Nomads and the State in Africa : the political roots of marginality

This book draws attention to the basic distinction between nomadic pastoralists who formed and dominated States in the past and those who kept their distance from States and lived in more decentralized segmentary structures. It analyses the implications of State formation or 'Statelessness' for the economy of these groups, their social stratification, and the extent of sedentarization, and for transformations in their ethno-cultural identity. It also examines the effects of such precolonial changes on different groups' relative incorporation or marginalization in the colonial system and the successor postcolonial State. The basic contention of the book is that 'State-forming' pastoralists were much more likely to be incorporated in the colonial system than their 'Stateless' counterparts and that this difference also influenced their differential fate in the postcolonial period. The book is based mainly on the examples of the Fulbe and the Tutsi among the State formers, the Maasai and the Samburu among the Stateless groups, and the Tuareg as a mixed type