Batbuyan Batjav

ABSTRACT This article brings work on geographies of care into dialogue with critical agrarian studies and research on mobile pastoralism to explore pastoral mobility as a form of care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mongolia. We aim to understand the spatialization of care and the tension between immobility and mobility as both divergent and intersecting modes of securing human and animal life during the co-occurrence of the global pandemic and severe winter conditions (dzud).

Mongolian nomadic herders traditionally pass on ecological knowledge intergenerationally, mainly within families. However, little is known about how current societal transformation processes may impact the application and transfer of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) amongst herders. Combining quantitative household survey data with qualitative interviews, we show that TEK is still widely applied amongst herders.