I

Let’s just say that governments and their donors are quite willing to distinguish pastoralists from pastoralism when their saving pastoralists means destroying the ways of pastoralism, e.g., sedentarize these herders as a way of bringing them more fully into modernity’s fruits of development.

But what are the policy and management implications in insisting that the primary unit and level of analysis are in fact systems/societies of pastoralism, not their “individuals”? For those who see older forms of pastoralism fast disappearing into history, this question seems moot. It is not, however, for those who still find a variety of pastoralisms not only in the past but now as well. I include myself in the latter group.

For me, what is underway in “pastoralism” is complex enough for multiple interpretations. Some of these are more policy and management relevant than others, e.g., the work by Ian Scoones and his PASTRES colleagues on a new narrative for pastoralism and its implications for other fields such as agrarian studies (see “Rethinking agrarian studies from a pastoralist perspective” in https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2020.1802249#d1e1561).

My own work has been to suggest a “critical infrastructure” approach to understanding the policy and management implications of contemporary pastoralisms. But, to repeat, today’s complexities open up other ways of reframing pastoralism collectively rather than individually. Below are four other “system-level” illustrations of reframing and their policy and management relevance (culled from previous blog entries with full references). Warning: I’ve chosen to be provocative in my selection.

II

1. Scenes, not issues. Instead of talking about grazing practices, herd mobility, shortage of herder amenities, overall poor living conditions for herders and their marginal social status, think of their practices as performance, their mobility and herding itineraries as travel, their scant amenities as the role of, say, everyday music while herding, and all that poor or picturesque herder clothing as, well, fashion in its own right. To do so means we end up describing “scenes” more than “issues”. As in, e.g., the frequently narrativized “downtown” scenes for the arts, music and lifestyle alternatives, where that “alternative” carries a quite different valence that the “marginal” of many pastoralism studies.

In shifting the policy and management focus from issues to scenes, we are explicitly shifting to what have been called frictional, improvisational contact zones that everyday pastoralism shares with other scenes organized around (alternative) performances, travel, music and fashion. That this analytic shift complicates official and academic policy narratives about pastoralism is a welcome one in my view. How so?

If we stick with the conventional view of herders as their own unit and level of analysis, we’ve been trained to think of informal contact zones as the decreasing space between two blades of modernity’s scissors: One blade is everyday pastoralism commodified by really-existing markets and state interventions; the other blade is everyday pastoralism disciplined into categories from really-existing officials, consultants, and social scientists.

The contact zones I am talking about, however, are a response to the scissors cutting one way only. Whether the zones are formal or informal is not the point. Pastoralism is, to use the phrase, an “infrastructural form.” It is a scene-making device that is exceptionally adept at rendering all that unromantic, unsentimental dust and sand and dirt in photos of herds and herders alive with working relations and affordances–a shared repertoire of practices and atmospheres–that necessarily extend beyond market and state. (One of the great virtues in looking at pastoralist practices at the event and situation level is that policy scenes can turn just as center-stage as discrete policy issues or processes.)

2. Mobility as shifts in interconnectivity. Think of herd/er mobility as the interconnections and their different configurations managed spatially and temporally by herders for what are still called the factors of livestock production (land, water, labor). Livestock “moving between different sites with variable forage resources within a mosaic of harvested crop fields, open pastures and thickets” necessarily refers to more than the uni-directional interconnection of livestock and herders moving from a ‘here’ to a ‘there.’ Shifts in reciprocal, mediated and pooled interconnectivity are also being managed as part and parcel of more granular, fine-grained mobility.

To expand: Livestock move sequentially from here to there, but their inter-relationships with sites along the way are anything but serially uni-directional. Reciprocal (bi-directional) relationships are also much discussed in the literature (the stubble for livestock, the manure for the crop field). Extensively-raised livestock fattened up at special sites just before sale or slaughter are examples of a mediated interconnection between the herders and that off-take. The grazing itinerary of moving livestock across time and space is a kind of pooled interconnectivity guiding the herders and herds involved. More, shifts in configurations are a centerpiece of mobility discussions in the literature, e.g., improvising and responding opportunistically, as livestock and herders move along the itinerary, if there is one.

I want to suggest that “land mosaics” are more than primarily a set of property relations, or a set of different species in a habitat, or as a landscape with heterogeneous habitats. Practices associated with mobility as shifting interconnectivities over time and space are to my mind central. Practically, the notion of mosaic complexifies analysis. Because it is now “mobility with respect to the mosaic(s) of interest,” not just: “mobility as a response to task environment variability.” So what? The mosaic is the intervening template–if you will, the scenes–for understanding interconnected exogenous and endogenous variabilities, now more granular with respect to practices than the critics’ usual suspects of climate, prices, and conflict.

3. The methodological problem of “pastoralists” as a social figure.

We consider a timeless model of a common property resource (CPR) in which N herdsmen are able to graze their cattle. The model has been constructed deliberately along orthodox economics lines. . . .We begin with a timeless world. Herdsmen are indexed by i (i = 1, 2, …, N). Cattle are private property. The grazing field is taken to be a village pasture. Its size is S. Cattle intermingle while grazing, so on average the animals consume the same amount of grass. If X is the size of the herd in the pasture, total output – of milk – is H(X, S), where H is taken to be constant returns to scale in X and S.Dasgupta, P. (2021), The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. London: HM Treasury: 221 (internal footnotes deleted)

After such bloodless abstractions, it’s a wonder even more readers don’t rush to anthropology for descriptions of really-existing pastoralists and their herding practices.

The methodological problem, though, remains: It’s pastoralists who are interviewed and quoted, not societies and systems. The policy-relevant compromise is to treat the pastoralists studied as one or more social figures, a composite assembled to represent the typical features of pastoralists who have been studied (or not).

A problem arises because use of social figures extends significantly beyond the confines of anthropology and the social sciences. Social figures “potentially have all the characteristics which would be considered character description in literary studies,” notes a cultural sociologist, adding, “unlike ideal types, for example, which are written with a clear heuristic goal in a scientific context, social figures can also appear in public debate or be described in literary texts.”

