Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes a tentative framework for conceptualising ‘sedentism’ as a fundamental set of assumptions in which development thinking is entrenched and which undermines mobile livelihoods and lifeways, even where states and development actors are not explicitly committed to sedentarisation.

Paper long abstract:

Nomadic people have long been subject to forced settlement, mobility restrictions, and discriminatory legal regimes implemented with the express objective of making them sedentary. While policies that explicitly call for forced sedentarisation have largely fallen to the wayside with advancements in international human rights law and the rise of more people-oriented approaches to conservation and development, the epistemic basis of sedentism lives on in many contemporary policies. Even where states and development actors are not explicitly committed to sedentarisation, the sedentist imaginary through which development is envisioned continues to undermine mobile peoples’ livelihoods and lifeways.

As its contribution to the discussion in the roundtable, this presentation proposes a conceptual framework for considering sedentism as a fundamental set of assumptions in which contemporary development thinking is entrenched. I will begin with a brief outline of the ‘sedentist development’ framework derived by the collaborative project Re-imagining Development for Mobile Peoples, a cross-regional comparative study of development policies at five locations in Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mauritania and Mongolia that are home to nomadic or peripatetic communities. Based on a review of relevant literature as well as short case studies in each of these sites, the project attempted to extract some of the cross-cutting trends in policy and practice that influence the degree to which mobile peoples are accommodated, excluded or otherwise affected. Five key dimensions of sedentism are described, and potential corollaries for comprehending sedentism in contemporary conservation policies are outlined for further discussion.