Interrogating Development and Resilience in the Pastoral Drylands of Northern Kenya
Greta Semplici
‘Enyes remembered playing with his friends, running and following shadows of clouds. Those who managed to stay protected from sun rays under the clouds’ shades the longest were the winners of the game … A game for kids played at times when trees did not have a crown … when there were no bird traps to set. When there was no water to waste … It must have been a time of drought … I understood that he was speaking of the form of resilience I was researching. It is a story of movement, running bodies and drifting clouds. It is a story of transformation of the harsh reality of a drought into a game … of attention to the environment and how it constantly changes, moulded by the relationship between humans, animals, rains, wind, river, grains of sand … a story of a group of friends supporting each other … a story of games and laughter. This is the everyday form of resilience I hope to portray in this book.’
Moving Deserts re-examines the concept of resilience, as applied in the development sector. It gives central stage to the voices, experiences, memories and everyday lives of the people whose resilience is the subject of much international attention and financial aid flows. Building a bridge between the perspectives of practitioners and local communities, Moving Deserts reveals a story about life, struggle and hope among Turkana herders, a story woven by following the movements and relations of the author’s hosts and interlocutors during fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork. The volume argues that it is in their very mobility that the meaning of resilience resides: mobility as physical movements to reach ephemeral and unevenly spread resources; mobility as social connections to weave a social fabric that also works as safety net; mobility as fluid identities, never static but plastic, capable of taking on new shapes and adapting to changes. The drylands and their inhabitants, largely pastoral populations, are the spine of the book. Drylands often fall in the imaginary of the remote, the deserted, the unproductive, a powerful imaginary rooted in romantic narratives, as well as in political and economic interests. At a time of rising alarm about climate change, mass migrations and energy requirements, drylands are returning to the international stage with a focus on building resilience. This book asks what we can learn about ‘pastoral development’, currently discussed in the international development regime under the label of resilience, by switching perspective and following pastoralists’ lived experiences?
Greta Semplici is a postdoctoral fellow at the Social Science department at the University of Molise, Italy. Previously she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, and a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute. Greta was affiliated to the Pastoralism Uncertainty and Resilience (PASTRES) programme as post-doctoral researcher. She earned a Ph.D. from the Oxford Department of International Development with a critical study of pastoralism and development in the arid lands of northern Kenya. In her research, with the support of visuals like photographs and creative writing, she aims to bring a people, a place and a culture to life in the eyes and hearts of those who have not been there.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 – The Resilience Agenda
Chapter 2 – The nomadism of space. An experiential journey through the variability of drylands
Chapter 3 – The nomadism of settlements: aid like rain
Chapter 4 – Practices of mobility
Chapter 5 – On food and no-food: the mobility of identities
Afterword – Mobility, Change, Resilience
1st September 2025 ISBN 978-1-912186-96-9 (PB) £30 eISBN 978-1-912186-97-6 (Open Access eBook)
Edited by Andrea Petitt, Anke Tonnaer, Véronique Servais, Catrien Notermans and Natasha Fijn
‘what this volume does is guide one into wandering beyond marked and bounded fields, so we might learn better how to get lost and thus discover different ways to navigate through always-elusive, richly inhabited places’
From the Afterword by Karin Bolender
‘Each piece invites us to remember that meeting the mystery of others humbly and openly is a task that requires bottomless curiosity and openness’
Multispecies Ethnography and Artful Methods explores the potential of multimodal art practices in doing qualitative research beyond the human. Through artful endeavours such as creative writing, photography, filmmaking, drawing and poetry, the volume aims to overcome the shortcomings of conventional, anthropocentric and logocentric methods in multispecies research. To move beyond the limitations of language and linguistic communication, the contributors build on the long tradition of visual and sensory anthropology while also engaging in and consciously reflecting on innovative, creative and artistic methods. Taking a multispecies and more-than-human perspective – ranging from snow and trees to animals and an AI oracle – the volume investigates ways to touch, speak, listen, feel, walk with and reach across different species.
This book and accompanying multimedia website advance the frontier of publishing artful expressions of academic research by highlighting how creative practices can be the very core of data collection, analysis and the communication of research. As such, the artful pieces are not ‘just’ illustrations of textual representations, but are practised as part of an iterative process of data collection and analysis.
The contributions by well-established scholars, early career researchers and postgraduates who carry out new, cutting-edge research offer an engaging range of analytical, methodological and empiric orientations, while conversing at the intersection of multispecies ethnography and artful methods.
About MEAM The international MEAMnetwork for Multispecies Ethnography and Artistic Methods was founded by Andrea Petitt, Véronique Servais, Anke Tonnaer and Catrien Notermans in 2022, when an online workshop was held. The same team organised the hybrid inaugural MEAM conference in Liège, July 2023.
THE EDITORS
Andrea Petitt is currently working as a researcher at Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle (LASC) at Université de Liège, Belgium, and is affiliated with the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Andrea has worked on long-term multispecies ethnography research projects based on fieldwork in Botswana, Sweden and Colorado (USA), with shorter stints in Nepal, Canada, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Increasingly, Andrea has worked with, and developed, artistic and ‘artful’ research methods for data collection, analysis and dissemination and has given a number of workshops on the subject for Ph.D. students and Faculty across Sweden and internationally.
Anke Tonnaer is an anthropologist and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Her research interests developed from long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Indigenous Australia, studying the intersection of nature and culture in tourism, to rewilding initiatives and the challenges of multispecies cohabitation and conservation practices in north-west Europe, especially the Netherlands. Her desire to narrate the more-than-human world in alternative ways alongside the rational dominant ways in ecology has brought her to exploring art-based methodology and sensory ethnography. In 2023, Anke worked with Catrien Notermans in an Arts-Science collaboration called TASC (The Art of Science) to design a post-anthropocentric future for the city of Nijmegen.
Véronique Servais is Professor in Anthropology of Communication at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Liège, Belgium. She is interested in the profound bio-social relationships that exists between human beings and animals (and other living beings). She conducted research in the field of ‘animal assisted therapies’ and ‘enchanted encounters’ between human beings and animals. She also studied visitor-primates interactions at a zoological park and dolphin-trainers’ affective communication at a Seaquarium. More recently, she has been doing research on the experience of encountering the forest, using microphenomenological interviews.
Catrien Notermans is an anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Her research line is on social relatedness with and beyond the human and focuses on the intersection of kinship, gender and religion in India, West Africa and Europe. Her most recent projects are on interspecies communication in women’s economic and religious activities in Rajasthan (India); and on storying human-river relatedness in the Netherlands. Her projects are based on visual, sensory and arts-based ethnography which are the methodologies she also teaches at the Anthropology Department. In 2023, Notermans worked together with Anke Tonnaer in an Arts-Science collaboration called TASC (The Art of Science) to design a post-anthropocentric future for the city of Nijmegen.
Natasha Fijn is Director of the Australian National University’s Mongolia Institute. She has been awarded a mid-career ARC Future Fellowship to conduct research on ‘A Multi-species Anthropological Approach to Influenza’ (2022–2026). Natasha wrote a seminal multispecies ethnography based in Mongolia, Living with Herds: Human-animal Coexistence in Mongolia (2011). She has co-edited five books and several journal volumes, including three special issues oriented toward visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, and three engaging with multispecies and sensory anthropology in the journals Inner Asia (2020), The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2020) and Anthropology Today (2023). She recently published a co-edited book with Routledge, Nurturing Alternative Futures: Living with Diversity in a More-than-human World in 2023.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Andrea Petitt, Anke Tonnaer, Véronique Servais, Catrien Notermans and Natasha Fijn
1. WRITING A SONG FOR AIIA. SPECULATIVE FICTION IN AN ART-SCIENCE COLLABORATION Text: Catrien Notermans and Anke Tonnaer Visuals: Marcel van Brakel [essay, poetry and AI visuals]
2.EARTH SWIMMERS / ON CAPTURE: A PRACTICE-BASED ETHNOGRAPHY OF MOLE CATCHING AND FILM MAKING IN NORTH YORKSHIRE. Hermione Spriggs in collaboration with mole catcher Nigel Stock [essay and film]
3.THE SOUNDS OF SNOW:AN EXPLORATION OF HUMAN-SNOW RELATIONS IN ILULISSAT, KALAALLIT NUNAAT Nanna Sandager Kisby [essay, photos and sound]
4.THE ENDURING PRESENCE OF THE EUCALYPTUS TREE: A PHOTO ESSAY Natasha Fijn [photo essay]
5.ARTISTIC CO-DISCOVERY IN MULTISPECIES COLLABORATION Bartram+Deigaard [essay and image composites]
6. ATTENDING TO FIREBUGS: ARTISTIC INVESTIGATIONS FOR RESPECTFUL CORRESPONDENCES Charlotte Dorn [photo essay]
7.FARMING COWS AND WORMS Simone de Boer and Hanna Charlotta Wernersson [essay and multimedia montage]
8. TO TOUCH LIGHTLY IN PASSING Merlijn Huntjens, Nina Willems and Leonie Cornips [essay, photos, sketches and poetry]
9.FREAKS OF NATURE: USING DEEP REFLEXIVITY TO UNDERSTAND TRANSGENICS Lisa Jean Moore [essay and photos]
10. ETHNOGRAPHY OF WORKING COWHORSES: RHYMING SENSORY METHODS Andrea Petitt [essay and poetry]
AFTERWORD Karin Bolender
Forthcoming 1 July 2025 ISBN 978-1-912186-93-8 (PB) – £30 978-1-912186-94-5 (ebook, MEAM multimedia) – Open Access 978-1-912186-95-2 (ebook, standard) – Open Access
Focusing on pastoral and rural communities, this volume highlights ongoing transitions in rural Central Asia. Informed by in-depth case studies from Mongolia, Buryatia and Kyrgyzstan, the essays focus on themes in contemporary pastoralism, including the adaptation and resilience of rural pastoralist livelihoods during and after the Covid-19 pandemic; healing, food and wellbeing, including an examination of rural experiences of wellbeing and the re-invention and revival of traditional foods; and economic relations, including changing spatialisation of labour spurred by mineral extraction, the role of digital media and urban-rural dynamics. The volume presents insights into contemporary human geography and anthropology of the Inner Asian region; highlights the ongoing importance of scholarship on rural places; and offers a critical lens on broader processes of change affecting the region. A collaboration between scholars spanning Japan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, the UK and the USA, the volume showcases work by diverse authors with longstanding engagement in Inner Asia.
This book is Open Access through the support of UKRI.
THE EDITORS
Ariell Ahearn is a human geographer researching the spatial politics of development, environmental governance and mobile pastoralism. She is an academic activist, working closely with rural pastoralists and human rights NGOs in Mongolia to secure legal safeguards for herders facing forced eviction, destruction of cultural and spiritual sites and discrimination.
Gantulga Munkherdene is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. He is Executive Secretary of the Mongolian Anthropological Association. Prior to joining Oxford, he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, National University of Mongolia.
Takahiro Ozaki is a professor at Kagoshima University, Japan, specialising in anthropology and Inner Asian area studies, mainly using quantitative social research as a methodology. He carries out comparative study on changes in pastoral strategies in Outer and Inner Mongolian pastoral societies. His major work is a book on Pastoral Strategies in Modern Mongolia: Comparative Ethnography of Regime Transformation and Natural Disaster.
Troy Sternberg. Extensive travel has inspired Troy’s research on desert regions, environments and people. His Ph.D. focused on pastoral environments in the Gobi Desert. A geographer at the University of Oxford, he continues to explore desert themes through research in Mongolia, Central Asia and across global drylands. His publications, academic exchanges and the Oxford Desert Conference series highlight contemporary changes and challenges in dryland areas.
