 27, 33, 36, 41, 43, 57, 59, 60, 72, 90, 101, 110, 117, 122, 126, 130, 134, 137, 144, 148–49, 154, 179, 181, 190, 191, 214, 218, 223, 231, 232, 233, 237–38, 243, 246, 269

Index  323 control, cont. over animals, 81, 85, 168, 173, 181, 184–86, 198–99, 201n3, 206, 219–20, 230 state control, 15, 16, 18–22, 34–35, 51, 53, 68, 76, 84, 86–87, 97, 126–27, 153, 167, 170, 217 cooperatives, 2n2, 21, 31, 70, 153; see also shirkats corruption, 153–55 cosmic economy of sharing, 100, 102, 106, 117, 119 credibility, 160, 168 credit(s), 36, 54, 56, 57, 96, 146, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155 Cultural Revolution, 18, 132 custom, 22, 58, 61, 105n14, 190, 244, 260, 261, 269 custom of uzha, 101 haimu, 46 D Dagomba, 231, 244 Daniel T. arap Moi (President), 255 decline, 15, 27, 52–53, 132, 152–54, 168, 180, 214, 270 of pastoralism, 156, 229 of reindeer herding, 34 of the importance of social relations, 23 Delta Group, 116–18; see also ZAO ‘Tofalariia’ denationalization, 19, 27, 33, 148 descent, 81, 214, 223, 247, 263 descent group, 268n16 patrilineal descent, 180, 225 development(s), 3, 21, 28n1, 48, 87, 123, 126, 132, 144, 146, 147, 148, 154–56, 171, 181, 199, 213, 214, 228, 237, 238, 246, 250–51, 255 Diamaré plains, 194, 196, 197, 201 Dinka, 73, 93 disease(s), 5, 15, 73, 86, 108, 169, 181, 217; see also trypanosomiasis

distribution, 47, 57, 61, 93, 95, 130, 132, 133, 134, 141, 145, 150–51, 159, 164, 168, 184, 187, 202, 241, 268 distribution of bridewealth, 256, 259, 264–66, 270 redistribution, 12n11, 127n2, 141, 159, 179, 180, 199, 265 diversification, 68, 92, 270 economic diversification, 214, 227–28 division of labour, 180, 184, 220 Dolgan, 10, 11, 17, 45–64, 88 dowry, 75, 87, 170, 198, 199, 221, 262 indirect dowry, 75, 205, 206–8 duty, duties, 2, 8, 47, 67, 71–77, 96, 97, 152, 160, 164, 174, 217–18, 235, 243 E earth priest, 237–39, 245 East Africa, 193, 225n11, 238 economy, 10, 15, 17, 34, 62, 63, 77, 87, 116, 118, 126, 132, 145, 146, 160, 162, 235, 265 domestic economy, 180, 200 economic organization, socio economic organization, 185, 200, 202, 213, 218, 228 market economy, 66, 68, 89, 96, 97, 121, 122, 133, 154, 165, 169, 170, 180, 218, 226–27 national economy, 18, 146, 250, 255 pastoral economy, 8, 68, 142, 155, 181, 216–18, 224, 226, 228–29, 238, 244 reindeer economy, 66, 77, 87 subsistence economy, 63, 224 embezzlement, 17, 20, 148, 153, 155 emigration, 162, 168 encroachment, 119, 270 entitlement(s), 6, 54, 65–97, 101, 118– 19, 223

