Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T11:15:27.953Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inscribing Identity and Agency on the Landscape: Of Pathways, Places, and the Transition of the Public Sphere in East Pokot, Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2014

Michael Bollig ,
Clemens Greiner  and
Matthias Österle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Drawing upon the dynamic interrelationship between human agency and space, this article sheds light on the constitution of and relation between “place” and “path” among the pastoral Pokot of East Pokot District in the Kenyan North Rift Valley. It discusses the transformation from a more mobile pastoralist model of spatialization, which relies on a flexible network approach combining paths and places, toward a more “place-making,” postpastoralist model linked to increasing sedentariness, privatization of land, a clearer definition of external and internal boundaries, and a rapid emergence of schools, churches, and other physical structures.

Résumé:

En s’appuyant sur la relation dynamique entre les espaces occupés par les hommes et l’activité qui s’y déroule, cet article met en lumière la constitution de la relation entre la notion de “lieu” et celle de “chemin transitoire” dans le contexte de la vie pastorale des Pokot du district Est “Pokot” dans la Vallée du Rift au nord du Kenya. Il étudie la transformation d’un modèle pastoral mobile d’utilisation de l’espace, reposant sur une approche de réseau flexible en combinant les chemins transitoires et les lieux, en un modèle “postpastoraliste” plus enclin à l’installation d’un lieu, lié à l’augmentation de la tendance sédentaire, de la privatisation des terres, à une définition plus claire des frontières internes et externes, et lié à l’émergence rapide d’écoles, d’églises et autres structures physiques permanentes.

Keywords

PastoralismEast Africapublic spherecultural changespace and place
Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 55 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2014 

