The issue of collective and multiple property rights in animals, such as cattle, camels or reindeers, among pastoralists has never been a subject of special cross-cultural and comparative study. Focusing on pastoralist societies in East and West Africa, the Far North and Siberia, and the Eurasian steppes, Who Owns the Stock? addresses the issue of property rights and the changes these societies have undergone due to the direct or indirect influence of modernization and globalization processes. The contributors also investigate the interplay of older sets of rights and modern marketing policies; political, ecological and economic effects of collectivization and de-collectivization; the existence of collective and private property in the Soviet Union and its successor states; state taxation and destocking measures in African dry lands; and the effects of quarantine, as well as import and export regulations. The rich and well-researched ethnographic, historical, and economic data in these chapters provides new theoretical insights into the matter of property rights in animals. Anatoly M. Khazanov is Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His publications include Nomads and the Outside World (1st. ed. Cambridge University Press, 1984) and After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Comonwealth of Independent States (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). Gunther Schlee is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. Until 1999, he was a Professor for Social Anthropology at the University of Bielefeld. His publications include Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (Manchester University Press 1989).
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
Introduction
Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee
PART I: TUNDRA AND TAIGA
Chapter 1. ‘I should have some deer, but I don’t remember how many’: Confused Ownership of Reindeer in Chukotka, Russia
Patty A. Gray
Chapter 2. Reindeer, Social Relations and Networks in a Post-Socialist Arctic Community: The Dolgan in Sakha
Aimar Ventsel
Chapter 3. Earmarks, Furmarks and the Community: Multiple Reindeer Property among West Siberian Pastoralists
Florian Stammler
Chapter 4. ‘Trust’ or ‘Domination’? Divergent Perceptions of Property in Animals among the Tozhu and the Tofa of South Siberia
Brian Donahoe
Chapter 5. Milk and Antlers: A System of Partitioned Rights and Multiple Holders of Reindeer in Northern China
Hugh Beach
PART II: THE EURASIAN STEPPE
Chapter 6. Pastoralism and Property Relations in Contemporary Kazakhstan
Anatoly M. Khazanov
Chapter 7. Property Rights in Livestock among Mongolian Pastoralists: Categories of Ownership and Categories of Control
Peter Finke
PART III: AFRICA
Chapter 8. Forms and Modalities of Property Rights in Cattle in a Fulbe Society (Western Burkina Faso)
Youssouf Diallo
Chapter 9. Individualization of Livestock Ownership in Fulbe Family Herds: The Effects of Pastoral Intensification and Islamic Renewal in Northern Cameroon
Mark Moritz
Chapter 10. From Cultural Property to Market Goods: Changes in the Economic Strategies and Herd Management Rationales of Agro-Pastoral Fulbe in North West Cameroon
Michaela Pelican
Chapter 11. Fulbe Pastoralists and the Changing Property Relations in Northern Ghana
Steve Tonah
Chapter 12. Multiple Rights in Animals: An East African Overview
Günther Schlee
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index
Anatoly M. Khazanov is Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His publications include Nomads and the Outside World (1st. ed. Cambridge University Press, 1984) and After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Comonwealth of Independent States (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).
Günther Schlee is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. Until 1999, he was a Professor for Social Anthropology at the University of Bielefeld. His publications include Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (Manchester University Press 1989).
"This volume offers a rich and insightful look into the lives of people whose notions of property can complicate overly simplistic assertions of the naturalness or inevitability of private property regimes that often serve the interests of the globally powerful. At the same time, it challenges perspectives that would deny the growing import and relevance of access to markets and to just allocation of property for individuals across cultures and places. In this regard, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to both specialist and general readers with an interest in the politics, economics and ecologies of property, private and otherwise."
– The Toronto Review of Books