Over Time and Space: Hybrid Rangeland Governance in Amdo Tibet

Abstract

Hybrid land governance, mosaics, polycentrism have become ways to describe contemporary rangeland settings - ways of responding to uncertainties through flexible institutions, overlapping boundaries and an assembled, plural bricolage of practices. However, this is frequently thought to be recent, often arising from more formal, regulated systems, whether state, private or communal, and with well-defined land tenure regimes. This paper argues that hybridity (in various forms) has always been present in Amdo Tibet, despite the political changes over time and space. Hybridity is a necessary response to uncertainty and central to the utilisation of variable resources, which is the core strategy of pastoralism. Yet the form of hybridity varies as it must be constructed in particular historical circumstances, constrained by political economic conditions between the feudal, collectivist, liberalised eras. Today's hybridity - and so contemporary rangeland use and management strategies - must be understood in this historical context, as an accretion of practices and strategies that have emerged over different eras.