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- Convenors:
-
Clemens Greiner
(University of Cologne)
Michaela Pelican (University of Cologne)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH102
- Start time:
- 30 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the role of rural-urban, regional and international migration and translocal social practices as drivers of change in African (post)pastoralist societies. We invite empirically based contributions to assess the relevance of these phenomena across cases and regions.
Long Abstract:
African pastoralism is changing at rapid pace, as many researchers have demonstrated. Relatively little is known about the impact of rural-urban, regional or international migration on these changes. This is surprising for a number of reasons: First, the usually remote and sparsely settled nature of pasture areas implies that income and educational opportunities are rare at local level and thus engender processes of migration. Second, population growth, environmental change and gradual loss of rangeland are observed in many pastoral areas and increase the pressure to find alternative sources of income. Third, African pastoralists - the same as any other people - are affected by today's processes of globalization and partake in a variety of translocal social networks.
With conceptual approaches changing from bounded and isolated units towards their integration into wider global phenomena, migration and translocality have become increasingly important research foci in the social sciences and the humanities. Recent research points to the increasing importance of migration and migration-related effects, such as remittances, socio-economic stratification, cultural change and part-time pastoralism, which are often related to ever growing entanglements that bridge the rural-urban divide. However, little effort has been done so far to systematically assess the relevance of these phenomena across individual cases and regions. This panel seeks to start closing this research gap by understanding the role of (domestic, rural-urban and international) migration and ensuing translocal practices as drivers of change in African (post)pastoralist societies. We invite empirically based contributions from a broad range of disciplinary fields and regional backgrounds.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Hauke-Peter Vehrs (University of Cologne)
Paper short abstract:
Pastoral Pokot in northern Baringo County perpetuate the notion of “locality” in their neighbourhood communities along strong kinship and livestock friendship ties, against the background of several long- and medium-term changes, such as environmental change and livelihood diversification.
Paper long abstract:
In East Pokot, pastoralism has undergone several changes in the past two hundred years, and pastoral livelihoods underwent times of specialisation of cattle husbandry in the 19th century and livelihood diversification in the 20th century (Bollig and Oesterle 2013). Nowadays, besides ongoing long- and medium-term transformations, rapid changes confront pastoralists with unprecedented challenges.
In 2014, The Geothermal Development Company (GDC) started to construct murram roads in East Pokot for the exploration of thermal energy. Another huge project is planned, the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) corridor. These infrastructure projects offer new opportunities, e.g. health services and transportation of goods and people. Though the structures for mobility are developing rapidly, pastoral Pokot strongly perpetuate their "remoteness", despite the short distances to flourishing cities, such as Marigat and Nakuru.
With reference to translocal processes and their "socio-spatial dynamics and processes of simultaneity and identity formation that transcend boundaries" (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013: 373), I argue that the reverse is the case of pastoral Pokot. Instead of transcending boundaries, the pastoralists create an isolated space and strengthen the local ties of kinship and livestock exchange. Here, I illustrate the emic perspective on current processes of development penetration into East Pokot and the endurance of locality against the general trends of increasing translocal processes in the Kenyan rural-urban interface. The aim of this paper is to explore the different levels of changes in East Pokot, and to what extent the recent implementation of a development project (GDC) shapes the local context of pastoralists.
Noel Okello (Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I argue that recent and ongoing road infrastructure expansion projects in the Nairobi Metropolitan Region premised on proleptic notions of modernity and neoliberal reform have, inadvertently, effected a cultural hybridity simultaneously modern and traditional.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I argue that the recent and ongoing transformation of road transportation infrastructure in the Nairobi Metropolitan Region has had unexpected effects on traditional pastoral lifestyles of the Maasai as well as on the organization of the everyday life of the new city: the city created by the new road infrastructure projects. I present observations and mappings of the everyday lives of pastoral and roadside communities along two roads, one new and the other expanded-the Eastern Bypass and the Mombasa Highway respectively. I posit that as the Maasai have been displaced from their land by the commoditization of land and accompanying encroachment of situated urban functions, road transportation infrastructure serves as the urban space to which they adapt their traditional lifestyles. Their lifestyle, per force, does not remain pure but is transformed through the nature of its interactions with this alien landscape. I further argue that such lifestyle changes are not limited to traditional lifestyles of the Maasai but extend to cover the construction of what I refer to as the new city. The result of these simultaneous transformations is hybrid urbanity: urbanity resilient in the face of continuing marginalization of the peripheral city.