324  Index entrustment, 204–7, 209, 210–12, 242 environment, 2, 4, 71, 106, 118, 119, 137, 141, 145, 146, 220, 224, 225, 234, 235, 244, 250, 257 epidemics, 164, 251, 255 Eurasian steppes, 5, 6, 7, 9, 15, 141 Evenki (also ‘Yakut Evenki’), 18, 19, 29, 46, 47, 58n5, 59, 61n6, 99n1, 101n4, 112, 121–37 exchange, 2, 10, 12n11, 18, 46, 47, 53, 58, 66, 73, 75, 78, 90, 91, 95, 99, 160, 165, 180, 193, 194, 196, 210n10, 211, 254–270 concept of two spheres of exchange, 6, 71, 74 delayed exchange, 91, 92–93, 96–97 social exchange, 80, 87, 187, 232; see also inheritance, bridewealth, gift expectation(s), 30, 33, 101, 160, 249, 268 trustful expectation, 263 exploitation, 31, 46, 48, 93–96, 129, 185 F Far North (of Cameroon), 193–212, 223, 226 Far North (of Russia), 6, 11, 15 farming, 4, 148, 162, 234, 237, 239– 41, 245, 262 subsistence farming, 216–217, 227, 228 feudalism, 2, 16 forage, 110, 112, 197, 204 cottonseed cakes, 197, 198, 203, 204, 211, 224 friendship, 6, 84, 209, 210, 254, 256, 257 stock-friendship, 9, 258–61, 265 funds, 38, 126, 136, 137, 246 G Gabra, 9, 247, 249, 250, 251–54, 257, 287–94

gender, gender and age, 57, 179, 180, 185, 188, 191, 213, 222 gift(s), 7, 9, 14, 30, 31, 46, 58–60, 62, 63, 64, 75, 80, 93, 103, 124, 132, 173, 179, 184–87, 191, 193, 202, 205–6, 209–10, 211, 214, 221, 236, 251, 254–61, 263–64, 267– 70 Gogo, 250, 258, 261, 265, 268 government, 18, 19, 35, 51–52, 54, 115, 123, 126, 128, 136n6, 142, 147– 48, 150, 153, 155–57, 217, 226, 228 local government, 127, 134, 136, 149, 245–46 Soviet government, 107, 116, 144, 146 grain production, 144, 152, 232, 233 grazing, 87, 94, 117, 155, 159, 168, 216, 217, 225, 227, 234, 240 grazing capacity, 197 overgrazing, 21, 145, 229 Great Leap Forward, 18 guardianship, 205, 207, 210–12, 221 GUP (Gosudarstvennoe Unitarnoe Pred priatie), 109 H Han, 124, 128, 134 Hausa, 216, 228, 236 heirs, see inheritance herd(s) (private), 76, 81, 82, 86, 90, 92, 95, 107, 108, 166 herder(s), herdsman (hired), 7, 12, 28, 46, 180, 184, 218, 220, 236, 242, 254, 268; see also pastukhi (shepherds) non-contract herders, 129 herding, Herding Council, 127, 129, 132, 134, 136 reindeer-herding enterprise(s), 33, 36, 38, 69 Hero of Socialist Labour, 50, 144

Index  325 household(s), family household(s), 7, 8, 21, 51, 60, 166, 170–74, 180, 199, 208, 209, 216–17, 219, 237, 245 household head, 7, 86, 92, 127, 133, 171, 193, 194, 197, 198–204, 206, 210, 212, 218–20, 223, 235, 237, 238, 240, 243, 255, 257, 258, 268, 270 polygynous household, 180, 189, 190, 199, 200, 235, 249, 266 uterine household, 268 hunter-gatherer(s), 99, 102, 223, 224, 225 hunters, 3, 12–14, 39, 49–51, 53, 56– 57, 59, 60–62, 100–6, 108, 109, 111–12, 114, 116–19, 124, 128, 130, 225 hunting and gathering, 3, 100, 119 hunting brigade, see brigade(s) husbandry, 3–4, 17n17, 143, 145, 180, 181, 191, 204, 208, 216, 227, 232, 233, 243, 244; see also pastoralism, transhumance reindeer husbandry, 50, 60, 68, 77, 101, 115 I identification, 1, 216, 223, 224 identity, 1, 66, 159, 181, 185, 261 ethnic identity, 113, 114, 196, 199, 213, 214, 229, 255 identity marker(s), 71, 77, 96, 216 Islamic identity, 214, 228 pastoral identity, 214–16, 222, 223 ideology, 31, 199, 208, 217, 230 egalitarian ideology, 9 Islamic ideology, 214, 219–20, 226, 228–29 milk-sales ideology, 214, 218, 222– 23, 226–29 Imam, 180, 233 independence, 57, 60, 75, 146, 152, 155, 171, 220, 253

