Ecological and Economic Factors in the Determination of Pastoral Specialisation

Bonté, Pierre

doi:10.1177/002190968101600104

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Exchange of social knowledge was given high value as it was understood to be necessary for identifying land uses and potentials within an ecosystem in the first place. As Bonte (1981) suggests, it ‘increases knowledge and experience of geographic and cultural variation and promotes cultural contact’ (1981, p. 46). A particular adeptness and competency in land use ways became distributed within Eurasia’s knowledge design structure to facilitate ‘collaboration, learning and awareness of foundational conditions (plant communities and governance structures) to ensure collective preservation’ (Manzano et al, 2021, p. 653).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conditioned by the biophysical realities of Eurasia's geography, which were not conducive to intensive crop cultivation, this research took culture as defined by endogenous understandings of 'those who farm (historically) versus those who do not' (Christian, 1994;Krader, 1963;Linseele, 2010;Montero et al, 2009;Spooner, 1973). The term 'culture' in this study builds from anthropological definitions where culture is treated as an inherited system of knowledge, beliefs, laws, and habits (Bartfield, 1997;Lewis, 1999;Ren, 2012). The biophysical characteristics of Eurasia's geography are then incorporated into the definition in order to account for the full array of the relationships between Eurasian peoples and the land upon which they have lived, worked, derived meaning and sustenance, and recorded their history (Sies, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What is a Resource? Representing Eurasia’s Pastoral/nomadic Development History in the IPBES Framework for Reconceptualized Resource Meanings

Berman

2023

Journal of Eurasian Studies

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The purpose of this article is to update the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) framework to reflect resource understandings arising within historically non-sedentary societies. This article examines how Eurasia’s unique development history based on livestock cultivation beget modes of understanding predicated in mobile life strategies and pastoral/nomadic interactions with the Eurasian geography. In contrast, prevailing resource ideas emphasize land relation histories of sedentary peoples. Using the IPBES framework, this article takes a novel approach to show how food and food customs reflect embedded resource understandings relevant to non-sedentary peoples. Empirical findings from sturgeon aquaculture facilities in the Caspian states of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan demonstrates sturgeon meat in customary cuisine connects Eurasian peoples to land knowledge instilled with its own resource meanings. This article updates the IPBES framework to incorporate the livestock element as the integrative mechanism giving the method for land use and Eurasia’s own resource concept. Incorporating the livestock variable within the IPBES framework to express the value accorded to mobility better represents the diversity of resource meaning-making processes. It also makes possible a consideration for how food and food customs enabling narrative transmit land appreciations and knowledges not adequately captured by conventional resource analyses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is a Resource? Representing Eurasia’s Pastoral/nomadic Development History in the IPBES Framework for Reconceptualized Resource Meanings

Berman

2023

Journal of Eurasian Studies

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“…Within a gradient of mobility, different examples range from enclosed farming systems (no mobility) to specialised systems (mobility inside hunting and gathering territory or slash and burn), extensive livestock production (mobility over extensive rangelands) and even agro-silvo-pastoral systems (mobility over vast areas through shifting cultivation and/or extensive livestock husbandry for example). Such communities, be they Pygmies, Boschiman, Peul, Kota and the like, are organised in ''moveable systems'' and their natural resource use strategy is based on their movements (See in particular Bahuchet 1992 for the Aka and Mbuti Pygmies; Lee 1979 for the Kung San ;Clanet 1994;Stenning 1959;Bonte 1981 and Dupire 1996 on pastoral mobility).…”

Section: Integrating Mobility Based Strategies In Land Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenge of participatory natural resource management with mobile herders at the scale of a Sub-Saharan African protected area

et al. 2009

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In Sub-Saharan Africa, the management of rangelands used by mobile populations, such as transhumant herders, must include large scale, sometimes cross-border, components. This mobility, common and significant in transhumant livestock production systems is, in most cases, not taken into account in conservation and natural resources management strategies around protected areas. Most conservation projects which include a development goal are designed to provide support to sedentary subsistence agricultural populations. Securing ''pastoral lands'' is seldom included as part of protected areas land management approaches. This paper focuses on the difficulty of integrating pastoral, agricultural and conservation issues into a regional land management plan. Based on a case study in Chad (Zakouma National Park), we pay particular attention to local mechanisms of land tenure negotiation, the mobile actors and the complex political landscape that this creates. (Résumé d'auteur

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“…It includes the spatial and temporal variation and interrelated dynamics of water, vegetation, and other key resources-all too often misleadingly lumped together as &dquo;the external environment&dquo;-as well as the links between this variation and dynamics and the livestock behavioral and physical characteristics. Coping with this complexity necessitates specialization across communities and within the herder household and the herds themselves (Bonte, 1981). Different household members or communities specialize in different aspects of livestock and environmental management, for example.…”

Section: Constant Search For Improvementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There, of course, have been criticisms of the ecological approach by some, for example, the critique of Spooner (1973) by R. Dyson-Hudson and N. Dyson-Hudson(1980). For another critique of the ecological approach, seeBonte (1981).at Bobst Library, New York University on June 13, 2015 jed.sagepub.com Downloaded from…”

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confidence: 99%

High-Reliability Pastoralism Versus Risk-Averse Pastoralism

Roe¹,

Huntsinger²,

Labnow³

1998

The Journal of Environment & Development

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The literature on pastoralism is sufficiently rich to accommodate two very different models ofpastoralism. Currently, virtually all attention given to pastoralism focuses on herder risk aversion, ecological adaptation, and the need for herd mobility in the face of an unpredictable environment. In contrast to the model of risk-averse pastoralism, the disequilibrium-based models of ecological dynamics on rangelands, often referred to as the new range ecology, enable us to see pastoralism as a high-reliability institution. From this perspective, high-reliability pastoralism is the search and attainment of reliable peak performance through the use and management of a highly complex range and livestock technology. The policy implications for pastoral development and rangelands are very different if pastoralists are found to be primarily reliability seeking rather than risk averse. Moreover, the implications for our understanding of pastoralism and its future are profound and differ appreciably from current conventional wisdom.A great deal of ink has been spilt over what is seen as the degradation of the largest land category in the world, this planet's arid and semiarid drylands, by its largest group of users, that is, pastoralists. Much of this written record needs to be rethought entirely, and what follows is, we believe, the first major rethinking of pastoralism in the past 15 years. Its major implication is that only after we have a more appropriate model of pastoralist behavior can we then address both what pastoralists are actually doing and the policy implications of their actions.Why do we need a new model of pastoralist behavior? The study of pastoralism continues to center on the implications of unpredictability in rangeland ecosystems for pastoral societies and land-use patterns (Sandford, 1983a, is the starting point of any such study). Conceiving unpredictability as risk and pastoralists as risk averters makes sense, if rangeland unpredictability is in fact the core exogenous driver of pastoralist decision making. We argue instead that the central concern of pastoralists is to better manage a predictably unpredictable environment so as to establish a reliable flow of life-sustaining goods and services from rangeland ecosystems that are in fact an endogenous part of their production systems. Downloaded from 388 As a start, think of the risk-averting pastoralist as engaged in an attempt to avoid or escape the high hazards of ecological unpredictability, given that the pastoralist has no control over the probability of those hazards occurring. The pastoralist in search of reliability is, in contrast, actively engaged in ongoing efforts to reduce the probability of those hazards he or she cannot avoid by managing temporal and spatial diversity in grazing opportunities, and diversity in livestock capabilities and response. Rather than being risk averse in trying to avoid hazards altogether, pastoralists accept and even take risks to respond to highconsequence hazards they cannot altogether avoid. In the classi...

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Ecological and Economic Factors in the Determination of Pastoral Specialisation

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

What is a Resource? Representing Eurasia’s Pastoral/nomadic Development History in the IPBES Framework for Reconceptualized Resource Meanings

What is a Resource? Representing Eurasia’s Pastoral/nomadic Development History in the IPBES Framework for Reconceptualized Resource Meanings

The challenge of participatory natural resource management with mobile herders at the scale of a Sub-Saharan African protected area

High-Reliability Pastoralism Versus Risk-Averse Pastoralism

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