Studying Hazard and Risk in Pastoral Societies

Abstract

This book centres around the comparison of hazards, risk perception and risk minimising strategies in two African pastoral societies, the Pokot of northern Kenya and the Himba of northern Namibia (see Map 1). Both societies were studied over several years of intensive field research between 1987 and 1999. The central questions guiding the comparative approach are: (1) How are hazards generated through environmental variation and degradation, through market failures, violent conflicts and marginalisation? (2) How do these hazards result in damage to single households or to individual actors and how does the damage vary within one society? (3) How are hazards perceived by the people affected? (4) How do actors of different wealth, status, age and gender try to minimise risks by delimiting the effect of damage during an on-going crisis and what kind of institutionalised measures do they design to insure themselves against hazards, preventing their occurrence or limiting their effects? (5) How is risk minimisation affected by cultural change and in how far is the quest for enhanced security itself a driving force of cultural evolution? Answering these questions in a comparative perspective should lead to generalising hypotheses on the dynamic interrelation of hazards, damage, risk-perception, risk-minimising strategies and buffering institutions in African pastoral societies.1