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During the last century the Maa‐speaking Il Chamus of Kenya have gone from irrigation farming to a pastoral economy based on small stock and cattle kept primarily for their milk. The author of this article contributes to a more nuanced picture of the “pastoral woman” by illustrating how widowhood changes those patterns of behaviour that the Il Chamus normally expect of women at particular life‐stages. He also considers the changes that widows are increasingly coming to face due to present‐day increases in non‐pastoral demands for labour, economic diversification, and the formalization of resource control.     

祁连山牧区妇女社会地位及其对草地政策的认知度

牧区妇女社会地位的高低对草地生态系统健康具有重要的影响。以祁连山区的天祝藏族自治县抓喜秀龙乡为调查研究区域,随机抽取100户藏族牧户为研究对象,采用问卷、座谈和关键人物座谈等形式,对妇女在社会生产中充当的角色、日常生活中承担的家务状况、受教育程度、参与社会活动情况以及对草地政策的认知等方面进行了系统调查和分析。研究结果表明:在农村社会变革中,女性是畜牧业生产的主力军,承担着将近80%的生产管理工作,74.3%的日常家务。其在家庭经济中的决策权和农村社会中的地位也在逐渐提高,在经济方面占36.5%的支配权,拥有14.5%的决策权。但是,妇女的受教育的程度普遍较低,女性的文盲率达14.4%。因此,妇女对草地生产管理技术的接受程度较低,对草原管理方面的政策及相关的法规缺乏认识,这将会对牧区草地畜牧业的可持续发展产生潜在影响。     

Women's changing economic roles with pastoral sedentarization: Varying strategies in alternate Rendille communities

The trend of pastoral sedentarization in Africa presents new economic opportunities to women through the sale of dairy products, agricultural produce, and labor. This study of Rendille of northern Kenya shows a variety of economic strategies pursued by women in nomadic pastoral, settled agro-pastoral, and town communities. Results of household budgets and interviews with married women indicate that urban centers attract both wealthier Rendille women selling milk and poorer women engaged in wage-labor and petty commodity trade; time allocation data shows that women living in towns work as strenuously as those in pastoral communities, while men in towns work less than in pastoral communities and less than women in both communities; and anthropometric data of women and children suggest that increases in women's income may have a beneficial effect on the nutrition and well-being of their children.     

Women's Income and the Livelihood Strategies of Dispossessed Pastoralists Near the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania

There are numerous incidences of impoverishment and livelihood change in pastoral societies following transformations in land use, and land and livestock ownership. Opinion is divided over the effect of these changes on women. This paper considers the case of the former residents of the Mkomazi Game Reserve. Pastoralists were evicted from the Reserve in the late 1980s and their livelihoods have changed as a result. I show that women from poorer households now have to sell milk, firewood, or medicine frequently to meet daily family needs, but I argue that increased income-earning activity by women is not only the result of impoverishment. Selling goods is useful for women as it provides an income that they control and some choose to earn their own money. The income resulting is also subject to intrahousehold power dynamics. Women may have to sell more goods more often and may be less free to use the money as they wish because men sometimes withdraw normal provisions for day-to-day needs in the expectation that women's income will meet the deficit. Debates over the changing status of women in pastoral society need to be cognizant of these intrahousehold contests.     

Potential of direct seeding for establishing native plants into pastoral land in New Zealand

Native plants are an important part of New Zealand?s uniqueness, and there is increasing awareness of the need to maintain these species in managed landscapes, particularly pastoral areas, in addition to the country?s conservation lands. The most widely used method of establishing native plants is transplanting nursery-grown seedlings, and for many species, much experience and knowledge has been gained in using this technique. Establishment of native plants in the field by direct seeding is a potentially useful alternative technique-which has been evaluated in the North and South Islands only to a limited extent. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge on the direct seeding of species into pastoral areas. It covers site and species selection, seed availability and quality, site preparation, and post-sowing management. It also compares the economics of native plant establishment by transplanting and by direct seeding. Direct seeding of pastoral areas is a relatively cheap technique, but its general applicability is currently limited because of frequently inadequate supplies of viable seed, lack of knowledge on appropriate sowing times and rates, unreliable field germination and seedling emergence, and frequent intense competition from existing vegetation, particularly exotic grasses.     