inheritance, 10, 22, 31, 73, 78–80, 82, 89, 95, 97, 127, 137, 147, 167, 170n2, 179, 185, 205, 214, 220, 241, 251, 258, 267–70 pre-inheritance, 9, 179, 185, 190, 209, 230 rules of inheritance, 184, 187–89, 191, 200, 203 Inner Mongolia, 99, 121, 128 institution, 1, 54, 57, 61, 69–70, 81, 86, 119, 127, 159–61, 189, 190, 259, 265; see also sovkhoz, obshchina of habbanae, 191 integration, 122, 255n12 disintegration, 85, 94 total social integration, 93 interaction, 5, 81, 96, 116, 159, 160, 226 investment, 54, 62, 122, 130, 146, 147, 200, 212 ‘invisible transformation’, 194 involvement, 114, 197, 211, 228 of local authorities, 21 of state authorities, 51, 69 Islam, 189, 191, 196, 199–200 Islamic codes, 200, 203, 204 Islamic law, see law Islamic rules of slaughter, 252 ivizhi, 11, 111–13, 114 J Jaafun, 8, 214, 216, 217, 218, 225, 227–29 Jallube, 228 jihad, 196 joint stock, 33, 68, 148, 149, 151, 161 joint stockowners, 9 K Karimojong, 9, 250, 256, 261, 264–65, 266, 267, 268 Kazakhstan (state), 14, 15, 16, 21–22, 147–50, 153–55, 157 keeping, 3, 4, 17n17, 18n19, 28, 58, 95, 209, 211, 242

326  Index keeping, cont. keeping-while-selling, 77 Kenya, 2, 11, 17, 247, 255, 258 Khanty, 58n5, 65, 76, 80, 81, 84, 86 khoziain, 61n6, 72, 73 kimanagan, 255–56; see also sharing out kin, 10, 21, 29, 30, 34, 43, 46, 47, 49, 54, 61, 62, 63, 75, 80, 82, 161, 170, 171, 173, 183, 187, 188, 193, 198, 201, 202–4, 205, 209, 210–11, 252, 256, 257, 259, 265; see also affines, obligations, relations kinship, 1, 6, 7, 59, 60, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 97, 179, 187, 266 in-laws, 89, 239, 253, 263, 264 Kipsigis, 9, 250, 254–56, 260, 262 knowledge, 18, 22, 71, 78, 83, 114–15, 118, 244 religious knowledge, 199 kolkhoz, kolkhozes, kolkhozy, 16, 17, 21, 48, 101, 107, 108, 116, 117, 143, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151 kolkhoz-sovkhoz system, 17 kolkhozniks, 16, 17, 149 Komi, 20, 21, 65, 86 Krasnoiarskii Krai, 45, 46 ‘kulaks’, 29, 31, 66, 86 Kyrgyzstan, 21 L land, 2, 13, 36, 56, 61n6, 101, 102n6, 103–5, 107, 108, 111, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 142, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150–51, 156, 160, 168, 175, 231–32, 237–38, 239–40, 245, 246, 250, 255, 258, 270; see also law, ownership, rights, shares virgin land campaign, 143n2, 145 large stock, 2, 6, 68, 166, 169, 171, 230, 264; see also cattle camels, 77, 153, 162, 164, 225n11, 247, 249, 251–54, 257, 261, 264 horses, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 77, 145, 153, 162, 164–66, 222

