Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender, Pastoralism, and Intensification: Changing Patterns of Resource Management in Morocco

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Steinmann, Susanne H Clark University The doctoral dissertation research will examine how women's resource management practices affect and respond to ecological and socio-economic changes associated with pastoral sedentarization and agro-pastoral intensification on the semi-arid steppe of eastern Morocco. In this region more intensive herding and farming practices help sustain a growing human population. Fieldwork will involve primary ethnographic data collection in the town of Tendrara, a village of settled Beni Guil nomads. A questionnaire survey of 150 recently settled pastoral women will illuminate how gendered patterns of resource management shape and respond to sedentarization. The study will seek to learn how ecological and economic changes affect women's access to, control over, and knowledge about animal and natural resources. A major objective is to investigate the ways in which gender-specific interests, activities and knowledge adjust to these changes and influence land use decisions. Wealth ranking, resource mapping, life histories, and informal interviews of women will complement the quantitative data. This work is critical for it provides knowledge, now lacking, of the interrelationships between land use change, gender, and environment.