PASTORALISM AND ITS CHANGING FACETS

Pastoralism has changed over time, and there are many causes for it. This research paper covers two major causes of change in pastoral systems. These two causes include fragmentation, the dissection of a natural system into spatially isolated parts, which is usually caused by a number of socioeconomic factors such as changes in land tenure, agriculture, sedentarization, and institutions. Second reason can be coined in the terms of climate change and climate variability, which are expected to alter dry and semiarid grasslands now and into the future. An adaptation framework is used to place global change in context. Although pastoral systems are clearly under numerous constraints and risks have intensified, pastoralists are acclimatising and trying to remain flexible. It is too early to ask if the responses are enough, given the magnitude and number of changes faced by pastoralists today. For many years, studies of peasants and pastoralists have run in parallel, creating mutual blind-spots. Reflection on a large literature on pastoralism across nine world regions reveals that there are nevertheless some important contrasts with classic representations of a settled peasantry. These are: living with and off uncertainty; Mobility to respond to variability; flexible land control and new forms of tenure; dynamic social formations; collective social relations for a new moral economy; engaging with complex markets and a new politics of a transforming world