Ectogenesis and gender-based oppression: Resisting the ideal of assimilation

In a recent article in this journal, Kathryn MacKay advances a defence of ectogenesis that is grounded in this technology’s potential to end—or at least mitigate the effects of—gender-based oppression. MacKay raises important issues concerning the socialization of women as ‘mothers’, and the harms that this socialization causes. She also considers ectogenesis as an ethically preferable alternative to gestational surrogacy and uterine transplantation, one that is less harmful to women and less subject to being co-opted to further oppressive ends. In this article, I challenge some of the assumptions that underlie MacKay’s case in favour of ectogenesis by questioning whether the relationship between women’s capacity to gestate and birth children and gender-based oppression is as strong as MacKay makes it out to be. I subsequently argue that—even if MacKay’s reading of this relationship is accurate—ectogenesis is not a desirable means to end gender-based oppression. It embodies a strategy that could be used to pursue liberating projects that follow what Iris Marion Young defines as ‘the ideal of assimilation’, but that must be resisted. I then concur with MacKay’s contention that ectogenesis is better than gestational surrogacy and uterine transplantation. My argument is that many of the problematic issues that MacKay herself sees as features of these practices will not disappear with ectogenesis. Finally, I conclude that MacKay’s narrow focus on women’s biology and ectogenesis as a solution to gender-based oppression results in the overlooking of broader systemic issues that contribute to the upholding of oppressive norms.     

Pastoral Sedentarization and Its Effects on Children’s Diet,Health, and Growth Among Rendille of Northern Kenya

Throughout the arid regions of Africa formerly mobile pastoral populations are becoming sedentary. Although pastoral sedentarization is encouraged by international development agencies and national governments as solutions to food insecurity, poor health care, and problems of governance, it has not been demonstrated that abandoning the pastoral way of life, and particularly childrens access to milk and other livestock products, is beneficial to the health and well-being of pastoral populations. This paper reports the results of a 3-year study of one pastoral and four settled Rendille communities of northern Kenya based on data from 17 repeated bimonthly surveys of childhood dietary, growth, and morbidity patterns and household level economic strata. Bivariate analysis of 5,535 measurements from 488 children from birth to 9 years revealed that age-specific height and weight measurements for the pastoral community are uniformly heavier and taller than children from the sedentary villages. Multivariate analysis using Generalized Estimating Equations methodology showed that the amount of milk consumed was always a statistically significant determinant of child weight and height growth, regardless of drought or non-drought times and breastfeeding status. Other significant determinants of child growth include morbidity and poverty, both associated with sedentary communities. These results indicate that international development assistance should not neglect improvements in livestock production and support of pastoral movements in Africas arid lands.     

Memory and war: Tamil women’s experiences of Sri Lanka’s civil war

This article explores how Tamil women in Australia reconstruct memories of Sri Lanka’s war through postmemory and personal experiences. Tamil women’s understandings of war are important for unravelling multiple sites of marginalization across social and political landscapes that challenge dominant perspectives of being Tamil-Australian. The article draws on sixteen in-depth interviews with Tamil women resettled in Australia as children in the 1980s and 1990s, foregrounding their unique position as part of a war generation. It shows that Tamil women’s experiences of political engagement during the final stages of war were motivated by memories of individual and collective sufferings. However, loss, exclusion and forced migration characterize their ambivalent connections to homeland. Not always tied to dominant memories of war, victimhood and subordination, the article concludes that each Tamil woman represents ongoing resistances, survival and renegotiations of Tamil diasporic experiences of war that are produced by their memory and memory work.     

Women and property in Guajiro society*

This paper discusses property‐related issues and concepts among the Guajiro—a matrilineal cattle pastoralist society in Colombia and Venezuela—from a women‐oriented perspective, focusing on types of, acquisition and management of property as well as death‐ and compensation‐linked property transactions. Also considered are questions pertaining to female productivity in pastoral societies and women's significance as resources and potential property.     

