Narrating futures in Mongolia's rangelands: Three stories about ‘sustainable cashmere’
| title | Narrating futures in Mongolia's rangelands: Three stories about ‘sustainable cashmere’ |
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| place | Online |
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| dateModified | 2024-08-07T06:32:20Z |
| meetingName | POLLEN2020 Conference |
| date | 2020-09-22 |
| key | MCHGEA27 |
| itemType | presentation |
| abstractNote | This paper explores three stories told by global cashmere producers, each of which narrates a perceived sustainability crisis in Mongolia's rangelands and proposes a transformative future to be enacted through the global commodity chain. In each story the cashmere producer as protagonist/narrator, responding to an ethical call to action, intervenes to rescue Mongolian herders and grasslands from almost certain disaster. In one version of the narrative cashmere goat herders overproduce to meet global demand, thereby contributing to overgrazing and the desertification of rangelands; the solution is for a multi-billion-dollar fashion group to reduce demand by eliminating virgin cashmere from its supply chain. In a second version, herders are indentured to ruthless middlemen who have no interest in herder welfare or a sustainable economy; the solution is for a young and energetic American entrepreneur to "disrupt" the industry by circumventing local trade networks and institutions. In a third story, herders appear to have drifted away from their ecologically noble Indigenous practices, drawn into a global economy that values quantity over quality; the solution is for an established luxury brand to market traditional culture and sustainability as core elements of its luxury value. Used as didactic stories, these narratives have been deployed to promote uptake of “sustainable” practices among cashmere-supplying pastoralists as well as among consumers in the Global North. Yet these stories can occlude or discredit alternative visions of the future proposed by mobile pastoralists themselves, which may instead be framed as stories that emphasize sovereignty and economic independence. While these various narratives are fundamentally contradictory, they can productively be read in dialogue with one another as engaging a situational ethics of "sustainability" in the cashmere industry. |
| dateAdded | 2024-08-07T06:07:45Z |
| version | 225 |
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| presentationType | Conference presentation |