Current discussions of Africa are dominated by themes of hunger, drought, and environmental devastation that shape the outsider's perception of the continent. Sweeping generalizations are substituted for the empirical data and analysis required for understanding the origins and directions of Africa's contemporary crises. These broad characterizations are perhaps nowhere more apparent than in Africa's semiarid rangelands, described as overgrazed, overpopulated, and overrun by “tradition-bound” herders. By addressing one particular dry region of Africa – northern Kenya – this book argues for the importance of localized data and careful analysis in deconstructing stereotypes about African agriculture and ecology.

The book has been taking shape for several years. It reflects more than a decade of my thinking about social and agrarian change in rural Africa. Although the work presents a detailed case study, it is motivated by a strong conviction that analyses of pastoral change should be placed in a comparative perspective. The first and most important period of field research for this project took place during 1980 and 1981 and resulted in my doctoral dissertation (1983). This was followed by shorter stints of fieldwork in the summers of 1984 and 1985 and the fall of 1986, and by extensive reviews of secondary data and archival materials in Kenya, England, and the United States. My perspective on pastoralism in Africa – and particularly in northern Kenya – has evolved considerably since the early phases of research. The work of 1980–1981 emphasized household economy and regional marketing, while the later phases of research focused on ecology (1984 and 1985) and development (1986).