Dawn Chatty

In July 2009, the Commission on Nomadic Peoples (CNP) took part in the 16th Congress of the IUAES in Kunming, Yunnan, China  between 27-31st July. The CNP sponsored three academic panels of 50 papers over three days. John Galaty and Michael Bollig organized a panel on Resilience to Resistance: Pastoralist Strategies in Response to Contemporary Political and Ecological Disruption and Change in Africa with 20 papers; Elliot Fratkin and Anatoly Khasanov  organized a session on Pastoral Development: a Global Assessment with 15 papers; and Fachun Du and Julia Klein  organized a panel on  Ecological Resettlement : Local Participation and Policy Improvement with 20 papers.  The latter panel was co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Colorado State University. 

Many of the papers from the academic panels at Kunming have now appeared in issues of the journal Nomadic Peoples.  A number of papers were selected to appear in a special volume published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This same collection has also been published by White Horse Press (2013) Modern Pastoralism and Conservation:  Old Problems, New Challenges, Tory Sternberg and Dawn Chatty (Eds.). A further outcome of the Kunming meetings was the negotiations of a grant  of $50,000 from the Ford Foundation  to support three  special issues of Nomadic Peoples  by local scholars: one by Chinese scholars, another by Indian scholars and a third by East African scholars.    The China special issue has appeared as Volume 16 (1) and the East Africa issue is forthcoming as Volume 17 (1).  The Indian special issue was never developed due to the inability of the Commission team to identify a willing special editor.

The Business Meeting of the CNP was held at the end of these three days. The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Anatoly Khasanov.  A summary of his biography is available at http://nomadicpeoples.info/awards/khazanov.shtml.  A new round of nominations and votes are being managed at the present time by Kathleen Galvin, the Chair of the Lifetime Achievement Awards Committee.  We intend to announce the recipient of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Awards at the CNP  Business Meeting, August 6th, at the 17 Congress of the IUAES in Manchester, United Kingdom.  

Under discussion at the Business meeting was a plan to tie full membership of the CNP to subscription to its journal Nomadic Peoples.  This change would require the election of a second officer for the Commission, a vice Chair or Secretary to manage the additional obligations that would emerge from this change of policy.   A vote was taken and Professor Elliot Fratkin was voted Vice Chair of the Commission.  It was proposed that full subscription paying members of the CNP would  receive the journal as well as, possibly,  a bi-annual electronic newsletter, and be eligible for discounts on registration fees to IUAES congresses and inter-congresses.  They would also be able to post announcements on the Commission website and its email listserve.  The Commission would continue to manage the e-listserve to all its full members as well as associate members – those who only register on line for the  e-listserve

We are now preparing to take part in the 17th  IUAES Congress in  Manchester, UK to be held August 50-10th , 2013.  The CNP has been granted an academic session on the Emerging World of Pastoralists and Nomads, under the theme Movement, Mobility and Migration.  A total of 36 papers have been divided into nine sub-panels of approximately four papers per sub-panel.  These will be presented on August 6, 7, and 8.  They include  sub-panels on: notions of mobility, sedentarization and human rights; pastoralism and identity in Arabia; South-west pastoralism and transhumance; pastoralism and transhumance in India and the Himalayas; pastoralism and mobility in Central and Northern Asia; Saharan and West African pastoralism, mobility and settlement; and East African pastoralism, displacement and sedentarization.   This is being jointly organized by Professor Philip Salzman and me.  For more details see the Commission on Nomadic Peoples website, http://www.nomadic peoples.info.  The academic session will run continuously from  9:00 am  August 6 through to the late afternoon of August 8 at University Place in the University of Manchester.  For details  see http://www.nomadit.co.uk/iuaes/iuaes2013/panels.php5?PanelID=1394.  

A second academic session, Lost in Mutation: Pastoral Development Rhetoric of the Third Millennium, has been organized by Saverio Kratli and consists of 7 papers.  This session will take place on August 9 starting at09:00 at University Place at the University of Manchester.

