New Publication: “Lands of the Future”

Echi Christina Gabbert together with Fana Gebresenbet, John G. Galaty and Günther Schlee published the volume “Lands of the Future” at Berghahn Books.

Rangeland, forests and riverine landscapes of pastoral communities in Eastern Africa are increasingly under threat. Abetted by states who think that outsiders can better use the lands than the people who have lived there for centuries, outside commercial interests have displaced indigenous dwellers from pastoral territories. This volume presents case studies from Eastern Africa, based on long-term field research, that vividly illustrate the struggles and strategies of those who face dispossession and also discredit ideological false modernist tropes like ‘backwardness’ and ‘primitiveness’. While genuinely acknowledging the urgency of the obligation of governments to provide good living conditions for their citizens, this volume exposes, in anthropological detail, the painful, harmful and deeply dissonant developments on pastoralist territories that first brought people together in the Lands of the Future Initiative. This is a volume full of dissonances. It will not curry favour with self-proclaimed modernizers. It takes a stand against power inequalities, harmful development, short-sighted growth paradigms and forms of repression on a global scale while searching for pathways of more peaceful futuremaking.

The introduction is open access.

For more information visit Lands of the Future.