Presentations

This paper explores mismatches between the ways that global cashmere consumers and cashmere-producing nomadic pastoralists in Mongolia imagine each other, using the lens of "branding" as a mechanism for self-identification and virtue signalling. Whereas global marketing of cashmere apparel conventionally highlights luxury value and indulgence, fashion labels have increasingly adopted sustainability as an element of their branding. Mongolian pastoralists, who supply most of the world's cashmere, are themselves also "branded" through this process, in ways that are not altogether positive. Fashion labels have reproduced claims that herders in Mongolia are in a state of "crisis", ostensibly triggered by overgrazing and degradation of grasslands to satisfy a global mass market for cashmere. In this context, nomadic pastoralists are represented as reckless but malleable targets for improvement. On the ground, branded interventions include several competing standards for sustainable cashmere, supported by different fashion labels but positioned operationally within the international development space. These new standards privilege technical improvements and increased production efficiencies, thus promoting a transition away from the "cultural" in favour of the "economic" in rationalized livestock production. At the same time, Mongolian pastoralists and cashmere processors aspire to a branding that associates cashmere with a place-based cultural identity. In imagining...

The phrase "sustainable cashmere" appears frequently in marketing messages from global brands and designers, in addition to serving as a frame of reference for several market-based development initiatives in Mongolia and China. But it is not generally obvious to consumers, or even to most producers, what should be understood as making a cashmere garment "sustainable". Beyond disagreement over the long-term ecological impacts of goats on Mongolia's rangelands, there are differing perspectives on which sustainability indicators to prioritize, from a range of factors such as wildlife conservation, rangeland biodiversity, governance, common-pool resource management, social inclusion, or economic livelihoods. Moreover, discussion of sustainability measures in the cashmere sector has given relatively little consideration to cultural factors. Our current research acknowledges claims, within Indigenous rights and national intangible cultural heritage safeguarding discourses, that cultural practices and expressions often support social well-being and privilege good relations with land and non-human species. From this perspective, we consider the strategic potential for cultural indicators within sustainability standards for cashmere, with a focus on "nomadic culture" as a political and economic resource.

Guest talk on counter-branding as a form of Indigenous self-identification within the market economy, with reference to the Mongolian cashmere trade

Whereas the marketing of cashmere apparel has traditionally highlighted luxury and indulgence, global fashion labels have increasingly adopted sustainability as an element of their branding. In partnership with international charities and development organizations, or through their own corporate social responsibility initiatives, fashion designers and retailers have attempted to certify and market their apparel as "sustainable cashmere". Cashmere-producing herders are themselves also branded through this process, marked by their willness to participate in self-regulation and self-improvement regimes. Through ethnographic research investigating the ways that Mongolian herders perceive and navigate sustainable branding and certification initiatives, we find that the concept of "sustainable cashmere" brings a narrow, technical scope to the political economy of pastoralism. Herders' own political concerns, often articulated with reference to the safeguarding of nomadic pastoral cultural heritage and identity, may better be captured in international branding through the concept of "cultural sustainability".

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...

The fair trade movement has achieved success in promoting ethical approaches to trade in global commodities, yet it has generally failed to accommodate ethical value conflicts between producers and consumers. Drawing on explorations forming part of my current research on the applied ethics of "sustainable" cashmere commodity chains, I discuss several options for designing fair trade mechanisms that accommodate value pluralism, commenting on examples of ethical conflicts and challenges associated with "nomadic culture" and its safeguarding. Two major strategies considered are (1) the assertion of cultural rights, as part of a deontological ethics, aligned with ideas of "universal cultural value" in the work of UNESCO World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage institutions; and (2) a commitment to inclusive metaethical discourse within fair trade networks, designed to expose and negotiate conflict between incommensurable or incomparable values held by diverse actors within the commodity chain. Whereas the cultural rights-based approach may be more effective in mobilizing consumers and other commodity chain actors, and is compatible with existing fair trade network designs, it offers limited potential to address power difference and value pluralism. Conversely, the discursive approach to fair trade provides limited normative guidance, but offers openings for ethnographically grounded critique that may...

This paper comments on the emergence of market-based governance systems in the Mongolian Gobi, involving patron-client relationships between wealthy local actors and nomadic herders. Over the past decade, international development organizations and the Government of Mongolia have introduced initiatives to encourage the provision of public services, including resource management and livestock commodities trade management, through collective action institutions. Yet the herder groups and cooperatives envisaged by these interventions have often failed to encourage horizontal solidarity and collaboration, instead serving to institutionalize existing patron-client relationships with local elites. In this paper, drawing on recent research on cashmere commodity chains, I explore some of the conditions supporting these political formations. First, I suggest that the dispersed and mobile nature of the desert population in Mongolia's Gobi is conducive to a non-territorial governance regime, creating advantages for delocalized market-based structures. Second, I argue that positive cultural value associations with individual wealth accumulation present an appearance of greater legitimacy in market institutions, in contrast to public or elected bodies in which clientelism can be represented as corrupt. I consider the implications of these forms of patron-client governance as bringing Mongolian desert herders under the power of distant, unknown, and unelected economic actors.

Is cashmere the sustainable textile of the future? Recently, several clothing brands begun marketing cashmere as “ethically produced” from “sustainable fibres”, positioning sustainability as a new marker of luxury. Garment labels proclaim affiliations with fair trade and resource management initiatives that target Mongolian goat herders, who produce 90% of the world’s cashmere. But on the ground in Mongolia, ideas of what is “ethical” or “sustainable” are much more complex than these labels suggest. Drawing on his ethnographic research among mobile pastoralists, Dr. Eric Thrift untangles the ethics of the global cashmere commodity chain.

Poster introducing the research project on Sustainable Cashmere