law, 10, 17, 20n22, 22, 51, 54, 57, 121, 146, 147, 150, 160, 166, 168, 183 customary law, 1, 183–85, 188 Islamic law, 170, 200, 241 land law, 148 law of the tundra, 47, 94, 101n4; see also zakon tundry Malekite law, 188–89 leadership, 21, 81, 88, 231, 233 leadership properties, 88–89 ‘left business’, 88 Levin and Cheboksarov (theory of), 100 Limited Liability Enterprises (LLE), 149, 150, 151 limited liability partnership, see Omolon state farm lineage(s), 7, 101, 193, 202, 229, 232, 237–39, 249, 250, 264 cattle lineages, 202, 224, 225, 227 ‘lineage-inborn’, 225 Maasa lineage, 249 matrilineages, 214, 223, 225 patrilineages, 202, 266 livestock development, 146, 169 livestock economy, 15, 146 livestock enterprises, 19, 151 livestock production, 7, 145–46, 152, 231, 236, 238, 244–45 loan(s), 2, 9, 184, 190, 191, 193, 205, 207, 208–9, 210, 212, 247, 249, 252–54, 256, 257, 259–60, 264 loan networks, see network(s) Logone flood plain, 194, 196 M maal, 252–54, 257, 268 Maasai, 219n4, 251 Mamprusi, 231, 233, 236 management, 30, 33, 36, 38, 48, 49, 53– 54, 59, 60, 85, 115, 121, 122, 126, 127, 130, 133–36, 147, 148, 151, 161, 169, 179, 180–83, 185, 186, 190, 198, 206, 210, 211, 232–33, 235, 242, 243, 246

Index  327 management, cont. management rationales, 214, 224, 227–28, 229 Mangui, 124, 137 maral, 12, 14, 103 mark(s), marking, 34, 62, 66, 77, 89, 104, 106, 129, 181–83, 247, 249, 255 earmarking/furmarking, 77–78, 80– 84, 90 market, 14–15, 18, 20n22, 38, 66, 68, 71, 74, 76, 180, 232–33, 235, 260 market production, 151, 214, 216, 224, 226–29 market system, 180, 181 marketing, 34, 53, 57, 69, 130, 146, 147, 154, 155, 169, 181, 200–1, 228, 244, 250, 251, 270 milk marketing, 228–29, 230 Maroua, 197, 198, 199 marriage, 6, 9, 10, 58, 75, 87, 89, 92, 96, 99, 128, 133, 134, 141, 171, 179, 185, 186–87, 189, 193, 203, 206, 219, 221, 240, 244, 252, 253, 256, 258, 261, 262–63, 265– 66; see also bridewealth, inheritance interethnic marriage, 240 polygynous marriages, 268–69 ‘mastering of the North’ (process), 48 Maveraunahr, 141 Mbororo, 213–30 mechanization, 50–51 Middle East, 9 migration(s), 46, 47, 54, 56, 72, 81, 88, 90–91, 215, 238, 246, 249, 270 emigration, 162, 168 immigration, 162 migration routes, 28–29, 60, 89 milk production, 152, 180, 214, 229, 233, 234, 244; see also economy, market, marketing milk sale(s), see under ideology, milk sales ideology milking, see rights Ministry of Agriculture, 48, 52, 53, 109

minority group, see Evenki modernization, 6, 146, 157 Moi, Daniel T. arap (President), 255 monetarization/monetization, 206, 255n12 Mongolia, 14, 18, 19, 22, 59, 77, 78, 99, 107, 121, 141, 159, 161, 168, 169 monopolization, 154 multispecies, 3, 6, 145, 164, 263 municipalization (munitsipalizatsiia), 35, 37–38, 40–42 MUPs (municipal unitarian enterprises), 53–56, 59, 60, 61, 62 N name giving, see inheritance, rights naming system, 223–24, 227 Nazarbaev, Nursultan (President), 147, 148 negotiation, 61, 133–36, 168, 221, 258, 261 Nenets, Nentsy, 17, 50, 65–66, 69, 73, 75, 80, 81, 82, 86–89, 93–94, 96; see also Yamal Nentsy network(s), 45, 60, 61, 62, 83, 87, 173 livestock exchange networks, 194 network of ‘delayed return’, 47 network of social relations, 93, 102, 193, 236, 261, 266 reciprocal network, network of reciprocity, 47, 57, 58–60, 63 Nganasan, 80, 88, 101n4 NGOs, 226, 228, 229 Nigeria, 188, 216, 218, 227, 241, 244 nomadism, 72, 96, 122, 141, 142, 144, 255 industrial nomadism, 49 nomads, 3, 9, 10, 14, 47, 66, 86, 141– 42, 250–51 nomadic lifestyle, lifestyle nomads, 72 semi-nomads, 142 North West Cameroon, see Mbororo North-East Africa, 14n14, 238

