Cens et puissance, ou Pourquoi les pasteurs nomades ne peuvent pas compter leur bétail

F. Pouillon — Census and Power, or Why Nomadic Pastors Cannot Count their Cattle. Why is it so hard to get information from nomadic pastors on the size of their herds? The explanation usually given seeming entirely inadequate, fieldwork data from different African pastoral societies—the Bedouins of Arabia and the Maghreb, and the Fulbe of the West African Sahel—are used to examine this problem. This behavior is in fact related to the mode of appropriation in these societies, an appropriation which is always relative and shared, without a one man-one head of cattle correspondence. Furthermore, it is the governments which try to force cattle numbering on the pastoralists in order to gain a foothold in their economies. Thus, no wander that they are reluctant to submit to such an imposition.