ABSTRACT
Pastoralism has long been considered a resilient livelihood strategy (Moritz et al. 2013; Robinson
and Berkes 2010) because it is highly adapted to the rangeland ecosystem constantly in dis-
equilibrium (Behnke et al. 1993). However, insufficient efforts have been made to operationalize
the concept of resilience in the pastoral contexts. In this chapter, we argue that existing resilience
research on pastoralism needs to be more cognizant of narratives by pastoralists whose situated
knowledge could offer more nuanced understandings of how resilience is manifested and chal-
lenged in the real world. Based on empirical evidence from comparative case studies in East Africa
and Central Asia, we aim to develop a context-relevant analysis of pastoral resilience.