So what? “For theorizing, this means. . .attention must be paid to a good figurative description: Is the figurative description vivid, descriptive and, as a figure, internally consistent? Does it accurately reflect the social context to which it refers? Therefore, the criteria to assess quality in theorizing must be complemented by literary criteria.”

And one of those literary conventions helps explain why the social figure of pastoralists today is frequently compared and contrasted to the social figure of pastoralists in the past. “[T]here are often antecedent figures for a social figure. . .The current social figure can then be understood as an update of older social figures.”

A small matter, you might think, and easily chalked up to “this is the way we do longitudinal analysis.” It is not, however, a slight issue methodologically, when comparing your pastoralist informants today with the social figure of pastoralists in the past ends up identifying “differences” that are more about evaluative criteria than about comparative empirics. Beware any benchmark of “pre-capitalist” pastoralism!

4. When government’s recurrent cost budget is the informal sector. Humor me and start with current debates over periodizing World Wars I and II. It’s one thing to adopt the conventional periodization of the latter as 1939 – 1945. It is another matter to read in detail how 1931 – 1953 was a protracted period of conflicts and wars unfolding into and from a central paroxysm (primarily but not exclusively) in Europe and the Pacific.

In the latter perspective, the December 1941 – September 1945 paroxysm, with carnage across multiple front-lines, and military engagements both in Europe and the Pacific, were embedded in a longer series of large regional wars. These in turn were less preludes than unfolding processes worldwide. (Think: Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the late 1940s Dutch war in Indonesia, the French war in Indochina from the late 1940s through early 1950s, and the Korean War.)

Now, reframe the most recent extended East Africa drought as one such paroxysm, with drought-related conflicts leading up to and following from it. Current emergency management terminology about this or that “longer-term recovery” are considerably problematic when the longer term is one drought unfolding into another and then over again. Immediate emergency response would look considerably less proactive when embedded in a process of recurring response always before the next disaster.

What does this mean practically? One major follow-on is giving renewed attention to government budgets for their recurrent operations in dryland communities. Or more pointedly, you’re looking at the recurrent cost crises of East Africa governments–which, to my mind, far too few critics analyze when fixated on failures of capital development projects and programs for pastoralists (as individuals and as systems).

My view is that you have to have recurrent operating budgets already in place in order to get recurring drought response and recovery more effective on the ground over time. This means opening up our understanding of “government’s recurrent cost budget.” Networks and communities of pastoralist households already on the ground are the de facto recurrent budget.

More, this “informal sector as recurrent budget” centers around the fact that when acting like other networks of reliability managers, these teams or groups of pastoralists give ongoing priority to the real-time prevention of other disasters from happening along the way and the need for their improvisational behavior to do that.

III

“But that’s not pastoralism!,” you insist–and you may be right as far as you go.

My position is we need to go further. Despite “the mountains of research evidence about contemporary pastoralists,” to be told what not to do only increases uncertainty in the absence of recommendations for doing what instead. That is why the drive to more counternarratives, rather than more critiques, is so important.

Indeed, the second anyone recommends “interventions should heed African pastoralists’ understanding of environmental change and uncertainty and support their approach to dealing with these,” there are always those who immediately problematize by asking “which pastoralists and which approaches are we to listen to?” and “how do we listen to them without instrumentalizing those worldviews?”

In these and other ways, the researching of “pastoralists” can reduce to bearing witness, professions of solidarity with those totalized as victims, and calls for Big-T transformations without much detail. This too can be policy relevant in the sense of, say, the Black Sash vigils by white women in the mid-1950’s apartheid South Africa.

The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I felt compelled to refuse the request of Tsar Peter the Great that they try out the former’s new execution gallows on one of their own men. It’s also recorded that Phalaris, 6th century BCE tyrant in Sicily ordered the inventor Perillus to design a huge bronze bull in which to roast the former’s victims alive. Their screams would, that tyrant hoped, sound just like the bellows of a bull. Phalaris was so impressed with the contraption that his first victim was Perillus.

Civilization, it seems, would be one where Friedrich Wilhelm I, Peter the Great, Phalaris, and all the other tyrants end in their own contraptions. And yet: It’s hardly helpful to know that modern cosmology–string theory plus black holes–implies there is a planet out there, just like this one in virtually every way, save that its US President is being water-boarded for crimes against humanity.

—Latest blog entries include

**”Radical political complexities that still matter: three examples“

—When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for recasting policy and management in the Anthropocene can be found at

When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for Recasting Policy and Management in the Anthropocene (links to the Guide and schematic)

–Those interested in newly updated extensions of the Guide, please see:

**”Sourcing new ideas from the humanities, fine arts, and other media for complex policy analysis and management (newly added)“

**”17 examples on how genre differences affect the structure and substance of policy and management [newly added]” structure-and-substance-of-policy-and-management-last-newly-added/

**”Instead of “differentiated by gender, race and class,” why not “differentiated by heterogeneity and complexity”? Ten examples of racism, class, capitalism, inequalities, border controls, authoritarianism, COVID and more”

**”New method matters in reframing policy and management (recently added)”

**”Emerging counternarratives on: migrants, border controls, digital networks, remittances, child labor, COVID’s impact (Africa and Europe), and global neoliberalism”

—Other major new reads:

**”The ‘future’ in HRO Studies: the example of networked reliability”

**”The siloing of approaches to discourse and narrative analyses in public policy“

**”A National Academy of Reliable Infrastructure Management”

**”‘Learning discrepantly’ for policy & management (updated and expanded)“

**”The value added from rethinking ‘prediction’ and ‘imagination’ in more granular terms“

**”I understand why others feel compelled to defend the humanities and arts. But their direct relevance for public policy and management has always been obvious.”