328  Index Nuer, 68, 73, 85, 93, 97 Nuguurak, Alexei (writer), 102, 104

state ownership, 14, 19, 20, 67, 70, 127, 147, 161

O obligation(s), 6, 10, 14, 23n23, 46, 47, 50, 54, 55, 61, 75, 91, 93, 101–2, 113, 127, 147, 159, 161, 166, 184, 186, 189, 193, 201, 219, 256, 258– 59, 263, 265, 270–71 moral obligation, 102, 106, 109, 220, 223, 266 obshchina, obshchiny, 38–39, 42, 52, 54– 56, 65n1, 69–70, 108–9 okrug, 65, 69, 77 Olguya, see Evenki Omolon state farm, 36–40 oran eezi, see cher eezi owner, 2, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 18–20, 30, 42, 49, 54, 62, 72, 73–74, 76, 80– 84, 90, 92, 96–97, 102, 107, 118, 153, 160, 161, 165, 166, 173, 174– 75, 180–81, 184, 186, 188, 190– 91, 204, 209, 210–11, 219, 222, 248–49, 252, 254, 256, 258, 260, 263, 268 ownership, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 22, 184–85, 186, 190, 243, 245, 247n2, 249, 250, 265 absentee ownership, 17 collective ownership, communal ownership, joint ownership, 7, 16, 27, 30, 107, 147, 161, 181, 237 district ownership, 53 dual ownership, 19, 121, 137 family ownership, 22, 170–74 individual ownership, 17, 142, 161, 168, 181, 184, 200, 238, 247 land ownership, 147, 231, 237–38 multiple ownership, 86, 232, 250 nominal ownership, 203, 205, 213, 219, 221, 253 private ownership, 9, 14, 17, 22, 31, 46, 69, 70, 108, 118, 147–48, 161 public ownership, 14, 70

P pastoral production, 181, 198, 202, 244–46 pastoral system(s), 5, 30, 194, 216, 224, agro-pastoral system, peri-urban pastoral system, 194–212 pastoralism, 2, 4, 6, 10, 16–19, 21–22, 146, 151–52, 154–57, 159, 162, 196, 214, 227, 270 agro-pastoralism, 214, 227, 228 carnivorous pastoralism, 17, 18, 30, 67, 68, 76, 80, 224 milch pastoralism, 17, 18, 30, 67, 76, 100, 224 mobile pastoralism, 3, 21, 141–42 multispecies pastoralism, 6 reindeer pastoralism, tundra pastoralism, 3, 28–30, 67, 78, 97 traditional pastoralism, 147 pastukhi (shepherds), 49, 95, 116 pasture(s), 4, 5, 8, 11, 16, 20–22, 28, 36, 53, 60, 61, 65, 73, 85–87, 90, 93, 95, 108, 141–45, 147–48, 155–56, 180, 194, 197–98, 216– 18, 225, 227, 231, 234–39, 242, 244–45 perestroika, 76, 86 period of reorganization, 27, 33, 35 permission, 52, 54, 55, 60–61, 101–2, 108–9, 119, 144, 196, 204, 211, 229, 239, 256 personal deer, 31–32, 34, 36, 40–41, 43, 70 personhood, 224–25 poaching, 130, 137, 152 Pokot, 9, 250, 258–60, 261, 265–66, 270 possession, 6, 12, 17, 36, 51, 55, 67, 93, 107, 121, 122, 126, 130, 141, 167, 179, 184, 185–86, 206, 217, 255, 265, 267–68

