ABSTRACT
Does this mean that the collective era can only be viewed through the lens of state politics? This contribution uses this question as a point of departure and explores local strategies employed in response to state grassland policies, arguing for the important role of local agency in such endeavors. Such agency was not expressed in the form of organized protests but through subtle resistance to and creative use of state grassland policies. In this sense, there are certain similarities with contemporary “embedded social activism” even though the post-Mao Party-state has exercised a different form of control. At the basis of this study are an affirmation of local agency and a non-dichotomous approach to the study of state-society relationships. Uxin Ju (Wushenzhao), a Mongolian community in Inner Mongolia, provides a case study. This exploration not only places the post-Mao environmental actions in a historical context, but also helps inform our understanding of current grassroots environmental strategies, as I will discuss in the concluding section.
