Throughout the world's arid regions, and particularly in northern and eastern Africa, formerly nomadic pastoralists are undergoing a transition to settled life. Pastoral sedentarization represents a response to multiple factors, including loss of livestock due to drought and famine, increased competition for range land due to growing populations, land privatization or appropriation for commercial farms, ranches, and tourist game parks, and to fear of increasing violence, ethnic conflict, and civil war. Although pastoral settlement is often encouraged by international development agencies and national governments as solutions to food insecurity, poor health care and problems of governance, the social, economic and health concomitants of sedentism are not inevitably beneficial. Biosocial studies presented in this volume, for example, point to greater nutritional and health benefits among nomadic livestock keepers, but increased opportunities in education, employment, and food security in towns.
This book examines from an interdisciplinary perspective pastoral sedentarization in one region of Africa - Marsabit District in northern Kenya - an isolated and arid region bordering Ethiopia and which contains multiple pastoral groups including Rendille, Samburu, Ariaal, Borana and Gabra peoples. Within this locale, we present recent studies conducted by cultural and biological anthropologists, veterinary biologists, economists, geographers and medical and community health personnel, linked by the common goal of delineating the consequences, both positive and negative, of settlement for formerly nomadic pastoral populations. For many of these former pastoralists, settled life does notnecessarily constitute a break with their pastoral kin and neighbors, but represents one more opportunity with which to survive in a difficult physical and social environment.
This edited work is a collection of international contributors from North America, Africa and Europe and focuses on a dilemma that affects many parts of the indigenous world. This book will be essential reading for professionals and students of social change in the developing world particularly in applied anthropology, development economics, rural sociology, environment and ecology, and medicine and public health

Focusing on one society's responses to famine relief and development efforts, this book is the story of how a people have adapted to, and survived, both natural and human-induced disasters. The Ariaal's determination to maintain their tradional lifestyles while taking advantage of the health and educational benefits offered to Kenyan society at lar

Throughout the world's arid regions, and particularly in northern and eastern Africa, formerly nomadic pastoralists are undergoing a transition to settled life. This reference shows that although pastoral settlement is often encouraged by international development agencies and national governments, the social, economic and health consequences of sedentism are not inevitably beneficial.

Elliot Fratkin shares the story of his early anthropological fieldwork in Kenya in the 1970s. Using his fieldnotes and letters home to bring to life the voices of those he met, Fratkin invites the reader to experience his cross-cultural friendships with the enigmatic laibon (a diviner and healer of the Samburu and Maasai peoples) Lonyoki, his family, and the people of the nomadic community of Lukumai. Fratkin participated in the daily lives of the Ariaal livestock herders and accompanied the laibon as he performed divination and healing rituals throughout Marsabit and Samburu Districts. After Fratkin reunited Lonyoki with his son and wife, Lonyoki adopted Fratkin into his family, and Fratkin continues his close friendship with Lonyoki s son Lembalen today. Black-and-white photographs, a guide to the characters, words, and places, and a list of suggested readings supplement the engaging narrative. Laibon is more than a memoir; it delves into nitty-gritty details of fieldwork, speaks to larger questions about ethnographic research, and provides unparalleled insight into the world of the laibon.

The theme of this volume is change, specifically the dynamic relationship between physical landscapes and economic practices. The contributors to Economies and the Transformation of Landscape consider the relationship between the environment and human activity from different perspectives and with regard to varied timescales to arrive at various understandings of economical-ecological transformations and what they can reveal about human culture. While each chapter stands on its own, offering detailed insights into particular cases, the volume as a whole challenges us to think broadly, and reflexively, about how human action affects the environment and changes to the environment affect human action.