Territorial behaviour among various herders and hunter-gatherers has been discussed in earlier studies, but this is the first time that a comparison of these three types of mobile populations has been attempted. The original papers presented in this volume discuss the conditions and problems of securing access to resources among pastoralists, peripatetics, and hunting, gathering and fishing communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. A comprehensive introductory chapter places these empirical studies in a broader theoretical context of the behaviourial sciences.

Social scientists have generally remained impervious to a major economic and cultural adaptation--namely, the peripatetic lifestyle--although this adaptation has been an integral part of developments within the socioeconomic and cultural networks that social scientists study. This lack of interest derives perhaps from the ambiguous integration of peripatetics into these networks as well as the often negatively charged constructs -"Gypsies," "outsiders," or "marginal others"--imposed on peripatetics by dominant cultures. As "peddlers of the strange" to borrow a phrase from Clifford Geertz,...

" A]n admirable example of how social anthropologists may contribute to understandings of conflicts and armed violence as complex and articulated social processes" - Ethos

The fact is that war comes in many guises and its effects continue to be felt long after peace is proclaimed. This challenges the anthropologists who write of war as participant observers. Participant observation inevitably deals with the here and now, with the highly specific. It is only over the long view that one can begin to see the commonalities that emerge from the different forms of conflict and can begin to...