Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I discuss how pastoralists in Germany and Ethiopia continue to manage land as a commons in times of increased commodification.

Paper long abstract:

Pastoralist livelihood is generally characterized by collective land-use strategies and community-based action. These aspects are also very essential for the concept of the commons which evolves all around the use and management of common resources.

Pastoralist collective land governance in Ethiopia and especially Germany is hardly written about. This is not coincidence. It is part of a grander story in which commons-based land use systems, and thereby livelihoods in which reproductive land care plays a major role, are undervalued. With this paper - which is based the findings of my dissertation - I contribute to a feminist re-writing of both the commons and pastoralism. I therefore ask: How do pastoralists continue to manage and use land as a commons in times of increased land enclosure and commodification / privatization? What is the gain in looking at commons from a feminist lens?

Through two case studies at the Nyangatom in South Ethiopia and at the Rechtler in the Oberallgäu / Germany I establish connections between spheres that are inseparable when it comes to sustaining life and natural resources. In pastoralism neither reproductive and productive spheres nor natural resources and their users can actually be divided, as I show through an analysis of the relationship between pastoralists and their land. With an emphasis of the role that gender and other social categories of difference play, I highlight both commonalities and differences between land governance structures and the everyday lives of the herders from the Rechtler (Germany) and Nyangatom (Ethiopia) communities.