Guro Fisktjønmo and Wurihan from the research project Complexity will travel to Mongolia on 1^st of July to carry out the first fieldwork in the project. From July through September, they will conduct fieldwork among nomadic herders in rural areas of Mongolia, and the peripheral western part of Mongolia.

Nomadic empires have long fascinated scholars, but the traditional view – being that they arise through contact with agricultural neighbors – does not fully explain how herding people evolved from small, kin-based cooperative groups to powerful hierarchical units. This is the core of the research project Complexity, which aims to understand political, social, and cultural organization among herding cultures.

The researchers behind the project see cooperative herding groups as fundamental building blocks in nomadic societies. From Africa to Inner Asia, they want to develop a theoretical explanation for how political complexity can arise from such groups.

Previous studies have been based on individual cases, and there is a lack of a cross-cultural study of cooperation among herding people. The Complexity project combines empirical data with modelling techniques to explore whether collaborative herding groups can be considered prototypes for more complex organizations.

Guro Fisktjønmo – an ecologist and Wurihan – an anthropologist will be cooperating on this fieldwork seeing herding from different angles.

Fisktjønmo will conduct interviews and experimental games to investigate how herders cooperate with each other. Wuhiran will explore the dynamics of cooperation among Mongolian herders through the lens of animal health and will be using ethnographic participant observation.

The researchers will start their journey from the capital Ulaanbaatar where they will meet up with local connections and networks. To be able to do fieldwork in Mongolia one needs a work permit, something the International Institute for the Study of Nomadic Civilizations under the auspices of UNESCO helped facilitate. Wurihan and Fisktjønmo will be doing their first round of fieldwork for a duration of three months.

Navigating the vast Mongolian landscape with its continental climate and daily temperature fluctuations requires more than maps and GPS, and the researchers will also be assisted with an experienced driver and a reliable vehicle on their journey.

When doing research on humans there are always ethical questions that need considering.

The project therefore has an ethical guideline that among other things discusses how to interact with participants in another culture and the study design and methodology. The project is also approved by Sikt – the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research and a designated ethical board that has evaluated the ethical aspects of the research project.

Fisktjønmo`s research will include mapping social networks and experimental games. Experimental games are a widespread research method to investigate human behavior, such as cooperation. Fisktjønmo explains how she will go about using experimental games as a research method:

– The herders will be given a set amount of money they can choose to give as an anonymous gift to other herders or keep for themselves. This models a decision problem whereby herders have to decide on how to distribute a limited resource.  

By combining the social networks and the results from the experimental games, Fisktjønmo will be able to examine the importance of kinship, reciprocity, network position and social environment for those the herders choose to cooperate with.

The recent pandemic prompted Wurihan to consider issues of animal health, which is regarded as a potential source of future outbreaks affecting humankind. Observing the dynamics and cooperation within the herding community, characterized by the coexistence of herds and herders with other entities, she hopes to shed some light on this crucial issue.