ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how reliance on livestock gives rise to like actions from the very different folk and argues that the type of animals tended, and the nature and availability of pasture constrain behavior. Sandhill and Great Pasture open two very different windows on pastoral life. The first commune was a large one, embracing Gasumu and Sandhill townships. In 1983 the family replaced the production team as the basic accounting unit, and Sandhill town took over administrative functions that the commune once handled. In Great Pasture, as in Sandhill, the daily care that livestock demand made it hard for women and men to do anything other than their proper tasks. Most Great Pasture families graze their own cows, but in Sandhill professional cowboys do this work. Mongol men, having earlier left their families to tend flocks in winter pasture, return to their grassland winter quarters.
