Use of Land by Nomadic Pastoralists in Iran: 1970–1998

In this paper, I examine how some nomadic pastoralists in Iran changed their use of the physical environment over the past thirty years and how these changes related to their economic practices. I base this paper on my anthropological research among Qashqa’i nomadic pastoralists in southwestern Iran in the 1970s and 1990s, including eight visits since the revolution in 1978-1979 and the Islamic Republic’s formation. I draw on my observations of the varying ecological adaptations and diversifying economic strategies of these tribal people as they exploited a vast section of the southern Zagros Mountains. Their practices included use and protection of pastureland, investment in arable land and agricultural techniques, construction of water-control systems, hunting, gathering, construction of shelters for people and animals, increased reliance on roads and motorized transportation, and closer ties with the national government and the market. Although much of the land these nomadic pastoralists used was not suitable for productive activities other than seasonal pastoralism, hunting, and gathering, they were increasingly forced to compete with settled agrarian communities for the available cultivable land and for access to water and rights of passage. They, did enjoy, however, the competitive advantage of a continuing reliance on migration, and the primary products of pastoralism (meat, dairy goods, wool, weavings) were in market demand. This paper may inspire other scholars to take fuller consideration of the people actually making use of a specific territory. However land is used, it is obviously more than just physical features. Studies of the environment too often ignore or neglect the people who make a livelihood there and whose use of land is a major part of their vital social and cultural systems. People have developed strategies of land use through a process of trial and error over long periods— decades, centuries, and even millennia. Such strategies and the people who devise them deserve at least our respect and at most our support and possible protection. ABSTRACT This paper describes and analyzes changes in natural resource use by the Qashqa’i nomadic pastoralists of southwestern Iran between the early 1970s and the present. Drawing upon the author’s anthropological fieldwork, including eight visits since the overthrow of the shah in 1979, the paper demonstrates how Qashqa’i land use strategies, which evolved over centuries as a means for survival in often marginal natural environments, have adapted to the pressures of an increasingly intrusive society with urban and technological biases. Despite these pressures, the Qashqa’i have used customary and new means to wrest a living from their remaining lands and have thereby preserved a measure of autonomy.