**”The Centrality of Restoration Resilience Across Interconnected Critical Infrastructures for Emergency Management: A Framework and Key Implications”

—Key blog entries on livestock herders, pastoralists and pastoralisms are:

**”If not corpse-pastoralism, then what are we seeing? Four other suggestions and key upshot for re-seeing what we thought we knew.“

**”Time to think more radically: three new policy narratives extremely different from current positions in pastoralist development”

**”Working pastoralism as a scene-making infrastructure“

**”Other fresh perspectives on pastoralists and pastoralism: 17 brief cases (last newly added)”

**”A ‘reliability-seeking economics in pastoralist development”

**”Twelve new extensions of “pastoralists as reliability professionals” and “pastoralism as a critical infrastructure”

**”First complicate those for-or-against-pastoralism arguments and then see the policy relevance: four brief examples”

—Key blog entries on updating Narrative Policy Analysis are:

**”Updating NARRATIVE POLICY ANALYSIS (1994)“

**”Narrative policy analysis: then, now and ahead”

**”The policy relevance of Michel Riffaterre and Algirdas Greimas: the example of global climate change (GCC)”

If a researcher only ever studies one political context, then the horizons of explanation are constrained because of selection bias. If one only studies the United States, without comparison to other countries, then this leads to a sample selection bias where one cannot answer why the United States has comparatively high poverty. To paraphrase [sociologist and political scientist, Seymour Martin Lipset], poverty scholars who only know one country, know no country.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10446494/

Radicalism is plural because of the many different practices and, accordingly, the benchmarks are comparative. So too today’s complexities make comparative radicalism a living force.

I.

The notebooks of Victor Serge, revolutionary, novelist and journalist, provide this example of how the radicals we need differ from the ones we are often stuck with:

13 September 1944. Second meeting of the Commission of independent socialists to study the political document drafted by Marceau Pivert, Gironella and Wilebaldo Solano. It is a kind of rudimentary Communist Manifesto, rehashing all the old phrases of that genre. I criticize it harshly—thinking that texts of this sort can do nothing but discredit the handful of men who take responsibility for them. They listen to me with interest and silent resentment. . .I say that the state has changed its nature and is no longer the armed body of one class for the domination of another, as Engels had it, with the exception of the totalitarian regimes; the modern state is also the organization of communications, of schools, of public health, etc. Indignation of Pivert, Gironella, Jean Malaquais: for a moment, I sense that they might cry treason! . . . .

My theses: that this war differs profoundly from that of 1914–18, of which it is the successor, and that it notably involves aspects of an international civil war (strong objections from Pivert). That the economic structure of the world has changed, traditional capitalism giving way to a planned economy, thus with a collectivist bent, which could be that of monopolies, of totalitarian parties—or of democracies of a new type, if they succeeded in coming into being (strong objections from Pivert). That the defeats of European socialism are not solely attributable to the inadequacy of leaders, although that is of some significance, but can be better explained in terms of the decline of the working class and of socialism as a result of modern technology—chronic unemployment, declassing of the jobless, tremendous increase in the productive capacity of machines, with less human labour required; greater influence of technicians. (Pivert rejects the entirety of these views without attempting to refute them; to speak of the weakening of the working class as a class appears sacrilegious to all; what can I do if it is the truth? A good Old Bolshevik, one of those who expelled and imprisoned us only to go before the firing squads themselves, would have given me this answer: there is no truth that can prevail over the interests of the party.)

That we are being carried along by the current of an immense revolution, but that the Russian Revolution will not repeat itself except in episodes of secondary importance. That socialism must renounce all ideas of dictatorship and of working-class hegemony and make itself the representative of the great masses among whom a socialistic consciousness is germinating, obscure and without doctrinal jargon. That the essential thing for the immediate future will be the restoration of traditional democratic rights, precondition for the rebirth of the workers’ and socialist movement; that we must try to break out of the void we are now in, to seek out the support and sympathy of the democratic masses wherever they are, make ourselves understood by them, bring our ideas up to date. That Stalinism, which has formed and nurtured armed resistance movements in France, Yugoslavia, Greece and elsewhere, constitutes the worst danger, the mortal danger that we would be crazy to claim we can face alone. That the years to come will be ones of confused struggles in which the socialist movement can do no more than re-establish itself—if it does not commit suicide through insurrectional demagogy. That it should seek influence on the terrain of democracy, in the Constituent Assemblies and elsewhere, accepting compromise in an intransigent spirit. That if the socialist left mires itself in an extremism bereft of influence, with a language barely intelligible to people and an out-dated ideology dating from 1920, the Stalinists will confect a fake socialism, subtle and without scruple, which might very well prevail.

No matter what I say, agreement is impossible, and the discussion difficult and sterile. Those who possess inner flexibility will change under the cudgel-blows of events; the others will vegetate in groupuscules on the margins of life (which offers many satisfactions) or will be crushed.

(Available online from the New Left Review at https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii82/articles/victor-serge-mexican-notebooks-1940-1947)

II

From the jurist and essayist, Carlos Moreno, re: political freedom, repression and humanitarianism:

The first proposition must be stated without qualification: the GDR had elements of an authoritarian state. It restricted political pluralism, controlled the press, restricted freedom of movement, imprisoned political opponents, and built a security apparatus that penetrated deeply into East German society. Chilean refugees [to East Germany] do not alter these facts, and the humanitarian assistance provided to them should not be used to rehabilitate the East German political system; to argue otherwise would be to replace one mythology with another. The GDR was not a democratic alternative to Pinochet’s Chile. But this is usually where the conventional Cold War narrative stops, treating that classification as though it explained everything that followed. It does not.

