A Pastoral Democracy (1961) by I. M. Lewis: politics among the northern Somali

The book

A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa is by Ioan M. Lewis (1930 to 2014), a British social anthropologist who spent most of his career at the London School of Economics. It was published in London by Oxford University Press for the International African Institute in 1961, with 320 pages, plates and maps (Journal of African History review). Lewis began his research in British Somaliland at the age of 25 (British Academy memoir).

Where the research was done

Lewis did his fieldwork from 1955 to 1957, mainly in the British Somaliland Protectorate, the area that became the north-west of the Somali Republic in 1960 and today forms Somaliland. He chose the north because livestock herding was more central to life there than in the south, where grain was also farmed. The book covers the period from about 1930 to 1955, and also looks at earlier conditions (HRAF World Cultures).

What it describes

• Lineage and clan. Lewis describes political life among the herders as shaped mainly by membership of lineages and clans, traced through the father's line. The subject is covered on Clans and lineage.
• The diya-paying group. The central unit in the book is the diya-paying group, a group of closely related men who agree by contract to pay and receive compensation (diya, Somali mag) together when one of their members kills or injures someone, or is killed or injured. Lewis treats this contract, part of Somali customary law, as the most important political unit in daily life (HRAF World Cultures). See Xeer, Somali customary law.
• Political parties. The political parties of the 1950s were built on these groupings, though they stressed national unity in their programmes.
• The Sufi orders. The Muslim religious orders (tariqas) in principle stood above lineage and clan, in favour of a wider brotherhood of believers, though Lewis found that this did not fully work in practice (HRAF World Cultures). See Islam in Somalia.

How it was received

• The book was reviewed on publication by the Somali language scholar B. W. Andrzejewski in the Journal of African History, and in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (Cambridge Core).
• It was reissued in 1998 by LIT Verlag in a series of classics in African anthropology, with an introduction by the Somali historian Said S. Samatar and an afterword by Lewis (LIT Verlag).
• Later works, such as Catherine Besteman's Unraveling Somalia (1999), argued that Somali politics could not be explained by clan and lineage alone, and pointed to divisions of race, status, class and region, especially in the farming south (Project MUSE).

Where to read it

• Lending copy: Internet Archive
• In a library: WorldCat

Related pages

• The Invention of Somalia (1995), edited by Ali Jimale Ahmed
• A Modern History of the Somali
• Unraveling Somalia (1999), Catherine Besteman
• Books about Somalis, 1960 to 1990