ABSTRACT
In this essay I examine a major characteristic of all pastoral nomads: movement of residence and of locale of pastoral operations. There are two reasons for this focus. One is that, in my opinion, the causes of movement have not been sufficiently and explicitly considered by anthropologists and others. There has been a tendency to over-emphasize a generalized environmental explanation. 1 My contention is that nomadic movement is a response not only to physico-biotic conditions and to other features of a socio-political kind in the total external environment of nomads; but it is also, and importantly, a response to the internal context of the socio-cultural system of the people. Secondly, the sociological implications of recurrent movement—where movement itself is empirically normal—have not been sufficiently specified nor integrated adequately into the analysis of nomadic social life.
