The End of the End

The theoretical framework of this book is human ecology, and it builds on a long tradition of ecosystems research in pastoralist societies. What distinguishes it from earlier studies is the author’s rejection of a model of the ecosystem as self-regulating. Instead, the model upon which Terry McCabe builds his argument is environmental disequilibrium. In a seminal paper published in 1988, Ellis and Swift described Turkana pastoralism as an adaptive response to nonhomeostatic ecosystem dynamics, or disequilibrium. At disequilibrium systems are incapable of self-regulation because external physical drivers such as rainfall patterns force their populations into decline well before they are able to attain carrying capacity—the defining feature of homeostatic systems. Sustainable human responses to disequilibrium require extraordinary behavioral plasticity. McCabe explores how the Turkana secure the survival of their herds in the short term by optimizing physical mobility, individual autonomy, and sociopolitical flexibility across a range of environmental contingencies. Among McCabe’s objectives in the volume is to “bring the ecosystem concept back into the analysis of human-environment relationships” (p. 7). The book therefore begins with a background chapter on the South Turkana Ecosystem Project (STEP), perhaps the definitive study of human ecology in a pastoralist system (Little and Leslie 1999). McCabe began his work in Turkana as a STEP researcher. A review of the literature on the ecosystems concept in anthropology and of more recent work on disequilibrium systems follows. Chapter 3 provides a discussion of Turkana social organization that is informed by the environmental and political history of Turkana District. Chapter 4 focuses on the geography and ecology of Ngisonyoka, the territorial subdivision that was the locus of STEP’s and of most of McCabe’s research. In a critical chapter (5) he introduces the central theme of the monograph, the linkage of pastoralism and violence. The odds that a family’s herds will survive over the long term are close to zero. Ultimately, disequilibrium defies all attempts to avert catastrophe (the loss of the herds). Disasters strike—randomly—and require a rapid response if the family is to avert starvation. Under these conditions the single most effective strategy to rebuild the herds is to acquire animals through raiding. This is the fundamental paradox of East African pastoralist societies: the cattle that ensure their survival expose them to raiding and violence. As the women in this study express it, “Cattle bring us to our enemies.” The heart of the book is the next four chapters, in which McCabe chronicles the changing fortunes of four Turkana herders and their families, in response to raiding and disasters, over a 16-year period from 1980 to 1996. The chapters are predominantly ethnographic, as he addresses a second major objective of the book: to reclaim human-ecosystems research by emphasizing its humanity. His analysis describes the actions and reactions of individuals behaving as people rather than as effects in a flow chart. He begins the section with a description of the situation of each of the four herding units in 1980 and traces the movement of their camps in the seasons that follow. He analyzes the reasons herders elected to make particular moves and the results of these decisions in terms of herd growth or decline. He investigates the correspondence between herd dynamics and family formation, development, and disintegration. His data quantify the direct effects of raiding on migratory patterns and herd growth as well as its indirect effects, through these variables, on family well-being and survival. In the next-to-last chapter of the book, McCabe expands his analysis beyond the four focal families to an examination of group movements in four territorial divisions of the Turkana in response to drought in the mid-1980s. In two divisions, raiding was the driving force behind their moves, whereas in the other two sections drought and livestock disease figured most prominently. McCabe considers the ecological, political, and cultural factors implicated in variable effects of drought on different sections. In the final chapter of the book, he considers the implications of his findings for economic development in pastoralist zones. This is a fine and timely book. First, its insistence that the ecosystem be placed front and center in human-environment interrelationships is particularly compelling at this time, when global climate change threatens both biological and cultural diversity. Second, this is the first comprehensive analysis of a pastoral system as a set of highly individualized responses to disequilibrium. Lastly, it documents a pastoralist society immediately before it embarked upon the extended spiral of violence that has engulfed the whole of the East African pastoralist zone and may ultimately spell the end for pastoralism as a viable human adaptation in this region. McCabe’s research overlapped with the widespread adoption of automatic weapons (AK-47s) by herders in northern Kenya and northern Uganda. Between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s, partly as a consequence of the influx of these weapons, the structure of pastoralist violence was transformed from small-scale, opportunistic raiding with spears to carefully orchestrated attacks with modern assault rifles. This book provides us with insight into the factors that compelled the Turkana to adopt automatic weapons: unrelenting drought alternating with floods and livestock epidemics and increasingly savage raids by Pokot herders to the southwest, who