Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T16:20:31.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The new pastoralism: poverty and dependency in northern Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Richard Hogg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Recent studies of African pastoralism have come more and more to concentrate on its political economy and to note the increasing social and economic differentiation occurring within pastoral societies. As Swift and Maliki write of West Africa: ‘Since the 1973 drought, there has been an increasing process of proletarianization in the countryside which has particularly affected herders, who are in many places being transformed from independent rural producers into cowboys herding other people's animals on land they no longer control’ (1984: 2). In Kenya this process has become increasingly apparent since independence, as pastoralism has become dominated by a town-based elite (see Dahl, 1979a; Little, 1983, 1985a and b; Ensminger, 1984). In this article I trace the origins of a new kind of pastoralism in northern Kenya, and argue that poverty and dependence is becoming a permanent way of life to many pastoralists.

Résumé

Le nouveau pastoralisme: pauvreté et dépendance au Kenya du Nord

L'article retrace les origines d'une nouvelle forme de pastoralisme au Kenya du Nord, à partir de ses origines durant la période coloniale jusqu'à nos jours. La pauvreté et la dèpendance d'une aide extérieure et d'un travail nomade sont en train de devenir les caractéristiques permanentes de la vie pastorale. Les projets d'irrigation et autres plans de développement se sont révélés de coûteux fiascos. Des études de cas particuliers et une accumulation d'observations générales sont analysées pour documenter l'émergence d'un petit nombre de families riches qui peuvent vivre relativement bien et peuvent également augmenter les revenus qu'elles tirent de leurs troupeaux grâce aux salaries et au commerce de détail. Ces quelques gens relativement riches contrastent avec la masse des families pauvres qui dépendent d'un travail nomade mal payé et d'aumônes et qui se trouvent également forcées de quitter cette économie pastorale. D'autres inégalités progressives reposent sur ces inégalités et les pauvres se retrouvent de plus en plus pris au piège de leur pauvreté. Si on veut aider les pauvres pastoraux, il faut alors réorienter les priorités de recherche pour examiner l'économie politique du pastoralisme et les processus sociaux et économiques qui sont à la base de la réduction à l'indigence progressive des populations pastorales.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 319 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barber, J. 1968. Imperial Frontier: a study of relations between the British and the pastoral tribes of north-east Uganda. Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House.Google Scholar
Baxter, P. T. W. 1966. ‘Acceptance and rejection of Islam among the Boran of the Northern Frontier District of Kenya’, in Lewis, I. M. (ed.), Islam in Tropical Africa, pp. 233–52. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Baxter, P. T. W. 1975. ‘Some consequences of sedentarization for social relationships’, in Monod, T. (ed.), Pastoralism in Tropical Africa, pp. 206–28. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Brown, E. J. 1980. A Socio-anthropological Survey of the Irrigation Schemes on the Turkwell River, Turkana District. Rome: FAO, Report No. AG: DP/KEN/78/015.Google Scholar
Chambers, R. 1983. Rural Development: putting the last first, London: Longman.Google Scholar
Cossins, N. 1975. ‘Marginal Enterprise: a socio-economic evaluation of small-scale irrigation projects along the Tana river at Garissa in the north-eastern province of Kenya’, Ministry of Agriculture and Oxfam, Nairobi.Google Scholar
Dahl, Gudrun. 1979a. Suffering Grass: subsistence and society of Waso Borana, Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology. Stockholm: University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Dahl, Gudrun. 1979b. ‘Ecology and equality: the Boran case’, in L'equipe ecologie et anthropologie des sociétés pastorales (ed.), Pastoral Production and Society, pp. 261–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Gudrun. and Hjort, A. 1979. Pastoral Change and the Role of Drought, Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC), no. R.2.Google Scholar
Dalleo, P. 1975. ‘Trade and Pastoralism: economic factors in the history of Somali of north-eastern Kenya, 1891–1948’, PhD thesis, Syracuse University.Google Scholar
Ecosystems, , 1983. Turkana District Resources Survey Draft Report, vol. II. Nairobi: Government of Kenya, Ministry of Energy and Regional Development.Google Scholar
Ensminger, Jean. 1984. ‘Political Economy among the Pastoral Galole Orma: the effects of market integration’, PhD thesis, Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Gulliver, P. H. 1951. A Preliminary Survey of the Turkana. University of Cape Town: Communications from the School of African Studies.Google Scholar
Hart, K. 1973. ‘Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 11 (1), 61–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hjort, A. 1979a. Savanna Town: rural ties and urban opportunities in northern Kenya, Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology. Stockholm: University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Hjort, A. 1979b. ‘Trading miraa: from school-leaver to shop-owner in Kenya’, Ethnos, 39, 1–4, 27–43.Google Scholar
Hogg, R. S. 1980. ‘Pastoralism and improvement: the case of the Isiolo Boran of northern Kenya’, Disasters, 4 (3), 299–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogg, R. S. 1982. ‘Destitution and development: the Turkana of north-west Kenya’, Disasters, 6 (3), 164–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogg, R. S. 1985. ‘The politics of drought: the pauperization of Isiolo Boran’, Disasters, 9 (1), 39–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hogg, R. S. 1986. ‘Settlement, pastoralism and the commons: the ideology and practice of irrigation development in northern Kenya’, in Anderson, D. and Grove, A. T. (eds.), Conservation in Africa - Policies and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Forthcoming.)Google Scholar
Little, P. 1983. ‘From Household to Region: the marketing-production interface among the Il Chamus of northern Kenya’, PhD thesis, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Little, P. 1985a. ‘Social differentiation and pastoralist sedentarization in northern Kenya’, Africa, 55 (3), 243–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little, P. 1985b. ‘Absentee herd owners and part-time pastoralists: the political economy of resource use in northern Kenya’, Human Ecology, 13 (2), 131–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merryman, J. L., and Merryman, N. H. 1980. The Potential for Agricultural Development in a Pastoral Society: a sociological study of the peoples of Garissa District, report no. 6. Nairobi: Ministry of Co-operative Development.Google Scholar
O'Leary, . 1984. The Kitui Akamba: economic and social change in semi-arid Kenya. Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books.Google Scholar
Smith, A. 1969. ‘The open market’, East Africa Journal, November, pp. 34–42.Google Scholar
Swift, J.et al.. 1984. Pastoral Development in Central Niger: report of the Niger Range and Livestock Project', Niger: USAID & Ministry of Rural Development.Google Scholar
Swift, J., and Maliki, A. 1984. A Co-operative Development Experiment among Nomadic Herders in Niger, ODI Pastoral Development Network, paper 18c.Google Scholar
Turton, E. R. 1970. ‘The Pastoral Tribes of Northern Kenya, 1880–1918’, PhD thesis, London University.Google Scholar
UNDF/FAO. 1971. Range Development in Isiolo District, United Nations Development Programme, Rangeland Surveys Kenya, UNFAO, AGP: SF/KEN 11, Working Paper no. 9, Nairobi.Google Scholar
Waller, R. 1985. ‘Ecology, migration and expansion in east Africa’, African Affairs, 84 (336), 347–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, W. 1958. Tribal Cohesion in a Money Economy: a study of the Mambwe people of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar