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Resilient Pastoralism : A Cultural Analysis of Navigating Climate Change, Modernity and the Development Industry in Northern Kenya

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Author

Summary, in English

This thesis offers a cultural analysis of climate change, modernisation and sustainable development in the pastoral landscape of Baringo, Northern Kenya. For the majority of the pastoralists living there, life is defined by crippling poverty, ethnic violence and an increasingly erratic and unpredictable climate. In response, a growing number of people have moved away from the traditional reliance on communal pastures and started intensively farming grass on individual farms. Baringo has also been somewhat of a testbed for International Development projects over the past half century. The majority of these, however, have failed. This thesis explores the parallel histories of Baringo’s marginalisation in the national economy and by International Development organisations. What social, political and ecological processes in Kenya and the global economy have led to this marginalisation? In what ways are people using grass farming to help cope with droughts, flooding and economic insecurity? Why have these local adaptations been overlooked by development organisations? And why have so many projects failed to bring sustainable development to the region? The material to answer these questions has been gathered during fieldwork in Baringo, in collaboration with local researchers, through qualitative research methods including interviews, observations and archival research. It consists of fieldnotes, interviews with pastoralists and historical documents from development organisations. The research has been inspired by cultural theories on cultural landscapes and global cultural flows as well as postcolonial perspectives on modernisation and development. The main findings demonstrate that modernisation has contributed to increased poverty, land degradation and ethnic clashes in the region. They also show that grass farming is an inherently flexible mode of production which emerged out of traditional forms of pastoralism as a way to cope with these new hardships. The thesis has also highlighted that pastoralist economic models and ways of thinking have historically been overlooked in global development discourses. As global discourses are translated into tangible projects on the ground in Baringo, they often ignore local solutions, resulting in a landscape littered with abandoned project sites and invasive species.

Publishing year

2025-03-21

Language

English

Publication/Series

Lund studies in arts and cultural sciences

Volume

36

Document type

Dissertation

Publisher

The Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University

Topic

  • Ethnology

Keywords

  • Pastoralism
  • Climate Change
  • International Development
  • Sustainable Development
  • Resilience
  • Ethnography
  • Kenya

Status

Published

Project

  • Pastoral Perceptions of Development: How pastoralist perceptions of society and the environment affect external development initiatives in Northern Kenya's Drylands and how to integrate them
  • Lund University Agenda 2030 Graduate School

Supervisor

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2001-7510
  • ISSN: 2001-7529
  • ISBN: 978-91-89874-82-4
  • ISBN: 978-91-89874-83-1

Defence date

25 April 2025

Defence time

13:00

Defence place

LUX C121

Opponent

  • Lars Kaijser (Professor)