The second proposition matters equally: the GDR provided genuine protection to Chileans persecuted by the Pinochet dictatorship. For some, that protection was the difference between imprisonment and freedom, between torture and safety, between disappearance and survival; Carlos Altamirano’s experience makes the point with unusual clarity. Whatever the ideological calculations behind it, East German officials helped a major Chilean political leader escape a dictatorship that wanted him captured, and the fact that the GDR had political motives does not make the rescue unreal. States rarely act for one reason; humanitarianism and strategy are not mutually exclusive; a government can use a refugee’s story for propaganda while simultaneously saving the refugee’s life. To deny either fact because of the other is equally reductive. Nieves Ayress’s experience makes a related point with a different kind of clarity, because in her case there was nothing left to rescue, only someone left to treat; and the GDR treated her, hospitalized her, gave her work and a functioning life, and did not, by her own account, subject her to the surveillance some of her compatriots experienced. Altamirano’s case proves the GDR was capable of protection. Ayress’s case proves something logically prior to protection and easily overlooked: that the same state was also capable, once protection had already failed elsewhere, of care.

This is perhaps the central argument of the paper: the GDR’s solidarity with Chile was neither purely humanitarian nor merely cynical. It was political and human at once. The state had strategic reasons to oppose Pinochet, and the coup gave East Germany an opportunity to demonstrate its anti-imperialist credentials, strengthen its international propaganda, and define its own legitimacy against a violent alternative. All of this is true; and it is also true that East Germans and Chileans formed real friendships, that Chileans built real lives in East Germany, that East German institutions provided real education, employment, medical care, housing, and political space, and that many Chileans remembered the GDR not as an abstraction but as the place where they had survived. The historian’s task is not to decide which of these realities was the “real” one. It is to understand how they existed simultaneously; and to remember, in doing so, that one of these authoritarian states killed and disappeared thousands of its opponents while the other jailed and surveilled dissidents without approaching that scale of lethal violence. Proportion is not a minor footnote to this argument. It is close to the argument’s whole point. . . .

There is a temptation to resolve the contradiction at the heart of this history rather than sit with it. Was the GDR a refuge or a dictatorship? Both. Was its solidarity genuine or propagandistic? Both. Were Chileans grateful to the GDR? Many were. Did some become critical of it? Certainly. Did East German authorities monitor the people they had sheltered? The archival record, once fully assembled, can help answer the extent and character of that surveillance; this remains the paper’s most important piece of unfinished work. Did that surveillance erase the meaning of the refuge? No. Did the refuge erase the authoritarian nature of the state? No. The contradiction is not a problem for historians to solve; it is the historical phenomenon that needs explaining, and Chile provides a useful case precisely because it places two authoritarian systems beside one another without making them equivalent. Political freedom is not distributed neatly between opposing geopolitical camps. Neither is political repression, and neither, for that matter, is humanitarianism.

Carlos Moreno (2026), “From Allende to Honecker: Chilean Exile, Internationalism, and the Cold War -The Stories of Carlos Altamirano and Nieves Ayress” (August 07, 2026). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7501038 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7501038 (my bold)

III

From the conclusion of yet another biting critique of capitalism:

If public and open markets are no longer the main mechanism of distribution of goods and services, if the allocation of financial resources is subject to the idiosyncratic whims of a few gargantuan corporations, if Big Tech companies acquire a significant part of their capital for free because consumers do not own their data – that is, if rent has displaced profit in our political economies – then indeed, are we still speaking of capitalism?. . .That is, [this means] facing up with the fact that along with neoliberalism, the familiar toolbox of progressive politics (e.g. taxation, regulation and mobilisation), has also become passé – or at least inadequate for the challenges that lie ahead. Perhaps we must think and act more radically.

https://www.postneoliberalism.org/articles/what-comes-after-neoliberalism-big-tech-and-asset-managers-as-the-new-rentiers/

Or we just ignore such conclusions. There is no “perhaps” when it comes to demanding details that differ case-by-case, for our next steps ahead.

The first proposition must be stated without qualification: the GDR had elements of an authoritarian state. It restricted political pluralism, controlled the press, restricted freedom of movement, imprisoned political opponents, and built a security apparatus that penetrated deeply into East German society. Chilean refugees [to East Germany] do not alter these facts, and the humanitarian assistance provided to them should not be used to rehabilitate the East German political system; to argue otherwise would be to replace one mythology with another. The GDR was not a democratic alternative to Pinochet’s Chile. But this is usually where the conventional Cold War narrative stops, treating that classification as though it explained everything that followed. It does not.

The second proposition matters equally: the GDR provided genuine protection to Chileans persecuted by the Pinochet dictatorship. For some, that protection was the difference between imprisonment and freedom, between torture and safety, between disappearance and survival; Carlos Altamirano’s experience makes the point with unusual clarity. Whatever the ideological calculations behind it, East German officials helped a major Chilean political leader escape a dictatorship that wanted him captured, and the fact that the GDR had political motives does not make the rescue unreal. States rarely act for one reason; humanitarianism and strategy are not mutually exclusive; a government can use a refugee’s story for propaganda while simultaneously saving the refugee’s life. To deny either fact because of the other is equally reductive. Nieves Ayress’s experience makes a related point with a different kind of clarity, because in her case there was nothing left to rescue, only someone left to treat; and the GDR treated her, hospitalized her, gave her work and a functioning life, and did not, by her own account, subject her to the surveillance some of her compatriots experienced. Altamirano’s case proves the GDR was capable of protection. Ayress’s case proves something logically prior to protection and easily overlooked: that the same state was also capable, once protection had already failed elsewhere, of care.

This is perhaps the central argument of the paper: the GDR’s solidarity with Chile was neither purely humanitarian nor merely cynical. It was political and human at once. The state had strategic reasons to oppose Pinochet, and the coup gave East Germany an opportunity to demonstrate its anti-imperialist credentials, strengthen its international propaganda, and define its own legitimacy against a violent alternative. All of this is true; and it is also true that East Germans and Chileans formed real friendships, that Chileans built real lives in East Germany, that East German institutions provided real education, employment, medical care, housing, and political space, and that many Chileans remembered the GDR not as an abstraction but as the place where they had survived. The historian’s task is not to decide which of these realities was the “real” one. It is to understand how they existed simultaneously; and to remember, in doing so, that one of these authoritarian states killed and disappeared thousands of its opponents while the other jailed and surveilled dissidents without approaching that scale of lethal violence. Proportion is not a minor footnote to this argument. It is close to the argument’s whole point. . . .