CONTENTS
Table of contents to follow.
1st October 2025 ISBN 978-1-912186-91-4 (PB) £25 eISBN 978-1-912186-92-1 (Open Access eBook)
The right of access to, and enjoyment of, cultural heritage is enshrined in human rights norms and the devastating effects of armed conflict on cultural heritage are well documented, with the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage having been an integral part of warfare throughout history. Culture now, once again, finds itself on war’s frontline Marking the 70th anniversary of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and in the current context of devastating conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, among others, Heritage at War – Plan and Prepare brings together military, academic,and heritage practitioners’ voices from across the Euro-Atlantic, North Africa and the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific to explore how lessons learned from past experiences of conflict can inform approaches to the safeguarding of cultural heritage today. Emerging from and building upon an international conference held at the V&A Museum in February 2023, the book addresses how the military, the heritage sector and other stakeholders in Human Security can, and must, collaborate to give primacy to people and protect tangible and intangible cultural heritage under attack. The volume’s case studies highlight interdisciplinary efforts to protect heritage in conflict zones, drawing out guidance for those working in the Heritage Sector in these contexts, with specific relevance to those engaged in cultural heritage protection and those working in related interdisciplinary fields. Reviewing the historic relationship between heritage and armed conflict, and offering lessons for present-day practitioners, Heritage at War shows how, in different contexts, heritage can be a catalyst and target of conflict, an obstacle to stabilisation, and yet also a potential vector of peace-building and the return to normality.
Mark Dunkley is a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield University, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and an Associate of the Security Institute. A Field Officer in the British Army Reserve, he has published widely on the relationship between culture and warfare and is co-editor of Cultural Heritage in Modern Conflict (2023).
Anna Tulliach is a Research Fellow in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has published extensively on the safekeeping of museum collections during conflict, art looting and vandalism in World War II, and the museological practices adopted between the two World Wars (1921–44).
Lisa Mol is an expert in heritage stone deterioration, in particular that associated with active combat, at the University of the West of England. She leads funded projects, including ‘Heritage in the Crossfire’ and ‘Partnership for Heritage’, and supports initiatives and colleagues in conflict zones in the documentation and remediation of damage to built heritage.
CONTENTS
Foreword Tristram Hunt, Director – Victoria and Albert Museum
Preface Peter Stone, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Protection and Peace – Newcastle University
Introduction: Heritage at War – Plan and Prepare Mark Dunkley, Anna Tulliach and Lisa Mol
Part I: Learning from the Past
1. Rome and the Second Temple: Early Imperial Roman Attitudes Toward Cultural Heritage During Armed Conflict Kevin Malmquist
2. Lessons from the Past: Land Warfare and Cultural Heritage in World War II Italy: The Role of the MFAA Carlotta Coccoli
3. Cultural Property Protection Issues Past and Present: Current UK Approach and Delivery Roger Curtis and Mark Dunkley
4. Challenges and Practices for Protecting Cultural Property in Armed Conflict: A Case Study of Korea Chang-hun Yang
5. From Scientific iIvestigation to Evidence: Investigating Armed Conflict Damage to Immovable Heritage Lisa Mol
Part II: Preparing for the Present
6. The Hague Convention and Beyond: Cultural Property Protection in the Netherlands Ankie Petersen
7. Peace-time Preparations for a Museum Near the Occupation Line: NGO-led Efforts Manana Tevzadze
8. On the Art Frontline: The Experience of French Conservation Officers in Protecting Cultural Property on Operations Tim Le Berre
9. The Role of NGOs in Rescuing and Promoting Recovery for Cultural Heritage and Cultural Bearers in Times of Crisis and War Amira Sadik Aly
10. Culture in Crisis – Supporting the World’s Cultural Heritage and Communities that Suffer Cultural Loss through Conflict Vernon Rapley
Publication date, 15 October 2024; 200 pp. ISBN 978-1-912186-86-0 (HB) £65 eISBN 978-1-912186-87-7 (eBook)