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

Bollig, Michael. 1992 Die Krieger der Gelben Gewehre: Intra- und Interethnische Konfliktaustragung bei den Pokot Nordwestkenias. Münster: Lit-Verlag.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 2000. “Staging Social Structures: Ritual and Social Organisation in an Egalitarian Society: The Pastoral Pokot of Northern Kenya.” Ethnos 65 (3): 341–65.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 2006. Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment: A Comparative Study of Two Pastoral Societies (Pokot NW Kenya and Himba NW Namibia). New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael, and Österle, Matthias. 2007. “‘We Turned Our Enemies into Baboons’: Warfare, Ritual and Pastoral Identity among the Pokot of Northern Kenya.” In The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence, edited by Rao, Aparna, Bollig, Michael, and Böck, Monika, 23–51. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 2008. “Changing Communal Land Tenure in an East African Pastoral System: Institutions and Socio-economic Transformations among the Pokot of NW Kenya.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 133 (2): 301–22.Google Scholar
Bollig, Michael. 2013. “The Political Ecology of Specialisation and Diversification: Long-term Dynamics of Pastoralism in East Pokot District, Kenya.” In Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present and Future, edited by Bollig, Michael, Schnegg, Michael, and Wotzka, Hans-Peter, 289–315. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Broch-Due, Vigdis. 1999. “Remembered Cattle, Forgotten People: The Morality of Exchange and the Exclusion of the Turkana Poor.” In The Poor Are Not Us, edited by Anderson, David and Broch-Due, Vigdis, 50–88. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Broch-Due, Vigdis. 2000. “Producing Nature and Poverty in Africa: An Introduction.” In Producing Nature and Poverty in Africa, edited by Broch-Due, Vigdis and Schroeder, Richard A., 9–52. Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.Google Scholar
Conant, Francis. 1965. “Korok: A Variable Unit of Physical and Social Space among the Pokot of East Africa.” American Anthropologist 67 (2): 429–34.Google Scholar
Cresswell, Tim. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. 1997. Tausend Plateaus. Berlin: Merve Verlag.Google Scholar
Dickhardt, Michael, and Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta. 2003. “Eine Theorie kultureller Räumlichkeit als Deutungsrahmen.” In Kulturelle Räume—Räumliche Kultur: Zur Neubestimmung des Verhältnisses zweier fundamentaler Kategorien menschlicher Praxis, edited by Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta and Dickhardt, Michael, 13–42. Münster: LIT.Google Scholar
Dyson-Hudson, Rada, and Meekers, Dominique. 1999. “Migration across Ecosystem Boundaries.” In Turkana Herders of the Dry Savanna: Ecology and Biobehavioral Response of Nomads to an Uncertain Environment, edited by Little, Michael A. and Leslie, Paul W., 303–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, Steven, and Basso, Keith H., eds. 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Fratkin, Elliott, and Roth, Eric A., eds. 2004. As Pastoralists Settle: Social, Health, and Economic Consequences of Pastoral Sedentarization in Marsabit District, Kenya. New York: Kluwer Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Galaty, John. 1993. “Maasai Expansion and the New East Africa African Pastoralism.” In Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa, edited by Spear, Thomas and Waller, Richard, 61–85. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Galaty, John. 1994. “Rangeland Tenure and Pastoralism in Africa.” In African Pastoralist Systems, edited by Fratkin, Elliott, Galvin, Kathleen A., and Roth, Eric A., 185–204. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Galvin, Kathleen A. 2009. “Transitions: Pastoralists Living with Change.” Annual Review of Anthropology 38: 185–98.Google Scholar
Greiner, Clemens. 2012. “Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial Conflict in Northern Kenya.” Human Ecology 40 (3): 415–25.Google Scholar
Greiner, Clemens. 2013. “Guns, Land and Votes: Cattle Rustling and the Politics of Boundary-(Re)Making in Northern Kenya.” African Affairs 112 (447): 216–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greiner, Clemens, Alvarez, Miguel, and Becker, Mathias. 2013. “From Cattle to Corn: Attributes of Emerging Farming Systems of Former Pastoral Nomads in East Pokot, Kenya.” Society and Natural Resources 26 (12): 1478–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtzman, Jon. 2005. “The Drunken Chief: Alcohol, Power and the Birth of the State in Samburu District, Northern Kenya.” Postcolonial Studies 8: 83–96.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception in the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lamphear, John. 1993. “Aspects of ‘Becoming Turkana’: Interactions and Assimilation between Maa- and Ateker-Speakers.” In Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa, edited by Spear, Thomas and Waller, Richard, 87–104. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Lamphear, John. 1998. “Brothers in Arms: Military Aspects of East African Age-Class Systems in Historical Perspective.” In Conflict, Age, and Power in North East Africa, edited by Kurimoto, Eisei and Simonse, Simon, 79–97. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Lesorogol, Carolyn K. 2005. “Privatizing Pastoral Lands: Economic and Normative Outcomes in Kenya.” World Development 33 (11): 1959–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lesorogol, Carolyn K. 2008. Contesting the Commons: Privatizing Pastoral Lands in Kenya. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Low, Setha M. 1996. “Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space.” American Ethnologist 23 (4): 861–79.Google Scholar
McCabe, J. Terrence. 1997. “Risk and Uncertainty among the Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania: A Case Study in Economic Change.” Nomadic Peoples 1 (1): 54–65.Google Scholar
McCabe, J. Terrence. 2004. “Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies”: Turkana Ecology, Politics, and Raiding in a Disequilibrium System. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
McCabe, J. Terrence, Leslie, Paul W., and DeLuca, Laura. 2010. “Adopting Cultivation to Remain Pastoralists: The Diversification of Maasai Livelihoods in Northern Tanzania.” Human Ecology 38 (3): 321–34.Google Scholar
Österle, Matthias. 2007. “Armed Economies, Militarized Identities, Excessive Violence: Automatic Rifles and the Transformation of Nomadic Pastoralism in Northwest Kenya.” In Aridity, Change and Conflict in Africa, edited by Bollig, Michaelet al., 193–222. Köln: Heinrich-Barth-Institut.Google Scholar
Österle, Matthias. 2008a. “Innovation und Transformation bei den pastoralnomadischen Pokot (East Pokot, Kenia).” Ph.D. diss., Universität zu Köln.Google Scholar
Österle, Matthias. 2008b. “From Cattle to Goats: The Transformation of East Pokot Pastoralism in Kenya.” Nomadic Peoples 12 (1): 81–91.Google Scholar
Pike, Ivy, et al. 2010. “Documenting the Health Consequences of Endemic Warfare in Three Pastoralist Communities of Northern Kenya: A Conceptual Framework.” Social Science and Medicine 70 (1): 45–52.Google Scholar
Schlee, Günther, and Shongolo, Abdullahi A.. 2012. Pastoralism and Politics in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Woodbridge, U.K.: James Currey.Google Scholar
Shipton, Parker. 1984. “Lineage and Locality as Antithetical Principles in East African Systems of Land Tenure.” Ethnology 23 (2): 117–32.Google Scholar
Spencer, Paul. 1998. The Pastoral Continuum. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Elizabeth E. 2010. “A ‘Hardening of Lines’: Landscape, Religion and Identity in Northern Kenya.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 4 (2): 201–20.Google Scholar
Weintraub, Jeff. 1997. “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction.” In Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, edited by Weintraub, Jeff and Kumar, Krishab, 1–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar