Pastoralism in Anthropology

Abstract

Pastoralism refers to a range of subsistence modes based on specialized herding of domestic animals on free range, and to forms of social life culturally dominated by values associated with the management of livestock wealth. Livestock in these economies have a function as both a means for producing utilities such as foodstuffs, wool, or skins, and as a form of capital with the potential of growth. So defined, ‘pastoralism’ refers to a wide range of adaptations in arid Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the subarctic. Varying combinations of animal species and different forms of political and economic articulation with surrounding societies, enable pastoralists to secure grain and other agricultural products. The main anthropological progress in understanding pastoral production was reached in the 1960s and 1970s in a conjuncture of interest from cultural ecology, Marxist materialism, and Barthian action theory. Later anthropological studies have mainly been propelled by an advocacy urge in defense of herd-people accused of causing desertification. Contemporary pastoralists almost universally suffer from a continuous process of vital land losses. Through technological reforms pastoral production is also undergoing serious structural change, signaling serious threats to pastoralism as a mode of life.