Freestyle Bearing
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Freestyle Bearing: Work, Play, And Synergy In The Practice Of Everyday Life Among Mongolian Reindeer Pastoralists Written by Nicolas Rasiulis University of Ottawa Faculty Of Social Sciences School Of Sociology And Anthropology A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master’s Of Arts in Anthropology Under the Supervision of Professor Julie Laplante © Nicolas Rasiulis, Ottawa, Canada, 2016. Table Of Contents Acronyms iii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Preface v Prologue v Introduction vi Overview Of Chapters vii Chapter 1. Dukha Tsaatan People And Livelihoods 1 1.1 Dukha And Tsaatan: Much More Than Just Names 1 1.2 Historical Context 2 1.3 Contemporary Situation 2 Chapter 2. Theoretical Approach 5 2.1 Synergetic Enmeshment 5 2.2 Making As Improvisatory Arrangement 6 2.3 Cultivating Sensible Attention In Practice With 8 2.4 Motricity, Freestyle, Aesthetics, And Kinaesthetic Pleasure 9 2.5 Open-Air Life: Nomadism In Wilderness 16 2.6 Reindeer Games: Relations of Symbiogenesis 19 2.7 Creativity, Improvisation, And Tradition 22 Chapter 3. Methods 23 3.1 Research Itinerary 25 3.2 List Of Mentors 28 Interstitial Vignette I 30 Interstitial Vignette II 31 Chapter 4. Taiga Freestyle: Bearing Of Enskillment 32 4.1 Pedagogy Of Practice In Immersion 32 4.2 Risky Business 38 4.3 Acrobatic Ease And Comfort Zone 40 4.4 Versatility In Diversity 46 4.5 Team Players 52 Chapter 5. Companionship And Dwelling As Livelihood 54 5.1 The More The Merrier 55 5.2 Making Homes In The Taiga 59 5.3 Carrying Life Onwards Through Pastoral Nomadism 71 Chapter 6. Animal Husbandry: Living With Interspecific Companions 79 6.1 Interspecific Companionship: Cooperative Livelihoods In Shared Spaces 81 6.2 Eating Animals And Animals Eating 86 Conclusion 99 I Freestyle Livelihoods 99 II Stewardship Meets Conservation 100 III Freestyling A Future 102 Epilogue 102 Annexes 1 A Tapestry Woven Of Diversely Flavoured Strands 103 2 Methodological Reflections On Fieldwork 106 3 Financial Economy, TCVC, And External Assistance 108 4 Taigiin Duu Lyrics (English Translation) 115 5 Reindeer Nomenclature Chart 115 6 Maps 116 7 Additional Images 118 ii Acronyms *NSPA: National Special Protected Area *TCVC: Tsaatan Community and Visitors Center Abstract Approximately 200 people, mostly Dukhas of Tuvan ancestry, live nomadically with reindeer, horses, and dogs as ‘Tsaatans’ in the taiga of northern Mongolia. How do they effectively realize their livelihoods? Does qualifying corporeal manners, or bearings, in which livelihood practices are performed in the moments of actualization offer insight into ways in which longer- term decision-making processes like nomadic settlement and livestock management are embodied? Informed by a phenomenological approach in anthropology during nearly four months of cooperative co-habitation with Tsaatan mentors, I argue that Tsaatans effectively realize livelihood practices as they cheerfully embody poised improvisation and acrobatics in both skillful discernment and movement. Simultaneously anticipating and performing diverse tasks in playful cooperation with friends, family and other animals along nomadic lifestyles in a wilderness habitat involves persistent, sensory-rich, versatile manipulation of environmental materials, as well as extensive geographic knowledge and frequent experiences of risk in remote, rugged terrain and powerful meteorological conditions impossible to completely avoid. These lifestyles catalyze the development of quick-witted and materially sensitive resilience with which people are capable of corresponding with beings, materials, and situations, and thereby of continuing to develop ancestral traditions of reindeer husbandry in a rapidly changing social, economic, technological and geo-political context. iii Acknowledgements I offer sincere thanks to the Tsaatan mentors with whom I co-inhabited the taiga, without whom this thesis would not exist. A special баярлалаа! goes to Zaya for her translation, and to her and Uultsang for their companionship and trust in me sitting their home and dogs. I also thank Burxuu for his hospitality and logistical assistance, as well as Lkhamdulam Natsagdorj for her help in preparing fieldwork, and Ganzorig Natsagdorj for his friendship and translation. Special thanks go to Sascha, Ashley Karitis, Max, Oli, and Amitie for their friendship and cooperative participation in Dukha lives with me. I thank Jürg Endres for having so kindly shared with me his experienced knowledge concerning Dukha people, and his friendship in the taiga. Deeply drawn thanks go to my family and friends for their years of love and support. A special merci! goes to my mother Louise for the wholeheartedly assembled care packages she sent me when I was in the Tsagaan Nuur area. A special aču! goes out to my father Andrew for having introduced me as a child to Mongolia in his travel stories and in the crimson coloured sweater he brought home from Ulaanbaatar. Another special merci! goes to my brother Alexandre for having introduced me to