Open Access, Open Systems: Pastoral Management of Common-Pool Resources in the Chad Basin

The discussion about the impact of pastoralists on ecosystems has been profoundly shaped by Hardin’s tragedy of the commons that held pastoralists responsible for overgrazing the range. Research has shown that grazing ecosystems are much more complex and dynamic than was previously assumed and that they can be managed adaptively as commons. However, proponents and critics of Hardin’s thesis continue to argue that open access to common-pool resources inevitably leads to a tragedy of the commons. A longitudinal study that we conducted of pastoral mobility and primary production in the Logone floodplain in the Far North Region of Cameroon suggest that open access does not have to lead to a tragedy of the commons. We argue that this pastoral system is best conceptualized as an open system, in which a combination of individual decision-making and coordination of movements leads to an ideal-free type of distribution of mobile pastoralists. We explain how this self-organizing system of open access works and its implications for theories of management of common-pool resources and our understanding of pastoral systems.     

Marriage Transactions: Labor, Property, Status

Marriage transactions—bridewealth, dowry, indirect dowry, and so on—and the absence of transactions have been shown to have a patterned distribution worldwide. This article attempts to account for these patterns by looking at marriage transactions as mechanisms by which households provide for labor needs, distribute property, and maintain or enhance status. A major factor in determining type of marriage transaction is the presence and type of property controlled by the household. Bridewealth circulates property and women, while dowry and indirect dowry concentrate them. The former is found where property is limited, in tribal societies and among the landless poorer classes in traditional states, whereas the latter is found in property-owning classes of landed or commercial pastoral peoples. This article pays particular attention to dowry and indirect dowry, using ethnographic and historical data to explain their functions.     

Indicator species for the interpretation of vegetation condition in the St Bathans area, central Otago, New Zealand

Monitoring the effect of management in rangelands is an integral part of the process of adaptive management. An understanding of how individual species react to management has two major benefits. Firstly, monitoring, can be simplified by avoiding species which are reacting mostly to other influences, and secondly the abundance of species can be interpreted in a meaningful way for assessing the influence of previous management. Gradient analysis on a matrix of 69 sample sites and 125 species in the St Bathans area of Central Otago identified a relatively homogenous data set, within which the effects of environmental variation had been minimised so that the major pattern of vegetation composition change was explained by pastoral impact. Ten plant species showed clear responses along the pastoral impact gradient, and were abundant over certain ranges of this gradient. It is recommended that these species be used to monitor trends in vegetation condition.     

Times of debt: heterochrony and bank loans in rural Mongolia

Recent scholarship in economic anthropology examines how the intersection of multiple forms of temporality shapes the time of debt relations. This article builds on and refines these approaches by analysing debt as a social relation that ‘folds’ the time of other relations within itself. It does so through deploying the concept of the ‘fold’ drawn from continental philosophy and anthropological literature on personhood. This approach provides a novel way of illuminating and reflecting upon a temporal tension at the heart of debt relations, in which the timely performance of debtor-creditor relations is contingent on the harnessing of temporalities formally outside their scope. This argument is made in relation to an ethnographic study of malchny zeel (the ‘herder's loan’) issued by commercial banks in a pastoral region of Mongolia.     

Computational Research on Mobile Pastoralism Using Agent-Based Modeling and Satellite Imagery

Dryland pastoralism has long attracted considerable attention from researchers in diverse fields. However, rigorous formal study is made difficult by the high level of mobility of pastoralists as well as by the sizable spatio-temporal variability of their environment. This article presents a new computational approach for studying mobile pastoralism that overcomes these issues. Combining multi-temporal satellite images and agent-based modeling allows a comprehensive examination of pastoral resource access over a realistic dryland landscape with unpredictable ecological dynamics. The article demonstrates the analytical potential of this approach through its application to mobile pastoralism in northeast Nigeria. Employing more than 100 satellite images of the area, extensive simulations are conducted under a wide array of circumstances, including different land-use constraints. The simulation results reveal complex dependencies of pastoral resource access on these circumstances along with persistent patterns of seasonal land use observed at the macro level.     

