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“We’re Living from Loan-to-Loan”: Pastoral Vulnerability and the cashmere-debt Cycle in Mongolia

Individual and Social Adaptations to Human Vulnerability

ISBN: 978-1-78769-176-6, eISBN: 978-1-78769-175-9

Publication date: 14 December 2018

Abstract

This paper explores the emerging articulations between microfinance and livestock production cycles among Mongolian pastoralists in contexts plagued by disaster and commodity market fluctuations. Ethnographic investigations of household production and vulnerability in two rural districts of eastern and western Mongolia demonstrates that both poor and wealthy households have become ensnared in a cashmere-debt cycle but that the bifurcation of livestock asset trajectories between large and small herds has also fostered diverse financial and herd management strategies that further exacerbate existing inequalities.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

The research discussed in this paper was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Taft Humanities Research Center and the University of Cincinnati. The author also expresses his appreciation to D. Chimedtseren and numerous others who assisted the data collection.

Citation

Murphy, D.J. (2018), "“We’re Living from Loan-to-Loan”: Pastoral Vulnerability and the cashmere-debt Cycle in Mongolia", Individual and Social Adaptations to Human Vulnerability (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 38), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 7-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0190-128120180000038002

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited