At the beginning of the nineteenth century nomads held considerable power in Iran and the Ottoman Empire. In Ottoman lands, westernizing reforms in landholding and local administration undermined tribal power and led to increasing sedentarization. In Iran, tribes and nomads remained central to the military, and retained power through World War I. In both states, the government controlled nomads by incorporating tribal leadership into government structure. New concepts of nationalism portrayed nomads as backwards and alien. World War I and the Constitutional Revolution of Iran brought an upsurge of nomad activity, but from the 1930s the Mandate powers, the Turkish Republic, and the Pahlavi dynasty of Iran worked actively to suppress nomadism. Even more important was the revolution in transportation and weaponry. The steamship, telegraph and railway replaced many caravan routes, destroying the market for camels. The machine gun and airplane made cavalry obsolete, while the truck ended the usefulness of caravans and the need for nomad guards over trade routes. Thus, nomads lost much of their usefulness to the state.

This chapter challenges a key precondition for many sustaining commons institutions - tight-knit communities. It argues that the gradual transformation of traditional nomadic societies into modern urban societies reflects a major change that has weakened the ability of kinship relations to serve as a social incentive to support sustainable common property regimes resulting in the fostering of a modern urban tragedy of the commons.

The chapter illuminates this argument by analyzing theories of social evolution and examining closely the urbanization processes undergone by Bedouin society in Israel, in which tight kinship relations traditionally supported sustainable management of the commons. The urbanization of Bedouin society challenged this traditional regime and triggered the evolution of private urban-style property units, on the one hand, and modern tragedies of the commons, on the other.

The chapter raises the question whether societies in which kinship ties have become less powerful can still produce strong enough incentives for collaboration.