canoe-tripping, and for engraining within me the love of Rangifer tarandus. I would also like to thank Patrick Weldon for the both gathered and crafted artefacts he has so kindly given me. I am grateful to all the professors and teachers who have tended the fire which drives my curiosity and analytic thinking. Special thanks go to Deborah Sick, David Jaclin and Scott Simon for their guidance in realizing my thesis. A particularly pleasurable appreciation to communicate is my gratefulness for Julie Laplante’s steadfast belief and faith in me since I first stepped into her office’s open door in 2012… bless! I am grateful to all my student colleagues, notably the day and night shift crews of the Panoramic Workspace for their friendship, and for their generous contributions to my physical sustenance and intellectual development. A big merci! goes out to my colleague Mylène Mongeon for her assistance in orchestrating a highly interactive, theatrical thesis defense performance. Special thanks go to Louis Hansen and his family for the motivation they so kindly and playfully inspire, as well as for introducing me to the art of log-home building and relevant skills which were of important use to me during fieldwork. I would also like to thank the University of Ottawa, its Faculty of Social Sciences, and its School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their financial help in realizing my thesis research. Alas, for life as I know it, I thank our planet, moon, and sun, and their functional correspondences with one another. iv Preface This thesis document is functionally multiple. It is first and foremost an honest attempt to genuinely communicate lived moments with Dukha reindeer herders and the diversely specified community they inhabit in ways which can evoke within you tangible experiences oozing with meaning perceivable to you. Second, and most pressingly, it is a valid document submission to the University of Ottawa which will enact the obtaining of my Master’s degree and will unshackle me of very expensive due payments not sufficiently financially supported by my provincial and federal governments alike. Third, it is a weird, administratively sound poem in homage to the outstanding people with whom I engaged 3 and a half months of profoundly edifying cohabitation. Fourth, it is a semantic exploration engaging the notion of livelihood as the practices and processes whereby people both ‘make a living and make it meaningful’ (Bebbington, 2000: 501). I present a personal understanding-in-making of Dukha livelihoods as expressions of freestyle bearing and lifestyle, the latter a historically informed, practically improvisatory lifestyle which intimately engages a beloved habitat. Though this presentation is personal, my person – transformed through sympathetic relation with research participants – is strung and tuned to share communal experiences and polyphonic meaning. Alas, this document is a prayer that its intended functions effectively realize themselves. Prologue Kneeling in the snow, hands bathed in blood, I feel the cold gnaw at my extremities. As I lose sensation in my hands and feet, and feel like this is normal, I notice to which point I have transformed over the past four months. The coyote... In the shape of hood, bumper and headlights, and in the sound of roaring engine, he had seen his life end. Found by a traveller, who would not deny him a second life in the transformation of his body into experiences of friendship and craft, he somehow found his way to me, in this familiar Canadian forest. As I hollow out his stomach by removing his frozen guts with my knife, the familiar odour of flesh brings a smile to my face, bringing me back to the Mongolian taiga where I developed a passion for tactile interaction with animals, living, dying and dead. v Introduction From late August to mid-December, 2015, I lived among Dukha and otherwise Tsaatan reindeer pastoralists along seasonal paths of migration through the taiga, and its rugged forests and alpine tundra, of the sparsely inhabited Mongolian area of the Eastern Sayan Mountains forming the country’s northern borderland with the Russian Republic of Tuva. By allowing me to tangibly participate in the everyday lives of remarkably dextrous, creative people, this expedition helped me better grasp phenomena of inhabitation and enskillment in wilderness places. I came to apprehend these phenomena as elements of Tsaatan livelihoods, spoken of here as the practical means with which Tsaatans sustain their persons, families and communities. More than just ensuring subsistence and shelter, livelihood involves learning, the development of skills and relationships, and the affirmation of significance (Long, 2000: 195). In addition to the domain of labour, Tsaatan livelihoods emerge in the domain of leisure. Believing that wholehearted, free- flowing participation in the world is the most direct way of experiencing and thus of knowing it, I fully engaged my mindful and emotional body in the taiga habitat with Dukhas along the same daily flows as they did through a task- and leisure-filled environment.