Pastoralism

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Variability is not uncertainty; mobility is not flexibility: Clarifying concepts in pastoralism studies with evidence from Tajikistan

By Kramer Gillin (Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

Pastoralism Vol. 11, Article Number: 13 (2021)

Research on pastoral systems has been underpinned by the concepts of variability, uncertainty, mobility and flexibility, but these terms have been used inconsistently, imprecisely, and sometimes superfluously. Researchers and practitioners often conflate variability and unpredictability, on the one hand, and mobility and flexibility, on the other.

Spatiotemporal variability is intrinsic to pastoral systems, but this variability exists on a spectrum from more unpredictable to more predictable; indeed, some parameters of variability can be quite predictable. Livestock mobility can be flexible, but in some pastoral contexts mobility patterns are very stable. Flexible land governance is not necessarily a prerequisite for mobility; the substance of rules is more important than their flexibility. Mobility is a response to environmental variability, whereas flexibility is a response to environmental uncertainty.

Though some degree of uncertainty is present in every context and livelihood activity, uncertainty as it has been understood and deployed within the pastoralism literature is, in fact, not the most mobility-influencing type of variability in every pastoral system. Therefore, while mobility is intrinsic to pastoralism, the need for flexibility is context-specific and not intrinsic to pastoralism, in contrast to characterizations found especially in non-academic development literature.

Pastoralism literature has been dominated by certain regions and ecosystems—namely the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa—where the differences between these concepts are blurrier, contributing to their conflation and global overextension. Temperate mountain pastoral systems, like the one described in this article, make the distinctions and relationships between these concepts clearer, but these distinctions are important to recognize in every pastoral system.

_{Figure 3. Spatial organization of livestock areas in typical village of study area}

Flexibility in pastoral land use and governance can have costs and should therefore only be advocated to the extent that it is necessary from a livelihood standpoint and not embraced as an immutable and inherent quality of all pastoral settings.