Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Development

In the drylands and mountains where pastoralists live, uncertainty is everywhere. In these settings, negotiating access to resources, navigating volatile markets, making use of varying social relations in times of stress, and responding to conflict and complex political dynamics is essential if livelihoods are to be generated. Pastoralism - the extensive, often mobile use of rangelands - is a vitally important livelihood practice globally. Rangelands cover more than half the world's land surface, supporting many millions of people and livestock, often in harsh and hostile environments. The book's chapters - with case studies from Africa, Asia, and Europe - explore how pastoral mobility is sustained, how resources are managed, how markets are combined, how social protections are provided, and how patterns of accumulation and investment are sustained in a more globalized, interconnected world. Focusing on the attributes of flexibility, adaptation, innovation, and learning for generating reliability, the book offers wider lessons for development in pastoral areas the world over that go beyond the rigid modes of planning, management, and control.

Shibaji Bose is a creative consultant and a visual-methods researcher. His work draws on long-term visual ethnography and participatory visual action research in remote and climatically fragile zones in South Asia.

Roopa Gogineni is a director and photographer focused on historical memory and modes of resistance. She has an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, where she researched the construction of media narratives around Somalia.

Natasha Maru is a multidisciplinary social scientist and policy consultant working on pastoral development. She has recently finished a PhD with the PASTRES programme at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, where she studied the temporal experiences of mobility among the Rabari pastoralists of western India.

Tahira Mohamed is an anthropologist from Marsabit County in northern Kenya. She recently completed her doctoral research under the PASTRES programme at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. Her study examines how 'moral economies' and social 'safety-net' institutions are evolving among the Waso Boran pastoralists of northern Kenya's Isiolo County.