Description
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the southwest and northeast regions. Unraveling the complex prehistory, history, and contemporary political ecology of African pastoralism, results in insight into the ingenuity and flexibility of historical and contemporary herders. Michael Bollig is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. His publications include Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment: A Comparative Study of Two Pastoral Societies (Springer, 2006); (with A. Rao and M. BAck, Berghahn Books, 2007); and African Landscapes: Interdisciplinary Approaches (with O. Bubenzer, Springer, 2009).