The Business Meeting of the Commission will be held on 6 th  August  between18:30 and 19:30.  The room is still to be confirmed.    The agenda for the meeting will be sent around shortly and will include  among other topics, a discussion of our memberships fees and subscription policy for Nomadic Peoples, plans to move to a new publisher, and  CNP finances. 

This year the CNP initiated the Best Student Essay Competition. The winner of this inaugural prize will be presented with a cheque for  $250 at the Business meeting on August 6th.  The winning essay by Andrew Alesbury, ‘A Society in Motion: the Tuareg from the Pre-Colonial Era to Today’ will appear in  Nomadic Peoples  Volume 17 (1). 

After serving as Chair of the Commission since 1998, it is time for me to hand over the Chairmanship of the Commission to my Vice Chair.  A new vice Chair will need to be nominated and elected at the coming Business meeting of the CNP at the 17th IUAES Congress in Manchester. Nominations – sent to me - are welcome before the meeting; however, nominations may also be made from the floor at the meeting itself.   

The Commission now has over 160 registered  associate members who are part of an email distribution list, or e-listserve, making communications much easier than in the past.  As a loosely structure organization of individuals interested in nomadic peoples, the web site and e-listserve are important means of communication among Commission members and other interested individuals.  

Dawn Chatty

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples I am pleased to announce   the extension of the 2013 Manchester IUAES Congress paper abstract and panel submission to August 3rd, 2012.  If you have  not already submitted a paper for the main CNP panel  as well as the panel organized by Saverio Kratli, please do so in the coming few weeks.  

Also in preparation for the IUAES Congress, Professor Kathy Galvin will shortly be seeking nominations from CNP members for the Lifetime Achievement Award to be presented at the Manchester IUAES Congress.

I take this opportunity to announce several changes to the management of our journal Nomadic Peoples.  The Commission has appointed four Associate Editors to assist Saverio in the work of producing two issues a year.  We are just about caught up on several years backlog and hope to shortly fulfil the requirements for assessment for entry in the Social Science Citation Index.  Please welcome Professor Michael Bollig, Dr Caroline Dyer, Dr Johann Bussow and Dr Troy Sternberg on to the editorial team.

I am also pleased to announce establishment of the Best  Student  Essay Prize  on the broad topic of nomadic peoples as defined in the Journal of Nomadic Peoples.  The inaugural prize of $250 will be awarded at the CNP Board Meeting during the IUAES Congress in Manchester  5-10 August 2013. The essay will appear in the following issue of Nomadic Peoples.  Essays should have been written during the period of graduate study and should not exceed 7,500 words. Entrants would normally be graduate students at the time of submission but undergraduates may also submit essays for consideration. Entrants should be paid student members of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples (www.nomadicpeoples.info). Submissions should be sent to me no later than  December 31st, 2012.

Our journal Nomadic Peoples is doing well.  It has strong institutional support, but individual paid CNP membership [with subscription to the journal] is low.  Most of our members subscribe to the free e-list only.   At this point, I would like to take the opportunity to encourage you to consider taking out full CNP annual membership in January of each year. Full membership gives you an annual subscription to Nomadic Peoples, a vote for the Lifetime Achievement Award the right to submit  a student essay for the Best Student Essay Award, a reduced registration fee for the IUAES Congresses,  and the right to post  announcements on the CNP e-list. 

Consider becoming a paid up member of the CNP.

In July 2003, the Commission took part in the 15th Congress of the IUAES in Florence, Italy with a day-long session of papers by 15 Commission members. This was followed by the Business Meeting of the Commission. A second set of papers and presentations was also organized by Emmanuel Marx in a nearby town. Most of these papers have since appeared in special issues of numerous journals including our own journal Nomadic Peoples. The IUAES organizers also published proceedings of that Congress.

