Managing Mobility in African Rangelands: The Legitimization of Transhumance (review)

Published seven years ago, this volume remains relevant for anyone concerned with pastoral development today, but in particular for policymakers and practitioners. It has two aims. The first is to provide an update on recent developments in pastoral development and the study of pastoral systems, offering a synthesis of recent theories, analyses, and data, which are presented as the "new paradigm" (often referred to as the "new thinking" or "new ecology" in the literature). The second objective is to strengthen arguments supporting livestock mobility in dryland environments and to give fieldworkers and policymakers the tools to "create the social, legal and institutional conditions that would legitimize transhumance" (9).

This volume is the third in a series concerning recent developments in pastoral studies, particularly in the field of rangeland ecology. Like Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New Models of Natural Variability and Pastoral Adaptation in African Savannas (1993) and Living with Uncertainty: New Directions in Pastoral Development in Africa (1995), it is published by Intermediate Technology Publications in London. The premise of all three volumes is that pastoral systems are rational adaptations to dryland ecology. Managing Mobility posits that mobility is the key adaptation in pastoral systems. Whereas the other two volumes focus on rangeland ecology and risk management, this one looks at the "traditional" and "modern" institutional contexts of pastoral mobility.

The book opens with an introduction that clearly outlines the argument and structure of the volume. Then follows a review of the literature in chapter 2 by Maryam Niamir-Fuller and Matthew Turner and eight chapters with case studies that examine different aspects of pastoral mobility in Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sudan, Uganda, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The volume concludes with a synthesis by Niamir-Fuller which distills fundamental principles of pastoral mobility and presents a set of practical solutions from the case studies. Of the ten chapters, seven are in English and three in French, with the introduction as well as chapter titles and abstracts in both languages. This makes the volume accessible in both Anglophone and Francophone Africa.

The review of the literature by Niamir-Fuller and Turner succinctly covers the ecological and social literature. The authors discuss the emerging theoretical framework of the "mobility paradigm." The goal is to develop "a more unified, multi-disciplinary rationale for livestock mobility in arid and semi-arid lands" (19), and as a result the chapter emphasizes extensive rather than intensive strategies in pastoral development. In each section of the review—dealing with the topics of resource base, resource users, adaptive strategies, and common property regimes—the authors provide text boxes with key terms, which they argue are not simply fashionable but connote truly new ideas and concepts that have immediate practical applications. But are concepts like reciprocity or social capital really new or even practical?

Overall, I find this is a very useful and interesting volume. It sketches new roadmaps for research on pastoral systems in Africa (and elsewhere) and offers many interesting suggestions for pastoral development. But although there have been interesting globalizing developments in the field of pastoral development, I cannot help fearing that implementation of the practical solutions will not succeed in protecting pastoral mobility against the tendency of states and development agencies to transform any management system into inflexible, hierarchical institutions. In the end, the fundamental principles of states may simply be incompatible with those underlying pastoral mobility.