Aims and Scopes

Unjustly labelled as backward and marginalised by the colonial/postcolonial states and international regimes dominated by agrarian-centrism, pastoralists and nomads have been suffering from extreme poverty, low-intensity conflict, environmental degradation, displacement, and eviction since the colonial period. In recent years, what has been termed the ‘Anthropocene’, comprising climate change, overpopulation, resource depletion, biodiversity extinction, and related environmental issues as sub-set agendas and that served as some core bases of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, has been making a profound impact on their livelihoods, both in policy narrative (Roe, 1994, 2023) and in reality (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Steffen et al., 2015).

Consequently, ‘Anthropocene’ and the subset agendas have come to reactivate obsolete anti-nomadism policies implemented in the forms of sedentarisation (Semplici & Rogers, 2023), land-grabbing and privatisation (see Lind et al., 2020), and eviction from rangeland and communal land, which assume pastoralists and nomads as environmental destroyers. Pastoralists and nomads who have already suffered from direct damage of Anthropocene/Capitalocene (Moore, 2016) are now facing additional struggles due to ‘anti-nomadism Anthropocene policies’ with the ‘blaming the victims’ logic (Ryan, 1972). Moreover, Anthropocene policies have caused further deterioration of pastoral/nomadic livelihoods or even withdrawal from pastoralism and nomadism entirely and permanently. However, the Anthropocene of pastoralists and nomads has not been fully questioned yet, both theoretically and ethnographically.

These hyflex sessions will explore the current policy narratives and realities of the ‘Anthropocene’ of pastoralists and nomads through the reshaping of academic knowledge employing ‘relational ontology’ (Konaka et al., 2023), which takes pastoral and nomadic ontology seriously. It focuses on the reflexive, complex, and dynamic interactions with their environment (‘Human makes environment, which makes humans’) beyond common dichotomies: human/non-human, subject/object, culture/nature, local/global, and traditional/modern. It also relativises the Western scientific knowledge and considers it equivalent to the ontology of pastoralists (Konaka, 2022). We must re-theorise reflexive relationships between human and nature beyond the ‘intact nature’ model and reevaluate the human-made environment of pastoralists and nomads, comprising rangeland and communal land, as part of the Anthropocene agenda. Relational ontology urges us to re-imagine and redraw the existing picture of Anthropocene as pastoralists and nomads towards forthcoming UN IYRP 2026 and the post-2030 agendas.

The theoretical ideas of these sessions, ‘relational ontology’, originated from our recent book on resilience of African pastoralism (Konaka et al., 2023; see also Konaka and Little, 2021). Another theoretical streamline is from Emery Roe (2023), who has recently published significant research on Anthropocene. Furthermore, Ian Scoones recently published an epoch-making paper on the transformation of the development from ‘control’ to ‘care’, in which he suggests that ‘such responses to uncertainty mean building on the embedded, mutualistic and networked relational practices that are so central to successful pastoralism’ (Scoones, 2023: 14). The paper is critically important in radically rethinking development and humanitarian assistance, with relational approaches at its core.

These hyflex sessions are designed to bring about convergence among these theoretical streams and to unleash their theoretical and practical potential through a worldwide exchange of theoretical ideas and ethnographic examinations.

Session 1 will explore the reconfiguration of developmental and humanitarian assistance as ‘care’ as proposed by Scoones’s paper regardless of pastoralism. We invited Simon West from Australia who had proposed ‘a relational turn’ for sustainability science (West, 2020), Makoto Nishi from Japan who had published a paper (Nishi, 2023) on care during the HIV epidemic in Ethiopia, and Rahma Hassan from Kenya who is doing research on humanitarian responses in Northern Kenya. Representatives from the Japanese KAKENHI team, former UN officials, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and international non-governmental organization staff will present papers.

Session 2 will feature a keynote speech by Emery Roe from UC Berkeley. It will be followed by ethnographic examinations on African pastoralists (Samburu, Maasai [Kenya], Nuer, Lotuho [South Sudan], and OvaHimba [Namibia]), with various topics interrelated with climate change (livelihood diversification, land issues, displacement, and local justice) by the Japanese KAKENHI team.

Both sessions are to be followed by comments by Ian Scoones as a discussant and concluded with general discussions.

References (selected)

Konaka, S., G. Semplici, and P. D. Little, eds, 2023. Reconsidering Resilience in African Pastoralism: Towards a Relational and Contextual Approach, Trans Pacific Press.

Konaka, S. and P. D. Little. 2021. ‘Introduction: Rethinking Resilience in the Context of East African Pastoralism’, Nomadic Peoples. 25: 165–180 https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2021.250201

Nishi, M. 2023. Care during ART Scale‑up: Surviving the HIV Epidemic in Ethiopia. BioSocieties (2023) 18:567–585.

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00283-7

Roe, M. 2023. When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for Recasting Policy and Management in the Anthropocene, IDS Working Paper 589.

https://doi.org/10.19088/IDS.2023.025

Semplici, G. and C. Rogers, 2023. Sedentism as Doxa: Biases against Mobile Peoples in Law, Policy and Practice. Nomadic Peoples. 27: 155-170.

Scoones, I. 2023. Confronting Uncertainties in Pastoral Areas: Transforming Development from Control to Care. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 31(4): 1–19. 

https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2023.04132303

Konaka, S. 2022. Material Culture of Displacement: Ontological Reflections on East African Pastoral Internally Displaced Persons, Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology 23(2).

West, S., L. Jamila Haider, S. Stålhammar, & S. Woroniecki. 2020 A relational Turn for Sustainability Science? Relational thinking, Leverage Points and tTansformations, Ecosystems and People, 16(1): 304-325.

https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2020.1814417