We are now preparing to take part in the delayed 16th IUAES Congress in Kunming, Yunnan, China to be held July 26th – July 31st, 2009. The Commission has been granted an Academic Session which is being divided into three panels. John Galaty and Michael Bollig are organizing a panel on Resilience to Resistance: Pastoralist Strategies in Response to Contemporary Political and Ecological Disruption and Change in Africa with 20 papers; Elliot Fratkin and Anatoly Khazanov are organizing a session on Pastoral Development: a Global Assessment with 15 papers; and Fachun Du and Julia Klein are organizing a panel on Ecological Resettlement : Local Participation and Policy Improvement with 20 papers. For more details wee the Commission on Nomadic Peoples website, http://users.ox.ac.uk/. The Academic Session will run continuously from 15:20 July 27ththrough to 18:30 July 30th. The Business Meeting of the Commission will be held on July 29th between 19:00 and 21:00. There will be a Dinner hosted by Professor Fachun Du for all Commission participants on July 30that 19:00.

The Editors of the journal Nomadic Peoples have changed since 2003 when Carol Kerven agreed to serve as Co-Editor along with William Lancaster. In 2005, William Lancaster decided to step down as Co-Editor. Since then Steven Dinero and Kenneth Bauer have both agreed to assist Carol as Co-Editors. They have since resigned as Co-Editors. In April 2009, Carol Kerven withdrew from editing the journal. In May 2009, Saverio Kratli was appointed as the Editor of Nomadic Peoples for an initial term of five years. This appointment will be ratified at the CNP Business Meeting, July 29th, 2009. Further information about the journal and about submissions can be found at www.berghahnbooks.com.

At the July 2003 Business Meeting of the Commission, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to both I.M. Lewis and Walter Goldschmidt. A new round of nominations and votes are being managed at the present time by Kathleen Galvin, the Chair of the Lifetime Achievement Awards Committee. We intend to announce the recipient of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Awards at the CNP Business Meeting, July 29th, 2009 in Kunming Yunnan, China.

In 2006, the edited book Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21st century was published by Brill in their Handbook of Oriental Studies Series (Leiden: E.J. Brill). With over 36 chapters contributed mainly by members of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples it is an important milestone of the Commission.

The Commission now has over 160 registered members who are part of an email distribution list, or listserve, making communications much easier than in the past. As a loosely structure organization of individuals interested in nomadic peoples, the web site and email distribution are important means of communication among Commission members and other interested individuals.

In 2010, the Commission expects to tie full membership to subscription to its journal Nomadic Peoples. This change will require the election of a second officer for the Commission, a vice Chair or Secretary to manage the additional obligations that would emerge from this change of policy. Full members will receive the journal as well as a bi-annual electronic newsletter, and be eligible for discounts on registration fees to IUAES congresses and inter-congresses. They will also be able to post announcements on the Commission website and its email listserve. The Commission will continue to manage the email listserve with its free registration.

Dawn Chatty

July , 2009

In July 2003, the Commission took part in the 15th Congress of the IUAES in Florence, Italy with a day-long session of papers by 15 Commission members. This was followed by the Business meeting of the Commission. A second set of papers and presentations was also organized by Emmanuel Marx in a nearby town. Most of these papers have since appeared in special issues of numerous journals including our own journal Nomadic Peoples. The IUAES organizers also published proceedings of that Congress.

We are now preparing to take part in the 16th IUAES Congress in Kunming, Yunnan, China between July 15 and July 23rd, 2008. The Commission has been granted an Academic Session which is being divided into three panels. Elliot Fratkin and Anatoly Khasanov are organizing one session on Pastoral Development: a Global Assessment with 19 papers; John Galaty and Michael Bollig are organizing a panel on Resilience to Resistance: Pastoralist Strategies in Response to Contemporary Political and Ecological Disruption and Change in Africawith 28 papers; and Ole Bruun is organizing a panel on Mongolian pastoralism: Development and Cultural Diversity with 5 papers. The Academic Session will be followed by a Business meeting of the Commission on either July 16th or 17. This will be confirmed shortly.