There is a temptation to resolve the contradiction at the heart of this history rather than sit with it. Was the GDR a refuge or a dictatorship? Both. Was its solidarity genuine or propagandistic? Both. Were Chileans grateful to the GDR? Many were. Did some become critical of it? Certainly. Did East German authorities monitor the people they had sheltered? The archival record, once fully assembled, can help answer the extent and character of that surveillance; this remains the paper’s most important piece of unfinished work. Did that surveillance erase the meaning of the refuge? No. Did the refuge erase the authoritarian nature of the state? No. The contradiction is not a problem for historians to solve; it is the historical phenomenon that needs explaining, and Chile provides a useful case precisely because it places two authoritarian systems beside one another without making them equivalent. Political freedom is not distributed neatly between opposing geopolitical camps. Neither is political repression, and neither, for that matter, is humanitarianism.

Carlos Moreno (2026), “From Allende to Honecker: Chilean Exile, Internationalism, and the Cold War -The Stories of Carlos Altamirano and Nieves Ayress” (August 07, 2026). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7501038 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7501038 (my bold)

From the notebooks of Victor Serge, the revolutionary, novelist and journalist:

13 September 1944. Second meeting of the Commission of independent socialists to study the political document drafted by Marceau Pivert, Gironella and Wilebaldo Solano. It is a kind of rudimentary Communist Manifesto, rehashing all the old phrases of that genre. I criticize it harshly—thinking that texts of this sort can do nothing but discredit the handful of men who take responsibility for them. They listen to me with interest and silent resentment. I say that we cannot improvise such documents today, as all terms, all ideas are being subject to revision in face of new realities, in the midst of a raging tempest. A confused and rather painful discussion. In passing, I said that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Socialist Party (PSOP) dissolved at the beginning of the war; Marceau Pivert, visibly irate, insists that it ‘exists and is a force’ and declares himself better informed than I, he who left France before the war. I argue that it is false to write that the working class, in bourgeois democracies, has only its chains to lose;that it enjoys—formerly enjoyed, in Europe—a real well-being and meaningful freedoms. Pivert speaks of mass malnutrition in France before the war! I say that the state has changed its nature and is no longer the armed body of one class for the domination of another, as Engels had it, with the exception of the totalitarian regimes; the modern state is also the organization of communications, of schools, of public health, etc. Indignation of Pivert, Gironella, Jean Malaquais: for a moment, I sense that they might cry treason!

I point out dim-witted naiveties in the text like ‘the complete organization of the world’; comical incoherences such as the affirmation of the ‘full sovereignty’ of all the colonial peoples, the rejection of ‘any hypocritical notion of guardianship towards them’, and the suggestion of providing them with ‘economic, moral and military aid’. They do not say much in response but I can see that I offended those sentiments which can only express themselves in this poor phraseology. (My thesis: that the emancipation of the colonial peoples can only be the result of a close collaboration with the industrial nations—the metropoles—socially reorganized, marching towards greater justice and humanity . . . greeted coldly without discussion). Narcís Molins i Fabregàs says that ‘we want to get down to action’ and not merely to ‘engage in discussions that are academic even if very interesting.’ What action, if not that of the typewriter; and ideas, accurate views, are they not also in a certain sense actions?

Malaquais finally reproaches me for not speaking of ‘the proletariat and the dictatorship of the proletariat’! (When did he ever speak of it himself? Another story.) At one point in the discussion, I felt exactly as I did in a Russian party cell in 1927, when we refuted, against all the clamour, the already blood-stained stupidities of ‘socialism in one country’ and denounced the Thermidor that was then unfolding. . .The psychological phenomenon of the Politburo repeats itself ad infinitum. At root: idealists caught by the sclerosis of doctrines, of circumstances, and dominated by their convictions and their emotional attachments, in short by fanaticism. In such conditions, those who trouble the inner security of others appear as loathsome heretics. Molins i Fabregàs, Gorkín, Pivert reproach me for putting in doubt convictions which they do not doubt themselves, hence their feeling of superiority.

The core of the debate, independent of the poor quality of the proposed [manifesto] text:

Their extremely optimistic and schematic conviction is that the Russian Revolution is going to repeat itself shortly in Europe. ‘The workers will occupy the factories’ (Pivert), they will take power (Gironella), then the European revolution will form a socialist Federation. New cadres will form themselves everywhere, the underground resistance movements already show the power of the masses. The Spaniards think they will be in Spain in six months and at the head of great movements. Pivert: ‘The PSOP continues!’ and he takes out a newspaper clipping which reports that the Lyons comrades’ underground paper has called for ‘the formation of a red army’ in France, which is the height of absurdity: to do such a thing when powerless, at the risk of one’s life, is to play into the hands of the reactionaries and the Stalinists.

My theses: that this war differs profoundly from that of 1914–18, of which it is the successor, and that it notably involves aspects of an international civil war (strong objections from Pivert). That the economic structure of the world has changed, traditional capitalism giving way to a planned economy, thus with a collectivist bent, which could be that of monopolies, of totalitarian parties—or of democracies of a new type, if they succeeded in coming into being (strong objections from Pivert). That the defeats of European socialism are not solely attributable to the inadequacy of leaders, although that is of some significance, but can be better explained in terms of the decline of the working class and of socialism as a result of modern technology—chronic unemployment, declassing of the jobless, tremendous increase in the productive capacity of machines, with less human labour required; greater influence of technicians. (Pivert rejects the entirety of these views without attempting to refute them; to speak of the weakening of the working class as a class appears sacrilegious to all; what can I do if it is the truth? A good Old Bolshevik, one of those who expelled and imprisoned us only to go before the firing squads themselves, would have given me this answer: there is no truth that
can prevail over the interests of the party.)

