Abstract
While individual strategies for coping with disasters (e.g. mobility and substituting food) are necessary to prevent human mortality and excessive losses of property, buffering institutions (e.g. social networks, resource protection) lower the vulnerability of communities and enhance their potential for quick recovery. In contrast to strategies employed during a crisis these institutions are of a more complex organisation and demand more co-ordination (Forbes, 1989:89). They are firmly integrated into the socio-economic system and belong to a standard repertoire of strategies. Typically individual benefits are sacrificed in order to create security for the common good. Pasture protection is a good case in point: herders give up their chances to exploit virgin grazing for the common good of a regulated and predictable range management.
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Endnotes
Beech (1911) who is an astute observer of other aspects of the economy does not mention camel holdings among the pastoral Pokot.
This reminds one of an argument forwarded by Gulliver (1955:30,39) that the Turkana kept camels very much like cattle in the past.
In a recently launched research project, Welle (2004) found that between 1975 and 1995 gardens in the Omuhonga valley had doubled in number and acreage. Presumably Himba invested more time into agriculture but also the immigration of Hakaona and Ngambwe households into the area may have contributed to this increase.
The fact that all livestock are inherited along the matrilineal line is astonishing. In most Herero groups (Viehe, 1902; Irle, 1906; Crandall, 1992) and, in fact, among the western Himba too, ancestral cattle are inherited patrilineally while non-ancestral cattle are transferred in the matriline.
See Hakansson (1990) for a comparative analysis of systems of protracted bridewealth payment in eastern Africa.
In a diachronic perspective changes in the size of bridewealth payments have taken place. While around the middle of the 19th century only very few cattle had to be given, by the end of the 19th century high bridewealth payments were required. After the Rinderpest epidemic of 1891 bridewealth payments were again reduced considerably. Data gathered by Schneider in the 1940s indicates that bridewealth payments may have been considerably higher in the pastoral areas of West Pokot (see also Barton, 1921) in the 1920s than they are today. Schneider (1953:240) says that about 30 to 50 animals were paid for bridewealth.
Polly Wiessner (1977, 1982), in a similar vein, identified hxaro networks of reciprocal gifting, as a leading topic in !Kung society.
Crandall (1991, 1992) maintains that patrilines concentrate in one locality whereas members of matrilines are dispersed. In contrast to this, my data shows that spatial concentrations of matriclan members also occur. Regarding patricians I only found a concentration of households belonging to the chiefly patriline in one area whereas other patrilines were dispersed.
It is of interest to note that there was a clear regional pattern in FZD and MBD (and their extensions) marriages. While the western Himba of Okauua and Otjitanda predominantly married FZD (and their extensions), the northern Himba of Omuramba and Omuhonga preferred to marry MDB and their extensions. Crandall asserts that there is a tendency to marry cross-cousins who come from further away (Crandall 1992:232). This observation is corroborated by my data.
Crandall (1992:242) notes that five sheep were being transferred also.
Density measures the cohesiveness of the network. The measure is defined as the number of existing relations divided by the number of potential relations (Schweizer 1997:177).
The measure for degree-centralisation relates to the entire graph and not to single actors only. The degree measures the number of direct exchange relations one actor has. Hence degree is a measure for the activity of an actor within the network. The degree-centralisation measures the variation (scattering) of degrees in the net. UCINET transfers the measures for centralisation into percentages. A percentage of 0% indicates that all actors are active in the network to the same degree, a percentage of 100% shows that one actor had drawn all exchanges to himself (Schweizer, 1997:183ff).
Closeness-centralisation measures the speed of interaction within a net. Those actors are central which are connected on short paths to each other. The closer an actor stands to all others the more effective and independent of the others he can act. The measure for Closeness-Centralisation again looks at the entire graph. A value of 100% occurs if one point in the net has direct contact to all others, while all other points can reach any other point only via two steps (the typical star). If all points are the same distance from each other the measure will be 0% (Schweizer, 1997:187ff).
Galaty & Johnson (1990), Baxter & Hogg (1990), Hitchcock (1990) among others give overviews and case studies on the working of communal land tenure among African pastoralists.
Behnke (1998:5) gives several examples from the western Kaokoland for this drainage system orientation of chieftaincies.
The issue of who has rights to use certain resources becomes more difficult if herders come from another ethnic community. There are some Hakaona, Ngambwe and Thwa households living in the area. Most Himba herders thought that they are just tolerated but that they did not have any rights in the area. The situation in northern Namibia contrasts sharply to that in southern Angola, where Himba and other southwestern Bantu groups (Hakaona, Zemba, Ngambwe, Thwa, Ndimba, Tjavikwa, Tjilenge, Kuvale, Kuroka) intermingle. The rights of the Toms community, Herero who originated in southern Angola and moved into the area only in 1917, to pasture in the area are questioned too.
Since 1998 so-called conservancies have been introduced at several places in the Kunene region (see Bollig, 2004a).
In Schneider’s monograph on the Hill Pokot (1953) the key term tilya has a slightly different connotation. He describes tilya as “probably the most important method of exchange of cattle ... outside bridewealth.” Tilya is based on the exchange of a cow for an ox on the provision that the one getting the cow gives back some calves at a later stage. Among the Pokot I was working with, the terms tilya (the exchange) and tilyai (the people exchanging) had a wider connotation. It contained relatives and comprised different forms of livestock exchanges. Schneider (1953:271) claims that tilya has a clearly pecuniary motive. While such exchanges among the pastoral Pokot are not beyond economic calculus they are much more than transactions with a solely pecuniary aim.
Storas (1997:60) observes the same attitudes on the maintenance of exchange relations and goods transferred among the pastoral Turkana.
The full text of the blessing and its original in the Pokot language is given in Bollig (1992a:190ff).
Material goods which pass boundaries were mainly goods attached to young men and young women. Hodder (1982:73) found that for example spears (attached to young men) and calabash designs (attached to young women) are not used as ethnic markers. They disrupt otherwise well defined boundaries.
Crandall (1992:124) reports that bigmen in the Opuwo area also donated a great number of cattle to non-relatives. Especially non-relatives become obliged to their benefactor.
Mureti is a precolonial hero cherished in many oral traditions (see Kajira Muniombara in Bollig, 1997c).
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Bollig, M. (2006). Buffering Mechanisms: Minimising Vulnerability. In: Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-27582-6_6
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