Clotting nomadic spaces : on sedentism and nomadism

dc.contributor.authorSEMPLICI, Greta
dc.date.accessioned2021-02-08T11:16:31Z
dc.date.available2021-02-08T11:16:31Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.descriptionFirst published online: 1 March 2020en
dc.descriptionBest Essay Award by Commission for Nomadic Peoples.
dc.description.abstractWith reference to Jeffrey C. Kaufmann’s concept of a ‘sediment of nomadism’, for which pastoralism is still, implicitly or not, referenced and essentialised to ‘pure’ degrees of mobility and ‘pure’ food economies centred around livestock, this article argues that, in pastoral settings, sedentism is equally essentialised. This article reverses the traditional critique of the nomadism/sedentism dichotomy by questioning the relevance of ideal types of ‘pure sedentism’. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Northern Kenya arid lands, this article looks away from big cities and regional urbanities to focus on small settlements springing up along improved roads and telecommunications infrastructure, showing that places are never motionless, despite measures of emplacement promoted by national and local governments and the international community. The drilling of boreholes, the construction of health centres and schools, the distribution of aid does not stop the mobility of places nor of their inhabitants. Until places remain mobile, they are alive; otherwise they clot. This argument makes it possible to move beyond a dichotomic definition of sedentism and nomadism to value changes, flexibility, and plasticity as important features of places created and recreated by mobile pastoralists.en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationNomadic peoples, 2020, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 56–85en
dc.identifier.doi10.3197/np.2020.240104
dc.identifier.endpage85en
dc.identifier.issn0822-7942
dc.identifier.issn1752-2366
dc.identifier.issue1en
dc.identifier.startpage56en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/69813
dc.identifier.volume24en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.orcid.uploadtrue*
dc.publisherThe White Horse Pressen
dc.relation.ispartofNomadic peoplesen
dc.titleClotting nomadic spaces : on sedentism and nomadismen
dc.typeArticleen
dspace.entity.typePublication
eui.subscribe.skiptrue
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-1509-5650
person.identifier.other43408
relation.isAuthorOfPublicationcfe375ae-7021-4739-98f3-9fbb6418c85a
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscoverycfe375ae-7021-4739-98f3-9fbb6418c85a
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