David Attenborough’s mission to restore the balance of nature in the documentary, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement, is at once inspiring and concerning. What if the balance of nature doesn’t exist? What if this mission is misplaced? The film is full of the familiar tropes of nature documentaries, once again repeated with Attenborough’s familiar gravitas. Human beings have overrun the world. Wilderness has been destroyed. Stability and balance – the ‘security and stability of the Holocene’ – have been upset. Our singular world – invoking the iconic picture of ‘only one earth’ (Ward and Dubos 1972) seen from space – becomes threatened. Catastrophe and crisis are the impending result. Unless of course ‘we’ (a rather generic humanity) can restore stability through protecting biodiversity; in his words, ‘rewilding the world’. Those of us brought up on Attenborough’s amazing natural history programmes have got used to the standard storyline, centred on a Malthusian narrative. Too many humans can damage the awe-inspiring, pristine nature depicted in the films. Yet, unlike most of his previous documentaries, this one goes a step further. An hour of the now-familiar narrative culminates in some tragic yet bizarre imagery of dying walruses in front of an appalled Davos audience. And then the argument shifts. In this very personal testimony, a 93-year-old Attenborough argues how we have to rediscover how to be sustainable: moving from being ‘apart from nature to being part of nature’; ‘working with nature rather than against it’. In guarded tones for sure, a more critical perspective is offered: one that identifies capitalism – without naming it here, although he does so in a BBC interview1 – and the structural relations of politics and economy as the driving forces behind the destruction of the non-human world. The inevitability of the countdown to doomsday can be challenged, he argues, even if ultimately by some odd techno-utopian solutions such as remote-controlled drones harvesting forests. Nature will and must endure, he proclaims: stability will be restored, with or without humans.
{"title":"Beyond the 'Balance of Nature': Pastoralists' Alternative Perspectives on Sustainability","authors":"I. Scoones","doi":"10.3197/NP.2021.250110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/NP.2021.250110","url":null,"abstract":"David Attenborough’s mission to restore the balance of nature in the documentary, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement, is at once inspiring and concerning. What if the balance of nature doesn’t exist? What if this mission is misplaced? The film is full of the familiar tropes of nature documentaries, once again repeated with Attenborough’s familiar gravitas. Human beings have overrun the world. Wilderness has been destroyed. Stability and balance – the ‘security and stability of the Holocene’ – have been upset. Our singular world – invoking the iconic picture of ‘only one earth’ (Ward and Dubos 1972) seen from space – becomes threatened. Catastrophe and crisis are the impending result. Unless of course ‘we’ (a rather generic humanity) can restore stability through protecting biodiversity; in his words, ‘rewilding the world’. Those of us brought up on Attenborough’s amazing natural history programmes have got used to the standard storyline, centred on a Malthusian narrative. Too many humans can damage the awe-inspiring, pristine nature depicted in the films. Yet, unlike most of his previous documentaries, this one goes a step further. An hour of the now-familiar narrative culminates in some tragic yet bizarre imagery of dying walruses in front of an appalled Davos audience. And then the argument shifts. In this very personal testimony, a 93-year-old Attenborough argues how we have to rediscover how to be sustainable: moving from being ‘apart from nature to being part of nature’; ‘working with nature rather than against it’. In guarded tones for sure, a more critical perspective is offered: one that identifies capitalism – without naming it here, although he does so in a BBC interview1 – and the structural relations of politics and economy as the driving forces behind the destruction of the non-human world. The inevitability of the countdown to doomsday can be challenged, he argues, even if ultimately by some odd techno-utopian solutions such as remote-controlled drones harvesting forests. Nature will and must endure, he proclaims: stability will be restored, with or without humans.","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45712384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Food Production Systems Involved and Evolving With Landscapes","authors":"F. Provenza","doi":"10.3197/NP.2021.250112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/NP.2021.250112","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":"25 1","pages":"121-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49603536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
By taking a small-scale perspective, Bedouin pastoral space in the Israeli Negev in the modern period has been misinterpreted as chaotic by various Israeli institutions. In critiquing this ontology we suggest that a knowledge gap with regard to an appropriate scale of understanding Bedouin settlement patterns and mechanisms of sedentarisation is at its root, and that a larger-scale analysis indicates that their space is in fact highly ordered. Field surveys and interviews with the local Bedouin showed that household cultivation plots in the Negev Highland during the period of the British Mandate were organised at a large scale through natural and man-made landscape features reflecting their structure, development and deployment in a highly ordered space. This analysis carries significant implications for understanding pastoral spaces at the local scale, particularly offering better comprehension of various sedentary forms and suggesting new approaches to sustainable planning and development for the Bedouin.
