Moving Deserts (forthcoming)
Interrogating Development and Resilience in the Pastoral Drylands of Northern Kenya
by Greta Semplici
Moving Deserts re-examines the concept of resilience, as applied in the development sector. It gives central stage to the voices, experiences, memories and everyday lives of the people whose resilience is the subject of much international attention and financial aid flows. Building a bridge between the perspectives of practitioners and local communities, Moving Deserts reveals a story about life, struggle and hope among Turkana herders, a story woven by following the movements and relations of the author’s hosts and interlocutors during fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork. The volume argues that it is in their very mobility that the meaning of resilience resides: mobility as physical movements to reach ephemeral and unevenly spread resources; mobility as social connections to weave a social fabric that also works as safety net; mobility as fluid identities, never static but plastic, capable of taking on new shapes and adapting to changes. The drylands and their inhabitants, largely pastoral populations, are the spine of the book. Drylands often fall in the imaginary of the remote, the deserted, the unproductive, a powerful imaginary rooted in romantic narratives, as well as in political and economic interests. At a time of rising alarm about climate change, mass migrations and energy requirements, drylands are returning to the international stage with a focus on building resilience. This book asks what we can learn about ‘pastoral development’, currently discussed in the international development regime under the label of resilience, by switching perspective and following pastoralists’ lived experiences?
‘Enyes remembered playing with his friends, running and following shadows of clouds. Those who managed to stay protected from sun rays under the clouds’ shades the longest were the winners of the game … A game for kids played at times when trees did not have a crown … when there were no bird traps to set. When there was no water to waste … It must have been a time of drought … I understood that he was speaking of the form of resilience I was researching. It is a story of movement, running bodies and drifting clouds. It is a story of transformation of the harsh reality of a drought into a game … of attention to the environment and how it constantly changes, moulded by the relationship between humans, animals, rains, wind, river, grains of sand … a story of a group of friends supporting each other … a story of games and laughter. This is the everyday form of resilience I hope to portray in this book.’
Greta Semplici in ‘Moving Deserts’
This book is Open Access through the support of The Open Book Collective.
THE AUTHOR
Greta Semplici is a postdoctoral fellow at the Social Science department at the University of Molise, Italy. Previously she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, and a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute. Greta was affiliated to the Pastoralism Uncertainty and Resilience (PASTRES) programme as post-doctoral researcher. She earned a Ph.D. from the Oxford Department of International Development with a critical study of pastoralism and development in the arid lands of northern Kenya. In her research, with the support of visuals like photographs and creative writing, she aims to bring a people, a place and a culture to life in the eyes and hearts of those who have not been there.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 – The Resilience Agenda
Chapter 2 – The nomadism of space. An experiential journey through the variability of drylands
Chapter 3 – The nomadism of settlements: aid like rain
Chapter 4 – Practices of mobility
Chapter 5 – On food and no-food: the mobility of identities
Afterword – Mobility, Change, Resilience
1st September 2025
ISBN 978-1-912186-96-9 (PB) £30
eISBN 978-1-912186-97-6 (Open Access eBook)