Drawing upon the author's extensive field research among pastoral peoples in the Middle East, India, and the Mediterranean, and on more than 30 years of comparative study of pastoralists around the world, Pastoralists is an authoritative synthesis of the varieties of pastoral life. At an ethnographic level, the concise volume provides detailed analyses of divergent types of pastoral societies, including segmentary tribes, tribal chiefdoms, and peasant pastoralists. At the same time, it addresses a set of substantive theoretical issues: ecological and cultural variation, equality and inequality, hierarchy and the basis of power, and state power and resistance. The book validates "pastoralists" as a conceptual category even as it reveals the diversity of societies, subsistence strategies, and power arrangements subsumed by that term.

Throughout the world's arid regions, and particularly in northern and eastern Africa, formerly nomadic pastoralists are undergoing a transition to settled life. This reference shows that although pastoral settlement is often encouraged by international development agencies and national governments, the social, economic and health consequences of sedentism are not inevitably beneficial.

The Gaddi of North India are agro-pastoralists who rear sheep and goats following a seasonal migration around the first Himalayan range. While studies on pastoralists have focused either on the pastoralists’ adaptation to their physical environment or treated the environment from a symbolic perspective, this book offers a new, holistic perspective that analyzes the ways in which people “make” place. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book not only describes a contemporary understanding of the Gaddi’s engagement with the environment but also analyzes religious practices and performances of social relations, as well as media practices and notions of aesthetics. Thereby, the landscape in which the Gaddi live is understood as a network of places that is constantly being built and rebuilt through these local practices. The book contributes to the growing interest in approaches of practice within environmental anthropology.

Pastoralism is a diffused and ancient form of human subsistence and probably one of the most studied by anthropologists at the crossroads between continuities and transformations. The present critical discourse on sustainable and responsible development implies a change of practices, a huge socio-economic transformation, and the return of new shepherds and herders in different European regions. Transhumance and extensive breeding are revitalized as a potential resource for inner and rural areas of Europe against depopulation and as an efficient form of farming deeply influencing landscape and functioning as a perfect eco-system service. This book is an occasion to reconsider grazing communities’ frictions in the new global heritage scenario.

Anthropological study of the nomadic Harasis.

Pastoralism refers to the type of farming system which uses extensive grazing on grasslands for livestock production. This type of farming covers 25 per cent of the world's land area and supports 20 million households. It makes substantial contributions to the economies of developing countries, although agricultural encroachment, conflict and drought continue to erode this way of life. This publication considers key policy issues and trends involved in attempts to improve the livelihoods of pastoralist families and communities.

Once again, the Horn of Africa has been in the headlines. And once again the news has been bad: drought, famine, conflict, hunger, suffering and death. The finger of blame has been pointed in numerous directions: to the changing climate, to environmental degradation, to overpopulation, to geopolitics and conflict, to aid agency failures, and more. But it is not all disaster and catastrophe. Many successful development efforts at ‘the margins’ often remain hidden, informal, sometimes illegal; and rarely in line with standard development prescriptions. If we shift our gaze from the capital cities to the regional centres and their hinterlands, then a very different perspective emerges. These are the places where pastoralists live. They have for centuries struggled with drought, conflict and famine. They are resourceful, entrepreneurial and innovative peoples. Yet they have been ignored and marginalised by the states that control their territory and the development agencies who are supposed to help them. This book argues that, while we should not ignore the profound difficulties of creating secure livelihoods in the Greater Horn of Africa, there is much to be learned from development successes, large and small. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars with an interest in development studies and human geography, with a particular emphasis on Africa. It will also appeal to development policy-makers and practitioners.