Issues Home About Contact Us Issue 29 - September 2023 عربى
Terminology Corner
Sedentarization

Is the process by which a nomadic population settles, which process and ultimate condition also are known as sedentism, or (sometimes called sedentariness). Sedentarization may be spontaneous, consensual or forced. In the causative sense (verb: sedentarize), it means that an external party initiates and/or organizes the settlement of a nomadic people in a defined and permanent place of habitation.[1] State authorities increasingly favor sedentarization of pastoral and transhumant populations as a policy choice to prevent traditional movement on the land. The official practice of sedentarization also frequently accompanies radical changes in the land tenure arrangements of the affected population in their original range of movement and in the newly defined location. This practice typically has led to the total elimination of nomads by settling them on the land as agriculturalists or other types of laborers, requiring radical changes in lifestyle, modes and means of production and social relations.


[1]    Frederik Barth, “Nomadism in the Mountain and Plateau Areas of South-West Asia,” in Problems of the Arid Zone (Paris: UNESCO, 1960), p. 342, at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000700/070024eo.pdf.



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