Nomadism

Nomadism describes a pattern of human behavior for which mobility is essential. Nomadism is defined as continuous wandering, usually in search of food or sustenance. The popular image of the hobo, a homeless male of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who jumped on and off freight trains while traveling the country looking for work probably comes as close to the basic definition as possible. A completely nomadic existence is almost never attained in reality. Nomadism seems more random in its spatial movement and organization to the outside observer than it is in reality to its practitioner. Most often, the term nomad is applied to animal herders, either as individuals or as groups, who move frequently and seasonally in search of support for the animals that form the basis of their livelihood.

Central to the classical concept of the nomad as an aimless wanderer is the belief that the nomad has no fixed home but rather moves where the spirit leads. The nomad is viewed as opportunistic in character, seizing opportunity whenever and wherever advantage exists. As soon as local conditions deteriorate or better opportunities are recognized or hoped for elsewhere, the nomad moves on to a new setting. In practice, mobile nomadic herders (pastoral nomads) are falsely regarded as aimless wanderers, lacking a permanent base, because they carry their home (a tent) with them and erect that dwelling whenever they stop. In practice, nomadic animal herders engage in regular movements between pasture zones that are only available at certain times of the year. Movement enables these nomadic pastoralists to optimize pasture quality for their animals by shifting from poorer to better seasonally available pasture. Nomadic pastoralism is rotational grazing on a grand scale, substituting seasonal movements over hundreds of miles for the sedentary farmers’ rotational shifts of livestock from paddock to paddock.

Nomadism is not migration, which is the process of shifting location from one place to another for a lengthy period. Many migrants have no intention of returning to their original home but rather plan (or hope) to remain permanently in the new location. The movement of European settlers to North America may have involved some returnees to their ancestral homeland, but the vast majority stayed at their destination. Nomadic peoples, for whom mobility is a dominant characteristic, intend to return to a base, usually a part of their total, exploitable habitat that is essential to their livelihood and sense of identity.

Many groups engage in livelihoods for which mobility is essential but are not nomads in the classic rootless sense. Duck herders in India traditionally traveled a regular, limited circuit from their bases in Tamil Nadu. Improved roads, expanded paddy rice areas that provide more postharvest grazing, and access to trucks now permits the movement of thousands of ducks over hundreds of kilometers following the rice harvest. Farmers in the foothills of the Alps and other mountain ranges habitually have moved their cattle to upland meadows for the summer, a seasonal oscillation called transhumance. Hunters and gatherers moved in synchronization with seasonal salmon spawning runs in the Pacific Northwest, as did wild rice harvesters in the Great Lakes. Nomadic herders, such as the Saami (Lapps) in Northern Scandinavia, continue to move their reindeer herds to mountain pastures each year. In reality, the idealized, aimless nomad is an idealized construct, viewed from the perspective of the permanently settled community and almost never realized in the real world, against which any more mobile group short of the ideal seems seminomadic.

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