CRASSH

The last few years have witnessed the return of a threat to global human health that had not made its appearance for almost a century: pneumonic plague. Although commonly regarded today as a figure of our agricultural past, in fact plague (Yersinia pestis) remains a potentially lethal threat to modern human societies. Examples can be drawn from Madagascar, Uganda and more recently China, where a pneumonic plague outbreak struck Qinghai Province in the summer of 2009, providing ample evidence of both the threat posed by plague and our lingering inability to fully understand this ancient disease, especially in its most lethal, pneumonic variety.

My proposed research focuses on the neglected transregional socio-ecological aspects of pneumonic plague in Inner Asia. From Tibet through Qinghai, Mongolia and Manchuria, to the South Siberian steppes of Transbaikalia, societies as diverse as Buryat herders, Mongol hunters and Tibetan nomads share their environment with the natural reservoir of Yersinia pestis: marmots. These large rodents, which populate the area in vast numbers, have been established as the original source of the great Manchurian plague outbreaks of 1910-1911 and 1920-21 and are widely suspected as the main, if not sole, original source of the disease on the planet. Yet, more than simply living alongside marmots, native societies across Inner Asia have for centuries depended on them for fur, meat and fat, engaging in seasonal hunting and trapping activities from March to November (with local variations according to altitude and latitude), when the particular mammals do not hibernate. It is these activities, bringing humans and marmots in intensive direct contact, that have been considered by epidemiologists as the most crucial factor in the spread and containment of plague in the area. All four major plague outbreaks in the last 100 years (1910-11, 1920-21, 1926, 2009) have been attributed to marmot-hunting malpractices. However, whilst early 20th century outbreaks were blamed on migrant workers failing to employ skilled and hygienic native hunting methods, the recent outbreak in Qinghai has paradoxically been attributed to the natives themselves.

This discrepancy poses significant questions regarding our understanding of human-marmot-plague relations in the area. Do native societies today continue to share the knowledge of their Buryat and Mongol counterparts at the turn of the century, acclaimed by epidemiologists as highly preventive of the spread of plague to human communities? And why despite the prevalence of marmots in the area and their intensive hunting, there have been no major outbreaks in Mongolia proper? Do Chinese reports made during the recent pneumonic plague epidemic in Qinghai, blaming Tibetans for indiscriminately skinning and eating marmots, reflect actual processes of deskilling amongst native hunters? Could these accusations be merely a result of ethnic-religious bias harboured by Beijing’s medical elites against Tibetans? Or was the supposed native knowledge of the disease an artefact of epidemiological imagination in the first place?

Approaching these questions from a transregional and interdisciplinary perspective my research will seek to establish how Tibetan, Buryat and Mongol hunters today relate to marmots in the traditional foci of plague. Do their hunting methods incorporate plague-preventive practices, taboos and restrictions? Do their myths, rituals, stories, proverbs and riddles contain warnings against marmot-related plague? Are such warnings to be found in Buddhist religious texts used in the endemic area, as suggested by Chinese epidemiologists in 1911?

The transregional flow and transmission of ritual and religious knowledge and practices across Inner Asia will constitute a particular focus of my study. Could the spread of Buddhism from Tibet to Transbaikalia via Mongolia account for similarities in human-marmot relations and plague related taboos in the area? Or could it actually be that, through pilgrimages, Tibetan Buddhism contributed to the spread of the disease, as claimed in the case of the 1916 plague outbreak in the Gansu Corridor of Northwest China? What has been the role of transregional flows of pre-Buddhist or shamanic beliefs and practices in the perception of human-marmot-plague relations, and how do these contend with Buddhist organised religion? Finally, how have modern flows, such as railways, political mobilisation, technology transfer and economic migration contributed to the transregionality of plague in Inner Asia, in terms of its spread, prevention and containment?

Far from simply covering an ethnographic or historiographic gap, answering these questions will have a concrete impact on our understanding of the social ecology of pneumonic plague in Inner Asia. Though not conducted from an epidemiological perspective per se, my research aims to contribute to a more spherical public health approach to the particular disease in the area, by developing a syndemic analysis of shifting native subsistence practices, socio-ecological variations and transregional religious, economic, technological and political flows in the area.