Mobile Pastoralists: Development Planning and Social Change in Oman

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Based on more than ten years of study among the Harasiis, a Middle Eastern tribe living in the Sultanate of Oman, Mobile Pastoralists is a powerful statement on the importance of grassroots, people-based development and on the inadequacy of conventional responses for such a community by the international aid bureaucracy. Dawn Chatty's work is the product of years of research among the Harasiis, during which she headed an international development project aiming to provide basic social services to the tribe without disturbing their traditional nomadic pastoral way of life. Mobile Pastoralists provides readers with a detailed description of the conception, drafting, implementation, and completion of Chatty's aid project. The book also includes nuanced case studies of individual Harasiis men and women, showing how development efforts and the complex forces of modernization have affected members on a personal level. Supplemented by a group of photographs of the tribe and their environment along with seven detailed regional maps. Mobile Pastoralists is a study with valuable applications for anthropology, cultural geography, development planning and Middle Eastern affairs.

SYNOPSIS

In this book­­the result of years of researching the Harasiis, a tribe living in the Sultanate of Oman­­Chatty examines how development efforts affected tribe members on a personal level, from pastoralism to full-time employment, formal education, and the changing role of women in this new environment.

FROM THE CRITICS

Choice

This stimulating study of a pastoral people coping with change can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in development politics as well as the Middle East in general.

Middle East Journal

This well-written account will be of interest to students of nomadic societies and to all who study the Sultanate of Oman.

Roy Behnke

Analyzes the life history of a development project from conception and design through to implementation and completion. It then assesses the impact of the project on the Omani nomads it was intended to benefit. Dawn Chatty spent ten years researching this subject, and her effort shows. She has produced an ethnography of both a development project and of a pastoral people caught up in rapid social and economic change and a lasting contribution to pastoral, developmental, and Middle Eastern studies.

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