Index  329 power, 14, 60, 77, 105n13, 126, 137, 148, 154, 157, 160, 161, 171, 175, 179, 183–85, 186, 191, 199, 238, 245, 253, 263, 267 preservation, 69, 147, 152 prestige, 6, 16, 22, 28, 71, 75–76, 91, 116, 144, 180, 185, 189, 244, 252, 253, 255 loss of prestige, 146 prikhvatization (grabization), 20 private animals, 14, 50, 54, 56–58, 78, 81, 165 privatization, 19–20, 27–28, 33, 34, 37, 53, 55, 69, 147–50, 153–54, 156, 157, 159, 165, 168–70, 174, 231, 244–46, 270 privilege(s), 133, 144, 183–85, 186, 189, 191, 218, 223 progeny, 253, 255–56, 258, 262 property, 1–2, 11–14, 16, 18, 28, 31, 32, 40, 43, 55, 65–67, 70, 100–2, 106, 112, 126, 142, 147, 179, 181, 183, 184–85, 186, 189, 190, 193– 94, 200, 202, 220, 222, 247, 250, 253, 254, 256, 263, 268 collective property, 30, 36, 70, 107–8, 148, 151, 161, 174, 198, 212, 232, 237, 245 cooperative property, 32 cultural property, 74, 77, 80, 97, 111, 113–14, 214 exclusive property, 29, 68, 73, 222 family property, 46, 134, 165, 174– 75, 179, 181, 206, 229–30 individual property, 1, 8, 30, 161, 174, 221 personal property, 17, 18, 32, 41, 69–70, 74, 187, 205, 212 private property, 10, 11, 17, 18, 22, 32, 36, 40, 66, 70, 72, 80, 89, 101, 108–9, 118, 160–61, 167, 168–70, 173, 174, 199, 226 property duties, 72, 96 property regime(s), 67, 68–71, 72, 76, 77–96, 97, 159, 255n12

property share(s), sharing property, 40, 47, 54, 108, 148–49, 241 state property, 32, 78, 108, 117, 121, 142, 162–66, 174 Q quarantine regulations, 15 R raid(s), 250, 255, 262, 268 ranching, 2, 67, 146, 147 rangelands, 195–96, 226 reciprocity, 1, 6, 9, 10–11, 22, 47, 58– 60, 75, 84, 91, 94, 107, 141, 145, 156, 173, 255, 259 balanced reciprocity, 75, 96 delayed balanced reciprocity, 90, 93 generalized reciprocity, 10, 94, 96 reform(s), 21, 55, 124, 127–30, 132, 137, 147–48, 153 market-oriented, 155 regime(s), see property regime(s) relations, 2, 7, 12, 38, 67, 68, 85–86, 92–93, 96, 101, 118, 137, 160, 204, 211, 212, 223, 232, 236, 242, 244, 256, 258, 261, 263, 265, 270 economic relations, 61, 194, 232 human-animal relations, 5, 11, 12, 18, 109, 223–26 kin relations, kinship relations, 82, 84, 88, 97, 170, 173, 259 power relations, 161, 171, 175 property relations, 1, 5, 12, 15, 31, 32–33, 64, 66–67, 71, 83, 87, 102, 141–42, 179, 181, 183, 185, 191, 193–194, 201n4, 202–3, 205, 213– 14, 218, 226, 229, 231, 249 relations of cooperation, 7, 179 relationship(s), 1, 6, 18–19, 46, 54, 58, 72, 73, 87, 93–94, 96–97, 146, 184, 188, 189–91, 204, 213, 231, 236, 252, 253–67; see also property

330  Index relationship(s), cont. between humans and cher eeleri/cher eezi, 12, 14, 102, 106, 109, 112–13, 116, 117, 118–19 human-animal relationship, 4, 5, 11, 41, 100–2, 104, 107, 110–11, 114, 115, 117, 118–19, 189, 213– 14, 223–26 human-to-human relationship, 12, 118 personal relationship, 47, 58, 64, 225 trusting relationship, trust relationship, 60, 62–63, 64, 102, 105, 106, 111, 114 relatives, 8, 11, 14, 20, 34, 40, 43, 46– 47, 49, 54–57, 59–63, 87–91, 94, 133–34, 150, 166, 171, 173, 175, 191, 216, 220–21, 223, 241, 254, 255, 257, 261–70; see also affines, kin Rendille, 2, 5, 9, 11, 14, 17, 225n11, 247, 249–54, 257, 261–62, 263, 268 Republic of Tyva, 11, 100 resource(s), 4, 16, 20, 31, 34, 38, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64, 67, 71, 77, 81, 87, 93, 96, 101–2, 116, 117–19, 121, 122, 126, 127, 137, 142, 147– 48, 150, 156, 159–61, 169, 170, 174–75, 189, 194, 196–97, 218, 227, 237, 238–39, 245–46 responsibility, 16, 18, 39–40, 52, 53, 122, 126, 132, 146, 164, 187, 211, 218, 220, 234, 242 reward, 31, 72, 165, 249, 268 rights, allodial rights, 238, 239, 240 bundle of rights, 14, 202, 213 disposition rights, 107–9, 117 land rights, land-use rights, 1, 8, 12, 56, 66, 250, 271 milking rights, 180, 185, 189, 190, 191; see also usufruct rights nominal rights, 7, 9 overlapping rights, 1, 201