An Oceanic revolution? Stella and the construction of new femininities in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific

In August 2012, a new magazine for women was released in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Entitled Stella, the magazine provides an ideal opportunity to analyse shifting constructions of gender among educated, employed women in PNG and elsewhere in the Pacific. Drawing on interviews, surveys and readers’ letters, this article discusses Papua New Guinean women who, because they display ‘modern attributes’, are maligned and discredited as ‘inauthentic’. It then goes on to document the ways in which Stella is enabling such women to assert themselves anew. Arguing that the publication of Stella marks the arrival into the public sphere of a group hitherto consigned to the margins of Pacific societies on the basis that they represent an ‘inauthentic minority’, the article makes an important contribution to scholarly discussion about the emergence of new femininities in PNG and the Pacific.     

Comparative vital statistics along the pastoral nomadism-sedentarism continuum

Vital statistics on pastoral nomadic and sedentarizing nomadic societies are by-and-large non-existent. Such information is highly important for both academic and policy-making reasons as pastoral nomadism as a mode of life is disappearing. This paper attempts to gather and present as much information as possible on crude birth and death rates and natural increase rates for various pastoral nomadic societies in different African and Middle Eastern countries. The information is arranged by a subdivision into nomads, seminomads, and sedentarized nomads. A summarization of this information suggests a possible pattern by which birth rates rise, death rates fall (but may rise in certain circumstances), and natural increase rates rise along the nomadism-sedentarism continuum. Such a possible pattern has several policy implications for governments assessing the needs of a nomadic society undergoing a process of change in its socio-ecological relationships.This article was written while the author was a visiting scholar at the Department of Geography at the University of California. The author wishes to thank Nga and Allen Scott and Melanine M. Patton, as well as two anonymous referees, for their assistance and suggestions for this paper.     

Commentary: "health has become secondary to a sexually attractive body"

This article focuses on the prevalence of cesarean section among upper class women for aesthetic purposes. In Latin America, the national cesarean section rate has risen to 40%, while in the early 1980s the rate was 75% in Brazil. In a survey conducted in the UK, 31% of women obstetricians would prefer to have cesarean section without any medical indication. This could perhaps be due to the obsession of maintaining a sexually appealing body. Health has then become secondary to the production of a sexually attractive body. The role of the medical profession lacks the definitive evidence on the issues regarding concerns of women and choices in childbirth particularly in some countries. The author suggests that the medical community and society should allow the women the choice between major surgery and childbirth.     

Origins of Specialized Pastoral Production in East Africa

The results of recent archeological research in the Loita-Mara area of Kenya offer new information on the timing and process of the development of pastoralism in East Africa. They suggest that a pattern of specialized pastoral production, similar to that of contemporary East African pastoralists such as the Maasai, was present in parts of East Africa 2,000 years ago. It may have developed as a result of new opportunities for increased pastoral production. A bimodal pattern of rainfall with a short dry season, similar to the modern climatic regime, appeared about 3,000 years ago, which allowed year-round milk production from cattle herds. The development of pastoralism in East Africa preceded agriculture and took place in a social and economic context of relationships between hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. Environmental opportunity, combined with cultural competition, may have provided the impetus toward pastoral specialization.     

A Co-Wife for the Cow: Gender Dimensions of Land Change and Livelihood Shift among Loita Maasai of Southern Kenya

Gender dimensions are fundamental to human/environment systems. I use gender to investigate land change in a forested area of conservation concern in the pastoral rangelands of Kenya Maasailand. Mixed methods reveal a narrative arc from the mid-1970s culminating in a transformation of land, livelihood, and culture by 2014. Empirical findings expand current understandings of livelihood shift in Maasailand to include gender dimensions critical to livelihood success. Remotely sensed satellite data and qualitative evidence expose simplistic narratives about environmental conditions in Loita Forest and Maasai women’s social status. I argue that gender deserves more attention in land-change studies because of its linkages to resource utilization and drivers of forest decline around the world.