NEW APPROACH IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE NOMADS
Current research rejects the perception that nomadic and sedentary ways of life are opposed to and in latent conflict with one another. It is not the confrontation, but the linkage of nomadic and sedentary systems with their different forms of political organization, social orders, understanding of space and moral values that historically had a lasting effect and helped to shape the face of vast regions and their societies. The supposed unity of space, place, culture and language turned out to be a fallacy. Culture is moveable and can move over long distances even without the movement of people, for example via communication. On the other hand, people in movement carry culture in their luggage as well.(42)
Anthropologists turn more and more to these interconnected links. Nomads are integrated into a worldwide network and can no longer be regarded as isolated groups. Even the rural nomads of the Sahara can no longer be regarded as ‘pure’ stockbreeders. They also work as traders or nowadays sometimes as tourist guides.(43) They interact, particularly economically, with sedentary relatives and friends in the villages, which results in dense networks between sedentary and mobile Saharan residents.
Today, the term nomad is no longer used exclusively for people who manage pastures; one can also define people operating in an urban environment as nomads.
It is therefore important to develop a definition of ‘nomad’ in anthropology that is not just reduced to its economic and geographical aspects.
In the nomadism discourse, however, the nomad’s activity as a pastoralist is predominantly considered, and his mobility viewed mainly from the cultural-cum-economic perspective. Rural nomads, by contrast, are excluded and marginalized in the postmodern discourse. Thus, one can neither characterize the mobility of urban nomads as nomadism, nor count rural nomads among the privileged nomads who are the exclusive subjects of postmodern nomadology.
NOMADOLOGY:
The study of nomads must be translated as nomadology. Detaching postmodern nomadology from its inherent Eurocentrism and integrating rural nomads opens up the possibility of a holistic study of nomads that looks beyond geographical and economic boundaries.
Thus, anthropological studies like in the volume,Tuareg Society within a Globalized World, cannot be defined as nomadism research. We could, however, define them as anthropological nomadology.
In such an anthropological nomadology we could easily integrate rural and urban nomads in Asia, America and Australia.
Nowadays, nomads have to be viewed in complex dimensions. In the era of globalization, holistic analyses within an anthropological nomadology are appropriate.
RESEARCH ON NOMADS:
- 1) Modern Nomads / Rural and urban Nomads
- 2) Nomadism / Pastoralism
- 3) Postmodern Nomadology
- 4) Nomads and Globalization in the Sahara
Chapters from the article:
Anja Fischer
Research and Nomads in the Age of Globalization
in:
Anja Fischer / Ines Kohl (eds.)
Tuareg Society within a Globalized World