That we are being carried along by the current of an immense revolution, but that the Russian Revolution will not repeat itself except in episodes of secondary importance. That socialism must renounce all ideas of dictatorship and of working-class hegemony and make itself the representative of the great masses among whom a socialistic consciousness is germinating, obscure and without doctrinal jargon. That the essential thing for the immediate future will be the restoration of traditional democratic rights, precondition for the rebirth of the workers’ and socialist movement; that we must try to break out of the void we are now in, to seek out the support and sympathy of the democratic masses wherever they are, make ourselves understood by them, bring our ideas up to date. That Stalinism, which has formed and nurtured armed resistance movements in France, Yugoslavia, Greece and elsewhere, constitutes the worst danger, the mortal danger that we would be crazy to claim we can face alone. That the years to come will be ones of confused struggles in which the socialist movement can do no more than re-establish itself—if it does not commit suicide through insurrectional demagogy. That it should seek influence on the terrain of democracy, in the Constituent Assemblies and elsewhere, accepting compromise in an intransigent spirit. That if the socialist left mires itself in an extremism bereft of influence, with a language barely intelligible to people and an out-dated ideology dating from 1920, the Stalinists will confect a fake socialism, subtle and without scruple, which might very well prevail.

No matter what I say, agreement is impossible, and the discussion difficult and sterile. Those who possess inner flexibility will change under the cudgel-blows of events; the others will vegetate in groupuscules on the margins of life (which offers many satisfactions) or will be crushed.

(accessed online at https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii82/articles/victor-serge-mexican-notebooks-1940-1947)

I

It’s common to think of frustration as distinctly personal and individual–at least until explaining why you and others cause my frustrations. At that point, frustrations aren’t just interpersonal; they may well be the basis for our interaction. As the psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips, and others underscore, you know you’re connected precisely because it’s frustrating (e.g., Phillips 2012).

Take a random walk through the literature and you will find explicit references to: frustrated pastoralists and communities (Nori 2022, passim); frustrated politicians in pastoralist areas (Allouche et al 2025, p.16); security forces frustrated by pastoralists (Casola 2022, p. 25); pastoralists frustrated by security forces (Scott-Villiers et al 2025, p. 29); pastoralists frustrated with researchers (Bell et al 2025, p.10/17), and frustrated researchers in pastoralist areas (Semplici et al 2024, p. 13). There are also frustrated younger men in pastoralist Kenya and their frustrated elders (Muneri 2024, passim; Hazama 2023, p. 267), along with frustrated—well, you get the picture.

Pastoralists are frustrated, researchers are frustrated, NGO staff are frustrated, and so too government officials. To repeat, that is how they know they’re interconnected: They frustrate others and others frustrate them.

So what? Now, here is where things get interesting from a pastoralist development perspective!

II

To start with, frustration highlights what’s missing in notions of “resilience in the face of uncertainty.” Handling their joint frustrations is what pastoralists, NGO staff, researchers, and government officials are to do between bouncing back and bouncing forward.

This is why it’s such a big issue to determine just with whom pastoralists are in fact interacting. Are they actually frustrated with this really-existing government official or that actually-existing NGO staff person? Or is it that the others are more a nuisance for them, if that? That is, do the pastoralists care enough to be frustrated and take action? (One of the ironies of the current emphasis on pastoralists caring for each other is the relative silence on this connectivity dimension of symmetrical or asymmetrical frustration.) Answers to such questions problematize currently popular binaries like caring/not caring and not only notions of caring and private self/public role.

III

The follow-on analytic step then is to look at other major pastoralist binaries and see to what extent, if any, frustration relationships problematize them as well. The reader is already familiar with the debunking of any hard and fast line between nature/nurture and ecosystems/humans, so no need to repeat the familiar criticisms here. What does need highlighting, I believe, is the critics’ own use of another very popular binary, that of justice/injustice, as if there were in fact just systems which can or should correct for the equally well-known injustices pastoralists undergo and have undergone.

The twofold obstacle to any such conclusion is that (1) all manner of injustices are incurred without specific reference to principles or norms of justice and, anyway (2) those principles and norms prove contradictory, inconsistent or ambiguous when it comes to specific contexts (Douglass 2025). This is both an empirical and theoretical argument most recently associated with the political philosopher, Judith Shklar:

What sort of problem is injustice? One way of thinking about it is as an ethical problem. If not the first virtue of social institutions, justice is one of the most important moral values that should guide our reflections on politics. Injustice negates (or is a departure from) justice and is therefore a problem. Understood this way, there is a strong case for maintaining that we require principles of justice to evaluate cases of injustice: we can only identify the nature and scale of injustices with reference to some prior idea of justice. As should now be evident, this is not Shklar’s approach to theorizing injustice. She instead starts from our experiences of injustice and explores the political problems to which they give rise. The sense of injustice that we all experience should be understood in reference to the plural, competing, and ever-changing expectations that exist within any society, which cannot be formalized into determinate principles of justice. As this sense of injustice is a deep and inescapable feature of all social life, there is a political imperative to find ways of living together that can mitigate it as effectively as possible without (at the extreme) descending into cycles of violent revenge. To understand the problem of injustice in this way is to treat it as a political problem, first and foremost, rather than as an ethical one.

Such a sense of injustice repeatedly appears in the pastoralist literature (e.g., Krätli and Toulmin 2020, p. 68). That there is injustice across many pastoralist areas and that the frustrating challenge is a political one in preventing or coping with ensuing cycles of violence are neatly captured by many pastoralist observers, including Nori (2022; see also Benjaminsen and Ba 2021):

Political leaders, mafia-like organisations, and insurgent groups have successfully manipulated ethnic identities, political asymmetries, and local grievances to mobilise support for their activities. These provide weapons, salaries and opportunities to seize power at the local level, and with these the promise of redressing the many injustices faced by pastoralists and thereby transforming the local political economy. Cases include Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Sahelo-Saharan fringes, Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, Al-Shabaab in the Somali ecosystem, and other organisations operating across SSA drylands and beyond, where local communities are drawn into a ‘war economy’ dominated by politicians, smugglers commanders, and fighters whose interests lie in generating new forms of power, protection and profit. . .

