Anthropological Reconsideration of the Dogma of "Competition over Scarce Resource" among the Pastoral Societies in East Africa.

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There are increasing the conflicts among the pastoral societies in East Africa. The mass media as well as scholar tend to explain that rival pastoralists compete for the scarce resources such as livestock, green pasture and water in the semi-arid region. However, such conflict and the dogma of "competition over scarce resource" seem to be instigated by the ethnic political elite. In order to reconsider the dogma of "competition over scarce resource," this study clarifies the complex aspects of sharing system of the ecological resources among the pastoral societies before the nationalism prevailed among pastoral societies in East Africa. As a result, it became clear that the different ethnic people coexisted and developed sharing system. For example, the cattle pastoralist who owned water well allowed the camel pastoralist to access their water resources in exchange of their labor force. The cattle pastoralist and camel pastoralist also segregated themselves spatially according to the need of livestock. This segregation decreased the competition over the ecological resource such as green pasture.