ownership rights, 6, 7, 48, 74, 93, 184, 202, 203, 219, 221, 229–30, 238, 265 rights of allocation and alienation, 213, 219 rights of control, 7, 181, 190, 219 shared rights, joint rights, 2, 10, 17, 21, 179, 183–85, 189, 250, 260 use rights, 28, 67, 71, 73, 74, 81, 92, 97, 107, 117, 159, 169, 189, 202, 238, 239, 258 usufruct rights, 7, 8, 9, 23, 62, 107, 184, 186, 201–2, 208, 210–12, 213, 219, 230, 243, 256, 258, 267; see also milking rights rules, 1, 9, 10, 96, 159–60, 165–67, 179, 184, 186, 187–89, 191, 200, 211, 220, 221, 243, 245, 254, 269, 270–71 Russia, 20, 27, 29, 34, 65, 66, 68, 76, 101, 115, 142, 154 Russian Federation, 22, 45, 99, 106 S Saami, 47, 66n4, 70, 77, 78, 80, 81, 89, 122 Sakha, (Republic of ), 45, 51–53, 54, 57, 70 Samburu, 9, 250, 257, 261, 263, 267, 268, 269 Second World War, 2n2, 94, 144, 154 security, 27, 59, 63, 97, 136n6, 196, 199, 238, 242 sedentarization, 15, 49, 51, 114, 115, 116, 118, 143n2, 228 shaman(s), 99, 106, 107 share(s), property shares, land shares, 7, 17, 33, 34, 36, 40–41, 54, 55, 60, 66, 69, 78, 80, 82, 90, 96, 97, 108, 133, 141, 148–49, 150, 170–72, 188–89, 223, 240, 241, 262, 267, 269 sharing, 9, 10, 11, 46–47, 60, 64, 68, 74, 76, 107, 119, 137, 185, 188, 190, 260, 265

Index  331 sharing, cont. sharing out, 252, 254, 255–56, 258, 260 shirkats, 21 Siberia, 3, 6, 13, 15, 18, 21, 35, 45, 47, 49, 83, 99, 100 smallstock, 2, 6, 17, 68, 93, 166, 170, 220, 222, 232–35, 240, 241, 243, 254, 257, 262, 264 ‘social isolation’, 68, 73, 93 socialist period, 14, 161, 170, 172 solidarity, 7, 82, 179, 191 mutual assistance, 10, 47, 66, 72, 73, 78, 84, 87, 89–90, 93–94, 95, 96, 97 mutual engagement, 224 mutual support, 173 Somali, 14, 251, 254 sooriyo, 247, 252 Soviet state, Soviet Union, 15, 17, 20, 27, 28, 30–31, 32, 33, 43, 48–50, 53, 65, 66, 69, 70, 87, 89, 106, 107, 115, 162 breakdown of the Soviet Union, 20 collapse of the Soviet Union, 88, 108, 148 dissolution of the Soviet state, 27 sovietization, 66, 89 sovkhoz, sovkhozes, sovkhozy, 16, 20, 21, 22, 31, 48, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74, 78, 80–89, 95, 101, 107–9, 117–18, 143–44, 148, 149, 150, 151 spirit, 11, 73 spirit animals, animal spirit, 12, 14 spirit masters, 100, 104, 117 water spirit, 214 state, 14, 15–17, 18–20, 22, 27, 31–32, 48, 52, 54, 57, 66, 68, 77, 87, 95, 96, 107, 115, 121, 127, 130, 144, 145, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 160, 167, 168–70, 174, 238, 245, 246 state appropriation, 124, 126–27, 130, 136 state farm, 15n15, 16, 20, 21, 31– 34, 36, 38–40, 48–50, 51, 53–59,

