Paper short abstract:

The paper explores conflicts and conflict resolution mechanisms that accompany the rapid individuation of land tenure among East African pastoralists.

Paper long abstract:

Until recently, the Pokot in the Kenyan Rift-Valley have been pastoral nomads. They managed an open, communal, non-fragmented rangeland with few restrictions regarding grazing and (temporary) settlement. In the past two decades, this has changed dramatically. The growing importance of rain-fed crop cultivation, increasing sedentarization, rapid population growth, the implementation of wildlife conservation projects, violent conflicts with neighboring pastoralists and the exploitation of geo-thermal power have led to major land-use changes and to an ongoing and profound fragmentation of the landscape. This has led to a rapid demise of customary tenure arrangements. While previously rights to land and land-based resources were largely overlapping, shared and flexible, they are now increasingly defined on exclusive notions of belonging, on family, clan and village basis. While Pokot society begins to develop more consistent relations to bounded territories, conflicts around access to and control over land have intensified. New discourses of belonging to the land are created and negotiated, and new institutions are developed to legitimize, consolidate and codify individual tenure. Drawing on data from ethnographic and interdisciplinary field work, this paper explores the profound intra-societal struggles and the problems of local mechanisms of dispute settlement that accompany the ongoing and rapid individuation of property rights.