The Editors of the journal Nomadic Peoples have changed since 2003 when Carol Kerven agreed to serve as Co-Editor along with William Lancaster. In 2005, William decided to step down as Co-Editor. Since then Steven Dinero and Kenneth Bauer have both agreed to assist Carol as Co-Editors. Further information about the journal and about submissions can be found by clicking here

At the July 2003 Business Meeting of the Commission, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to both I.M. Lewis and Walter Goldschmidt. A new round of nominations and votes are being managed at the present time by Kathleen Galvin. We hope to be able to announce one or perhaps two new Lifetime Achievement Awards at the next Business meeting of the Commission in Kunming Yunnan, China in July 2008.

In 2006, the edited book Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21st century was published by Brill in their Handbook of Oriental Studies Series (Leiden: E.J. Brill). With over 36 chapters contributed mainly by members of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples it is an important milestone of the Commission.

The Commission now has over 100 registered members who are part of an email distribution list, making communications among the members much easier than in the past. As a loosely structure organization of individuals interested in nomadic peoples, the web site and email distribution are important means of communication among Commission members and other interested individuals.

Dawn Chatty 
Chair, Commission on Nomadic Peoples
Reader in Anthropology and Forced Migration and
Deputy Director
Refugee Studies Programme
Department for International Development (QEH)
University of Oxford, UK

March 10th 2008

At the Williamsburg XIV Congress of the IUAES, the Commission members agreed to split the responsibility for Chairing the Commission from the editing of the Journal of Nomadic Peoples, the official publication of the Commission. In March 1999, Dawn Chatty was voted the new Chair of the Commission and Aparna Rao and Michael Casimir remained co-editors of the Journal. Each year two issues of the Journal of Nomadic Peoples has appeared under the co-editorship of Rao and Casimir as well as in the last few years the able assistance of William Lancaster as a third co-editor.

In 1998, the first Lifetime Achievement Award was instituted and presented by Philip Salzman, the Chair of the Lifetime Achievement Awards Committee, to Fredrik Barth. In 2001, as second Lifetime Achievement Award was made to Daniel Bates, and in 2003, a tie for first place meant that two individuals were next given this award - I.M. Lewis and Walter Goldschmidt.

On taking up the Chair of the Commission, I undertook to set up a website which could be used by all members and other interested parties to keep abreast of developments, activities, conferences, panels and workshops related to nomadic peoples. In 1999 the official website of the Commission was set up (http://users.ox.ac.uk/) and linked with the Journal website at Berghahn Press as well as other relevant institutions and networks.

Participation in inter-congress meetings was on an individual basis. Members of the Commission attended inter-congresses in China in 2000, in Germany in 2001 and in Japan in 2002. No commission panels were organized for any of these events.

In September 1999, an 'open' conference was organized by the Commission at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. Displacement, Forced Settlement and Conservation was a three-day conference with 40 paper presentations. One outcome of this meeting was the publication Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement, and Sustainable Development, Dawn Chatty and Marcus Colchester, Editors, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Press, 2002. This book appears in hard copy and online. The hard copy has 21 chapters and the on-line version includes all but two of the original papers presented at the conference.

At the close of this meeting a recommendation emerged from the participants to hold a follow-on conference to bridge the divide between natural and social scientists over the issue of conservation. To that end, a successful fund-raising campaign was set into motion to hold an 'invited' conference in Wadi Dana Jordan in April 2002. 8 researchers, 8 practitioners and 8 policy makers were invited to the conference to give papers and to take part in discussion groups. One important output of the conference was the agreeing of the Dana Declaration on Conservation and Mobile Peoples (www.danadeclaration.org). This declaration is being taken to the World Parks Congress in Durban in September 2003, where it is hoped to get endorsement from that body and other conservation institutions. The proceedings of this meeting will appear as a special issue of the Journal of Nomadic Peoples (2003 no.2).

The Commission now has 94 registered members who are part of an email distribution list, making communications among the members much easier than in the past and transparent. As a loosely structured organization of individuals interested in nomadic peoples, the web site and email distribution list makes communication and information exchange much more timely than it has been in the past.

Dawn Chatty 
July 14th, 2003

Dawn Chatty 
Chair, Commission on Nomadic Peoples 
Dulverton Research Fellow and Deputy Director 
Refugee Studies Programme 
Queen Elizabeth House 
University of Oxford