63, 69, 114, 115, 145, 148, 149, 150, 161; see also sovkhozy, sovkhozes, Omolon state farm status, 33–34, 39–42, 56, 57, 100, 106–7, 116, 179, 183–84, 186, 191, 212, 253 social status, 28, 213, 221, 244 stock, see large stock, smallstock stock associates, 250n5, 251–60, 264 (live)stock exchange, 2, 194, 258 stock friends, 256, 257, 258, 259, 261; see also stock associates, stock friendship(s) stockowner(s), 9, 23n23, 156, 157, 161n1, 188, 233, 239–40, 263 subsistence, 18, 28, 66, 71, 93, 122, 127, 130, 137, 143, 151, 155, 157, 216, 217, 227, 254, 256, 260 family subsistence, 218, subsistence economy; see under economy T taiga, 3, 6, 12, 18, 28, 29, 46, 49, 99, 100, 102–4, 107, 110, 112 taxation, 15, 20n22, 169, 170, 171, 196 tenure, 28, 118, 156, 238, 245 territory, 1, 12, 13, 28, 36, 38, 40, 45, 49, 51, 56, 57, 60–61, 69, 101–2, 104, 115, 124, 141, 161, 231 Tofalariia, 114–18 trade, traders, 30, 51, 56, 60, 112, 154, 160, 199, 224, 226, 239, 254, 258 tradition, 1, 9, 22, 46, 58, 59, 119, 145, 190, 199–200, 204, 206, 208 transhumance, 194, 196, 197, 198, 209, 216, 218, 225 transition zone(s), 99, 231, 244–46 trypanosomiasis, 181, 216 tundra, 3, 4, 11, 18, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39, 41, 43, 47, 49, 50–51, 54, 56, 60, 61, 62–64, 65, 67, 71–77, 81–82, 86, 88, 89, 94–97 Siberian Tundra, 10, 17 tundra zone, 45, 46, 90, 91 tundroviki, 51, 57–63

332  Index Turkana, 5, 9, 250, 256–57, 261, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268 Turkmenistan, 17, 21, 22, 23 U ultimogeniture, 10, 78, 87, 88, 89, 95 Uurung Khaia (village), 45, 48, 50, 53, 59–60 Uzbekistan, 21, 22 uzha, 101, 104 V Van Gujjars, 109–10, 111 visualization, visualizing property, see mark, marking W wealth, 12, 28, 29, 73, 107, 134, 148, 159, 179, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 199, 200, 201, 217, 218, 245, 266; see also bridewealth West Africa, 14n14, 181, 193, 197, 199, 201n4, 228, 230, 234, 238, 242, 244 white reindeer, 58n5, 60, 99 wild animals, 12–13, 100–4, 106–7, 111, 113, 116, 117–18, 225

WoDaaBe/Wodaabe, 188, 190n4, 201n4, 208, 220 World Bank, 148, 149 World War Two, see Second World War Wuro Badaberniwol, 194, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 204, 209 X Xovd-sum, 162, 163, 164, 166, 168, 169, 170, 172 Y Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 45; see also Republic of Sakha Yakutia, 16, 20, 22, 23, 76 Yamal Nentsy, 21, 68, 74, 84, 96, 97 Yamal peninsula, 10, 21, 50, 84 Yamal-Nenets autonomous okrug, 17, 65, 68–71; see also YNAO Yeltsin, Boris (Russian President), 33, 35 YNAO, 65, 66, 69, 76, 77 Z zakon tundry, 74, 94, 96, 97 ZAO ‘Tofalariia’, 117, 118