In other words, it should not be surprising when existing local justice systems are commended for providing some everyday order and stability (e.g., Scott-Villiers 2025, p.35).

Why? Because even weak systems demonstrate the frustrating–really, frustrating–importance of giving injustice and grievances their due, whatever the global justice systems appealed to (see also Douglass 2025; on local and global justice systems and their tensions, start with Elster 1992).

---

Sources

Allouche, J., C.Y. Yao, K.S. Amédée 2025. “Rethinking ‘Farmer-Herder’ Conflicts in Ivorian Internal Frontier.” African Affairs 123/493: 449–467 (access online at https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/123/493/449/7951617)

Bell, A. R., O. S. Rakotonarivo, W. Zhang, C. De Petris, A. Kipchumba, R. S. Meinzen-Dick. 2025. “Understanding pastoralist adaptations to drought via games and choice experiments: field testing among Borana communities.” Ecology and Society 30(1) (accessed online at https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15836-300125)

Benjaminsen, T.A., B. Ba 2021. “Fulani-Dogon Killings in Mali: Farmer-herder conflicts as insurgency and counterinsurgency.” African Security (accessed online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19392)

Douglass, R. 2025. “Who Needs a Theory of Justice? Judith Shklar and the Politics of Injustice.” American Political Science Review: 1–12 (accessed online at http://cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/who-needs-a-theory-of-justice-judith-shklar-and-the-politics-of-injustice/5B25A4AF90526DAE217F93E87765E074)

Elster, J. 1992. Local Justice: How Institutions Allocate Scarce Goods and Necessary Burdens, Russell Sage Foundation: New York NY

Hazama, I. 2023. “Man-Animal Social Relationship as Source of Resilience,” Chapter 9 in Reconsidering Resilience in African Pastoralism: Toward a Relational and Contextual Approach, Eds. S. Konaka, G. Semplici and P. Little, Kyoto University Press and Trans Pacific Press, Japan

Krätli S., C. Toulmin 2020. Farmer–Herder Conflict in Sub-saharan Africa? IIED, Briefing. International Institute for Environment and Development, London (accessed online at http://pubs.iied. org/17753IIED)

Muneri, E.W. 2024. Intersectional Subjectivities, Embodied Experiences, and Everyday Responses among the Maasai Pastoralists Amidst Environmental Changes: Insights from the Mara in Kenya, PhD dissertation, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (accessed online at https://sussex.figshare.com › ndownloader › files)

Nori, M. 2022. Assessing the Policy Frame in Pastoral Areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Research Paper No. RSC 2022/03, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Italy (accessed online at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4071572 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4071572)

Phillips, A. 2012. Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York NY.

Scott-Villiers, P., A. Scott-Villiers, and the team from Action for Social and Economic Progress, Somalia 2025. Navigating Violence and Negotiating Order in the Somalia–Kenya Borderlands. IDS Working Paper 618, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies (accessed online at https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/articles/report/Navigating_Violence_and_Negotiating_Order_in_the_Somalia_Kenya_Borderlands/28715012?file=53375021)

Semplici, G., L.J, Haider, R. Unks, T.S. Mohamed, G. Simula, P. Tsering (Huadancairang), N. Maru, L. Pappagallo, M. Taye 2024. “Relational resiliences: reflections from pastoralism across the world.” Ecosystems and People, 20(1) (accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2024.2396928)

West, S., L.J. Haider, S. Stålhammar & S. Woroniecki 2020. “A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations.” Ecosystems and People, 16:1, 304-325 (accessed online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26395916.2020.1814417)

I

200 million to 500 million pastoralist herders in the world is a very large number, and very large numbers have distributions ranging from those doing better to those doing worse than average. It’s fair then to ask those who argue that pastoralist societies are changing for the worse, which ones in the distribution of pastoralist societies are “getting it (more) right,” from the perspective(s) of the critics.

The fact is that no one, let alone those insisting pastoralist societies are being depastoralized by forces beyond their control, has an overall understanding of the empirical distribution of pastoralist societies worldwide. Instead, “our critical project is to increase understanding of those pastoralist societies we study.” 

And significant advances have been made in that understanding. Clearly, there have been pastoralist societies which have ceased to practice any variety of pastoralism. Persistently failing development projects, misleading assumptions about pastoralist behavior, and basically wrong middle-level theories (think the Tragedy of the Commons in light of the subsequent Common Property Resource Management case material) are now a shared knowledge, and continue to be so even though incentives remain among donors and governments to ignore it.

II

But there are problems with “our critical project is to increase understanding of pastoralist societies.” First, if there were ever a Eurocentric idea it is that one. It’s passing odd when critics of Eurocentrism commit themselves to increased understanding and reflection tout court.

Second, it’s no news that others, including pastoralists themselves, want more by way of response and action from better understanding. Where are the counternarratives upon which to base better policy and management not only to “pastoralists are backwards and therefore [sic] in need to techno-managerial solutions”, but also to ”pastoralist societies are being depastoralized” by all manner of wider processes including commodification, marketization, financialization, settler colonialism, nationalism, militarism, racism, marginalization, the climate emergency, and always-late capitalism? As the common property resource management narrative is no longer sufficient to base some policy and management, what are the robust alternatives?

Third, those counternarratives have to be at the level of actionable granularity rather than de rigueur calls for big-T transformations, whose details are to be left to, well, the low and mean cunning of others who know better than the critics how to get their hands dirty. It’s also more than passing odd that those who rightly fault government policies and projects should at the same time not develop counternarrative policies and strategies to test and validate their increased understanding of what is actually underway on the ground.

III

Some already know and act upon the above, but still: So what?

