This volume brings together leading anthropologists who discuss how pastoralists are coping and changing as the societies they inhabit change at an unprecedented pace. The various issues pertaining to the different geographic areas covered are united by a general theme: socioeconomic and cultural changes in contemporary pastoralist societies and groups. These changes are far from being spontaneous. They result from the painful adaptation of the mobile and extensive pastoralists to the modern world, in which pastoralists occupy only a marginal and inferior economic and social position. Discussion focuses on the worldwide deterioration of the socio-political and economic standing of the pastoralist, the historical factors of colonization/de-colonization, and how modernizing sedentary society—with its technological inventions, modern infrastructure, and national requirements of taxation and education—impacts on change in nomadic societies.
This volume brings together leading anthropologists who discuss how pastoralists are coping and changing as the societies they inhabit change at an unprecedented pace. The various issues pertaining to the different geographic areas covered are united by a general theme: socioeconomic and cultural changes in contemporary pastoralist societies and groups. These changes are far from being spontaneous. They result from the painful adaptation of the mobile and extensive pastoralists to the modern world, in which pastoralists occupy only a marginal and inferior economic and social position. Discussion focuses on the worldwide deterioration of the socio-political and economic standing of the pastoralist, the historical factors of colonization/de-colonization, and how modernizing sedentary society—with its technological inventions, modern infrastructure, and national requirements of taxation and education—impacts on change in nomadic societies.