{"title":"Scale, Landscape and Indigenous Bedouin Land Use: Spatial Order and Agricultural Sedentarisation in the Negev Highland","authors":"Ariel Meraiot, A. Meir, Steve Rosen","doi":"10.3197/NP.2021.250102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/NP.2021.250102","url":null,"abstract":"By taking a small-scale perspective, Bedouin pastoral space in the Israeli Negev in the modern period has been misinterpreted as chaotic by various Israeli institutions. In critiquing this ontology we suggest that a knowledge gap with regard to an appropriate scale of understanding\u0000 Bedouin settlement patterns and mechanisms of sedentarisation is at its root, and that a larger-scale analysis indicates that their space is in fact highly ordered. Field surveys and interviews with the local Bedouin showed that household cultivation plots in the Negev Highland during the\u0000 period of the British Mandate were organised at a large scale through natural and man-made landscape features reflecting their structure, development and deployment in a highly ordered space. This analysis carries significant implications for understanding pastoral spaces at the local scale,\u0000 particularly offering better comprehension of various sedentary forms and suggesting new approaches to sustainable planning and development for the Bedouin.","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":"25 1","pages":"4-35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42342677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How might we think about the fluidities of those who live in high variability environments when they butt up against state and disciplinary stabilities? This Afterword explores this question by distinguishing between infrastructures of stability and infrastructures of fluidity. The differences between these – which the paper calls the infrastructures of difference – are not simply conceptual, methodological and epistemological, but also deeply embedded in normative, metaphysical, institutional and material relations. This explains why they are so resilient, and why the infrastructures of stability so powerfully enact the bias against variability of pastoralists, Roma and indigenous groups. However, the Afterword also argues that in practice stabilities and fluidities are entangled, relational, and are never mutually exclusive. Instead they go together fractally, so that stabilities lie within fluidities, and fluidities within stabilities. Finally, the Afterword rehearses the political and intellectual implications of this by touching on the tactics used by those who champion fluidities in the face of powerful stabilities. The lesson here appears paradoxical, but it is not: to be fluid is (also) to include stability.
{"title":"Afterword: The Infrastructures of Difference","authors":"Solveig Joks, Liv Østmo, J. Law","doi":"10.3197/np.2020.240211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2020.240211","url":null,"abstract":"How might we think about the fluidities of those who live in high variability environments when they butt up against state and disciplinary stabilities? This Afterword explores this question by distinguishing between infrastructures of stability and infrastructures of fluidity.\u0000 The differences between these – which the paper calls the infrastructures of difference – are not simply conceptual, methodological and epistemological, but also deeply embedded in normative, metaphysical, institutional and material relations. This explains why they are\u0000 so resilient, and why the infrastructures of stability so powerfully enact the bias against variability of pastoralists, Roma and indigenous groups. However, the Afterword also argues that in practice stabilities and fluidities are entangled, relational, and are never mutually exclusive. Instead\u0000 they go together fractally, so that stabilities lie within fluidities, and fluidities within stabilities. Finally, the Afterword rehearses the political and intellectual implications of this by touching on the tactics used by those who champion fluidities in the face of powerful stabilities.\u0000 The lesson here appears paradoxical, but it is not: to be fluid is (also) to include stability.","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":"24 1","pages":"323-343"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45858642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial Introduction Methodological Mess: Doing Research In Contexts of High Variability","authors":"L. Pappagallo, Greta Semplici","doi":"10.3197/np.2020.240201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2020.240201","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":"24 1","pages":"179-194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45836349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Andrea E. Duffy, Nomad's Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World","authors":"Onur İnal","doi":"10.3197/np.2020.240212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2020.240212","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":"24 1","pages":"344-347"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47496495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research has shown that pastoralism and the management of the commons are connected (Bollig and Lesogorol 2016). In this article I discuss how the concept of variability, which emerged from discussions of dryland ecologies in the 1980s (Homewood 2008), can inform and enhance research on the commons and vice versa. Research on the commons can further elucidate the understanding of pastoralist practices. I conclude with reflections drawn from some empirical examples in the literature, the use of the socio-ecological systems (SES) framework, and discuss the benefits and potential problems when applied to heterogeneous and flexible pastoralist practices and to the pastoral management of the commons.
{"title":"Commons Research and Pastoralism in the Context of Variability","authors":"J. P. Blau","doi":"10.3197/np.2020.240207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2020.240207","url":null,"abstract":"Research has shown that pastoralism and the management of the commons are connected (Bollig and Lesogorol 2016). In this article I discuss how the concept of variability, which emerged from discussions of dryland ecologies in the 1980s (Homewood 2008), can inform and enhance research\u0000 on the commons and vice versa. Research on the commons can further elucidate the understanding of pastoralist practices. I conclude with reflections drawn from some empirical examples in the literature, the use of the socio-ecological systems (SES) framework, and discuss the benefits and potential\u0000 problems when applied to heterogeneous and flexible pastoralist practices and to the pastoral management of the commons.","PeriodicalId":19318,"journal":{"name":"Nomadic Peoples","volume":"24 1","pages":"272-285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43546345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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