It seems to me that we are at a conjuncture similar to that Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues found themselves in at the 1985 Annapolis Conference on Common Property Resource Management. There she worked with researchers who had presented case material finding too many empirical and policy shortfalls in the Tragedy of Commons and government rural management policies.

From that conference and subsequent work came the counternarrative for which she later won the Nobel Prize in the misnamed field of economic sciences. Today, we need other pastoralism counternarratives, and even researchers focusing exclusively on the depastoralization of pastoralist societies presumably can esteem that challenge, which she also met.

I.

What are the problems?

The details vary from country to country, though not by much. . . All are caused by a latent policy of austerity, resulting in a failure to invest in public goods. These are, in no particular order: stagnant growth, under which any structural change takes on a zero-sum character; the deterioration of public infrastructure, including railways, bridges and roads; a growing housing shortage and rising urban rents; the failure to adapt both cities and rural areas to the consequences of climate change; the lack of an immigration policy to counterbalance an ageing population alongside a sharp decline in birth rates; the decay of the education system, particularly primary schools; the indebtedness of local authorities and their diminishing ability to make necessary investments and provide essential services; growing inequality in income and wealth, with low-income families – particularly those headed by single mothers – chronically the worst hit; and, last but not least, widespread anxiety about the future, driven in part by fear of cuts to state-provided essential services that are becoming increasingly hard to finance.

What’s to be done?

Above all, questions must be asked – particularly by the left – in front of an audience who, contrary to the advice of PR ‘experts’, we must still regard as capable of reason if democracy is to continue to exist. How do we get capital to foot the bill for the costs it imposes on society and nature? How do we prevent tax avoidance and tax evasion? How do we protect companies that provide good-quality work for the people in our country from a global trade system that shows no regard for working people? How can we halt the decline in our population, through immigration as well as through better family policies? How do we relieve our local administrations of their debt burdens, to allow them to provide the public services that are indispensable for a good life for all in a society in transition such as ours? And how must ‘our democracy’ be restructured so that it can be a democracy for all and give its citizens the opportunity to take control of their own lives, rather than having to beg for help from a state whose coffers are empty and will remain so for a long time to come?

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/who-will-pay?pc=1789

That’s it? Really? I mean, is this even good enough? Surely, more useful things can be said, even when, as I believe, the above is true as far as it goes.

II.

Quietism of despair would have been one 1950s’ reaction. Calls for capital-T transformations are, however, common these days: economic, political, global, planetary, interpersonal, behavioral, ecological, ontological, epistemological, normative–whatever, it’s got to be capital-T. These Big Changes are all urgent, even more so because the details of implementation and operation are, well, unclear.

A more useful first response, I argue, is to accept the challenge of recasting the above “What are the problems?” and “What’s to be done?”

I’m quite willing to believe that it’s too late, what happens next will be worse, and anyway it’s all overtaken by politics, dollars, and jerks. I’m unwilling to accept that proposition, though, without first analyzing the preconditions for and ways then to undertake recasting. Why? Because the assumption of intractability stops short of the multiple interpretations that the complexities of policy and management open up for reframing, redescribing, revising, reorienting, and repurposing.

III

Frankly, you must wonder why so many people believe they sit on analytic perches above it all from which they can peer, prognosticate and puppeteer problems and solutions all the way down. Speaking for myself, I’m in the middle of fragments that are at best candidates for “problems,” as if I’m reading a book’s index, the only thing left behind from a multi-volume text that has since disappeared, or never existed. It’s natural to make connections between and among the entry terms in front of you and me, though where apophenia begins (if at all) is not clear.

A 1950s reaction as well? Perhaps; arguably more so since mysteries over connections are (for me) a clear adjunct to uncertainty, but mystery is not something Anthropocene uncertainty cultivates. Rather, policy analysts like myself are left with a (faux?) familiarity that feels more like scrapbooks, plaster cast replicas, and rehanging museum walls.

Policy analysis and public management as first a curation of fragments before the recomposition(s)?

---

NB. For examples of the kind of recastings called for please see When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for recasting policy and management in the Anthropocene (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2023) https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/18008

Especially in analytic philosophy, we have come to value a certain measured style that comprises perspicacious structuring of arguments, clear signposting, definite conclusions, systematic presentation of evidence, elimination of the author’s distinct voice and autobiography, lack of flourishes and digressions, avoidance of ambiguity, and other such stylistic properties. We may call such a style the ‘objective style’ of discourse.

https ://academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/article/61/4/559/6402993

Response? Total social construction, that “objective style”! Logocentric, Eurocentric (and probably worse).

Compare then to the genre strategies identified from a review of current fiction in the Italian literature market on the climate:

In techno-scientific thrillers, agency is concentrated in heroic figures (scientists, experts) who must overcome institutional obstacles to implement solutions; they express a decisional verticality (hierarchical authority in crisis decisionmaking) that contrasts with social inertia. Techno-scientific thrillers are dominated by anxiogenic urgency; anxiety is amplified by means of tight narrative rhythms and the constant threat posed by imminent disasters. An emotional mobilization is consequently ignited, oriented toward immediate action. This pattern corresponds to a form of “technocratic imagination” (Gagné 2019) in climate discourse, whereby specialized knowledge becomes the primary force driving environmental action. Besides, post-collapse dystopias manifest themselves in survival micro-agencies (limited agency focused on day-to-day survival). In this context, agency is reduced to the daily dimension of survival in a hostile world, formally exhibited through task-oriented dialogue and routine-centered plots. It is the expression of a destabilizing horizontality that makes it impossible to plan and achieve long-term goals. Dystopias also show traits of an affective tension between nostalgia for a lost, almost idealized world and present trauma, thereby producing what could be called ecological grief, namely, an incomplete psychological processing of environmental loss.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41290-026-00289-9

Response? But, but the urgency, that anxiety, those obstacles and inertia, the loss and grief, the trauma and dystopia if we don’t do something now–all that is true!

Response: Read more complicated literatures, if it’s policy and management you’re worried about.