A form of social organization where people and animals move from place to place in search of pasture. The itinerary of movement may take the form of a routine pattern but, as rainfall varies, there may be movement away from this routine.
True nomads have no fixed abode and no sedentary agriculture.
Semi-nomads like some Australian Aborigines wander for some of the year and grow crops for the rest of the year. As international boundaries are increasingly well defined, with border guards, nomadism will decline. Governments try to immobilize nomads as an attempt to bring them in line with more advanced societies for the purposes of taxation as well as to improve their health and literacy. However, many researchers now consider that nomadism represents the best use of fragile ecosystems. A Dictionary of Geography 3.