Working Paper 101

Title
Whose Complementarity? Social lines of conflict between mobile pastoralism and agriculture in the context of social differentiation in the Moroccan Sus

Author
Bertram Turner

Department
Project Group Legal Pluralism

Year of publication
2008

Number of pages
34

Downloas
Working Paper 101

Abstract
Transformations in the relationship between mobile pastoralism and agriculture in southwest Morocco are commonly addressed as a shift from traditional relations of complementarity and cooperation in resource exploitation to relations of confrontation due to accelerated competition over access to increasingly scarce and therefore contested resources. In the paper, instead, these transformations are analysed as processes of elite formation based on the formation of strategic groups. It is argued that the integration both of agriculture and of mobile pastoralism in the neoliberal market economy has resulted in a reconfiguration of social relations of all groups of actors involved and has led to an asymmetrical constellation favouring cooperation between different strata of elite. Included in the analysis is the transnational dimension of the described social processes that has not only contributed to the strategic course of action in elite cooperation but has also opened up new agency and room for manoeuvring for those who form resistance against.