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Cattle Marketing and Pastoral Conservatism: Karamoja District, Uganda, 1948-1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Michael D. Quam
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Extract

Non-western peoples are often portrayed as extremely conservative, tradition-bound, and either apathetic or hostile toward change agents and their efforts. This picture of the conservative peasant appears in both social scientific analyses and journalistic accounts, and springs in part from the frustrations that many external change agents have felt when confronted with what seemed to be implacable resistance.

In the African context, particularly in East Africa, the “conservative native” par excellence has been the pastoralist. Ogling tourists are fascinated by the “noble savagery” of the Maasai, the Karimojong, and the Samburu, while African governments pass laws prohibiting the carrying of spears, requiring school attendance, banning transhumance, setting minimum quotas for livestock sales, establishing destocking policies and programs, and demanding increased agricultural production.

From the government's point of view, this pastoral conservatism has been particularly annoying and costly in its manifestations in economic behavior. Pastoralists are said to be emotionally attached to their livestock to a degree that makes it impossible for them to operate as rational economic actors. They are accused of being both lazy and spend-thrifts. A European economist, who was chiefly responsible for the creation of a development plan for Karamoja District, Uganda, told me that the Karimojong “don't have the sagacity of a squirrel.”

Countering this stereotyping is a growing awareness among some social scientists that the label of “conservatism” applied by analysts is myopic and ethnocentric (Ortiz, 1971) or, in the case of some officials, self-serving (Erasmus, 1968).

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 1978 , pp. 49 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1978

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