TheImprovement ofTropical and Subtropical Rangelands

262 IMPROVEMENT OF TROPIOAL AND SUBTROPIOAL RANGELANDS
"species emphasis" among neighboring pastoral peoples in northern
Kenya and suggests that different combinations of livestock could
indeed provide a generative model for predicting forms of social
organization.
Our focus is on systems of production rather than on particular
groups of people or their cultural traits, and we are concerned both
with constraints that may be caused by ecology and an economic
dependence on camel herds, and with restrictions on production
caused by the social organization.
REPRODUCTION AND RISI
Camel keeping is fundamentally a high-risk undertaking (Sweet,
1965), due to the animals' very slow reproduction rate. Only when
she is about six years old does the camel dam start to bear calves,
and then normally only one calf every second year. In contrast, the
cow first calves at about three or four years of age, and then every
year thereafter. If a camel owner is struck by misfortune and left
only with a minimal number of camels or none at all, rebuilding the
herd is a very slow procell. Breeding animals are very expensive
to buy, and owners are often reluctant to part with them. Lost
camels, in many cases, are never replaced; the 1018 is as final as
when a farmer or peasant becomes landless. A dramatic example is
the fate of the Sakuye Borana in northern Kenya, who lost virtually
all their camels during a war in the early 19701. Practically all the
Sakuye were pushed out of their traditional livelihood, because they
were unable to provide proper care for the remaining animals and
were incapable of expanding their holdings fast enough to reenter
viable pastoralism. They were forced to leave their area to seek other
income and thereby lost effective control over their pastures, which
were subsequently used by other camel herders. It is now almost
impOl8ible for even rich Sakuye to purchase breeding animals in the
market (Dahl and Hjort, 1979).
The hazards of camel reproduction have also been used as an
explanatory variable by authors (notably Sweet, 1965) who have
sought to understand the institutionalization of raiding in Arabian
camel-owning societies. By acquiring animals in a raid, the herd
owner can preclude several unproductive years in the development of
his herd. One partial solution to the risk is that many camel-owning
societies in Mrica and Arabia have systems of property holding
that redistribute the risks among herd owners. All the animals of