Günther Schlee & Abdullahi A. Shongolo 
Pastoralism and Politics in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia [PDF ebook] 

Examines how the lives of pastoralists in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia are deeply affected by the creation of mutually exclusive ethnic territories and proposes ways to reverse this trend.


Focuses on pastoralism, politics, policies and development in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. It is based on anthropological field research over a period of thirty-four years and attempts a synthesis of historical findingsand political anthropology, including studies carried out from a perspective of development intervention. Presenting a detailed ethnographic view of recent events of ethnic violence in Kenya, the authors analyse how local patterns of conflict among pastoralists were influenced by both national and regional politics, which have encouraged an increased tendency of territorialized ethnicity. The authors then discuss ways of getting out of the ethnic trap and revitalizing a mobile livestock economy in a region where other forms of land use are impossible or much less effective.

A companion volume to
Islam and Ethnicity in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia, it will be of particular interest to political anthropologists, students of nomadism, pastoral economy ecology, and globalization.


Günther Schlee is director of the Department of ‘Integration and Conflict’, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany; Abdullahi Shongolo is an independent scholar based in Kenya.

Table of Content

Introduction – Günther Schlee

Moi Era Politics, Transnational Relations & the Territorialization of Ethnicity – Abdullahi A. Shongolo and Günther Schlee

The Post-Moi Period (2002-2007) – Günther Schlee and Abdullahi A. Shongolo

Feedbacks & Cross-fertilizations: the ‘Declaration of Indigenous Communities of Mylae District’ – Günther Schlee

Some Comparative Perspectives, Conclusions & Recommendations – Günther Schlee