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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Hired Herders and Herd Management in Fulani Pastoralism (Northern Cote d'Ivoire) |
Author: | Bassett, Thomas J. |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | Cahiers d'études africaines |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 133-135 |
Pages: | 147-173 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire |
Subjects: | Fulani agricultural workers animal husbandry Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Labor and Employment |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1994.2045 |
Abstract: | Successful livestock raising is contingent upon the mobility of herds and their capacity to exploit range resources that are temporally and spatially unevenly distributed. The author argues that the flexibility of the Fulani in northern Côte d'Ivoire to adjust to environmental variability is constrained by their productive relations with salaried herders, who play a significant role in Fulani livestock raising and in carrying out opportunistic grazing strategies. Power struggles between herders and Fulani owners over the quality and control of labour adversely affect herding practices. Given their poor working conditions, low incomes, and weak commitment to herd owners, most herders do not devote much care to their work. The most dramatic manifestation of careless herding is the widespread problem of crop damage. Farmer-herder conflicts over this issue have led to the expulsion of Fulani herds from favoured transhumance zones. Thus it is at the juncture of environmental and political processes that one can explain why optimal grazing strategies are not being realized in northern Côte d'Ivoire. The article is based on field research in northern Côte d'Ivoire, including interviews with thirty salaried herders in the Katiali and Sirasso regions in 1992. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French (p. 522-523). |