Florian Köhler (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the role of regional rural-urban migration in a group of Fulɓe Woɗaaɓe in Niger. Circulatory migration patterns and a high mobility among migrants have led to new forms of translocal connectedness and exchange with a significant transforming impact on the pastoral society.
Paper long abstract:
Based on extensive fieldwork in a group of Fulɓe Woɗaaɓe in eastern Niger, this paper discusses the impact of rural-urban migration in a pastoral society. In the literature, the Woɗaaɓe have mainly been presented as highly mobile pastoralists, specialized in the breeding of Zebu cattle. Today, they are increasingly engaged in a transformation process towards a more diversified livelihood based notably on agro-pastoralism and work migration to regional urban centres. Neither the urban strategies, nor the creation of rural proto-villages, however, have entailed the end of mobility, but rather, mobility has taken new forms and new dimensions.
Many migrants move regularly between the pastoral zone and the city, keeping a balance between income-generating activities in the urban space and maintaining the social ties to their pastoral home communities. Rural and urban-based actors are connected by complex translocal social networks, their connectedness being increasingly supported by new communication technologies. The paper argues that the urban and the (agro-)pastoral sphere are today complementary spaces of resource appropriation. Migrants provide financial support through remittances, and they are involved in networking aimed at accessing new resources for their home communities, e.g. through urban contacts to development actors.
Many biographies reveal patterns of circular or return migration: Multiple shifts from pastoral to urban activities and back are common and lead to flows of knowledge and ideas that have a transforming impact on the communities of origin. Returning migrants introduce change by engaging in local processes and by introducing new concepts, e.g. rural schools.
Elsemi Olwage (University of Cologne)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is based on research conducted in north-western Namibia – a region dominated by livestock farming and pastoral societies. It explores the relationship between changing and divergent mobility practices and the re-making of localities, local-state configurations and relations of difference.
Paper long abstract:
Mobility is often an assumed inherent part of a semi-nomadic or pastoral existence. Yet taking this as a starting point can be misleading. Rather, everyday experiences as well as peoples' past and future imaginings are often instead marked by conditions of immobility. In order to critically consider, both theoretically and ethnographically, this interplay between mobility/immobility, the following paper focuses on changing mobility practices within the context of central north-western Namibia. This region is predominantly characterized by livestock farming and pastoral societies for whom a shared existence have to be negotiated within a particular environment and communal land tenure system. Rooted within complex historical contingencies and colonial inheritances, this tenure system and its' boundaries have undergone some important institutional, material-symbolic and legal-bureaucratic changes within post-independent Namibia. Based on long-term ethnographic research conducted over a period of fourteen months and taking a particular settlement dispute as point of departure, I thus aim to look at the relationship between changing mobility practices and the making and unmaking of tenure and local relations. In order to do so, I specifically consider recent north-south regional migrations, the entanglement between rural and urban public life and institutions, and the dynamics of cross-border labour migration.
Elisabeth Rossé (Chercheuse affiliée au LESC, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents how social networks created in a situation of migration impact and create social conflicts among semi-urban Tandroy, pastoral people who live between their native region and the city of Toliara (Madagascar).
Paper long abstract:
Tandroy are a pastoral population from the most southern region of Madagascar (Androy). They possess important herds of zebu, which constitute their main wealth. The ritual sacrifice of zebus is an important vector of communication with the ancestors and of production of social identity.
Since the 1930's, migrations became a way of life, often in the continuity of the transhumance. People live most of the time in a bi-residential situation between Androy region and the city of Toliara, sharing their time between pastoral activities and precarious jobs in the city. Social identity remains strongly bound to the ancestral land and important rituals are performed in the home village. Therefore, the constitution of a herd remains a crucial objective even for urban migrants.
My research showed that the social stratification of Tandroy in the urban context of the city of Toliara is largely based on social networks created through migration, and reflects regional disparities of development of infrastructures in Androy region.
I will describe this social stratification through a crisis which arose in 2013 within the association of the Tandroy of Toliara, historically led by Tandroy working as rickshaw men and defending characteristic pastoral social values of solidarity. I show how the conflict, that divided the association in two rival camps, reveals two different ways in which Tandroy people politically relate to the local territory, and tackles the underlying issue of the transmission of the collective Tandroy identity.