Project Details
Projekt Print View

SFB 586:  Difference and Integration - Interacation between Nomadic and Sedentary Peoples in Civilizations of the Old World's Arid Zone

Subject Area Humanities
Geosciences
Term from 2001 to 2012
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5484782
 
The research programme deals with the interrelation between nomadic and sedentary peoples in past and present. The geographical focus is the arid zone stretching from Morocco to China, where mobile and sedentary modes of life have been interacting since many centuries. Trade and exchange, distinction and conflict, attempts of domination and assimilation have often led to continuous intermeshing between nomads and sedentary, often urban societies. Their changeable coexistence has left deep imprints on civilizations in many parts of the world during long periods of time and still has retained its force.
The research team consists of specialists from different disciplines, such as Geography and Classical History, Oriental Studies as well as Cultural Ethnology, Egyptology and Archeology. The complex combination of seventeen research projects, planned for an initial phase of three years, aims at identifying types of interaction in most of the relevant spheres of social activity: trade and land tenure, political institutions and state organization, religious and ethical concepts, social and aesthetical value systems figure among the main aspects dealt with in several case studies.
Nomadic use of natural and human resources - mainly through extensive pastoralism, but also through other means of livelihood based on mobility as a mode of life - is certainly not a neglected field of research. Yet its interconnection with settled life in villages, urban centers and states has not been explored sufficiently. Results are expected to be significant also for the future, since increasing water shortages reinforce the need for appropriate pastoral land use, as nomadic forms of life also seem to spread in a number of mega-cities.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

Applicant Institution Universität Leipzig
 
 

Additional Information

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung