ABSTRACT
People are pastoralists and they are subsistence agriculturalists, making adjustments with careful calculation, skeptical of anything but time honored strategies, seeking out a tolerable life that demands independence while encouraging mutual support. The interriverine area, however, is characterized by a social formation where the mode of production varies across households, but displays the basic features of a subsistence-based agropastoralism. When water is available year-round the villagers are in the optimal situation to engage in sedentary agropastoralism. Subsistence-based agropastoralists in the interriverine area contend with many things that provide for all of them a 'common denominator': e.g. gradual depletion of farmland, high infant mortality, a low return on labor, unpredictability of rains. Patterns of agropastoralism vary across the region, however, due to factors that distinguish one area or village location from another—in particular the availability or access to water, farmland, rangeland and markets.
