I received my B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, M. Phil. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and PhD from the Catholic University of America (1987), all in Cultural Anthropology. My research focuses on life and social change among nomadic pastoralists – people who live and move with their domestic livestock and who are found largely in the arid regions of the world. In the last half century, many former nomads have settled in small towns or farms to take up other types of lives. Much of my work focuses on Ariaal pastoralists of northern Kenya. Ariaal are a cultural mix of two larger groups, cattle keeping Samburu and camel keeping Rendille, and are related to the larger cluster of Maasai peoples of East Africa.
My initial fieldwork in the 1970s focused on Ariaal social organization, cultural ecology, and ritual life including the activity of laibon medicine men. In the 1980s I turned my attention to issues of development and change, particularly what happened to Kenyan pastoralists during periods of drought and famine. Ariaal and Rendille communities were largely isolated in the 1970s, but during the 1980s they became recipients of humanitarian relief of many international organizations, including the Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision. One consequence of these changes was a large scale settling of former pastoralists, particularly poor people who did not have enough livestock to subsist as they had before. In the 1990s, I participated in a three yera study which examined the health and nutrition effects of settling of Ariaal and Rendille people, in collaboration with my wife Marty Nathan MD and Eric Roth, an anthropologist at the University of Victoria Canada. We found that settled children had higher levels of malnutrition and illnesses than the pastoralists, which we attributed to lack of milk animals in the settled communities.
A huge lure of cultural anthropology is the opportunity to study, work, and travel in foreign countries, and I have been very fortunate in this respect. In 2002 and 2003 I served as a consultant with the World Bank Inspection Panel investigating complaints about the building of the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline. In 2003, I was a Fulbright Scholar teaching at the University of Asmara, Eritrea, and in 2005 I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Mongolia for an international conference on pastoralism. In 2007, I participated in a Smith Alumnae tour of Mali, where we visited Bambara, Dogon, Fulani, and Tuareg people.
My research directly informs my teaching at Smith. My courses include ANT 130 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, ANT 241 The Anthropology of Development, ANT 230 Africa: Population,Environment, and Health, and ANT 236 Economy, Ecology and Society. In addition I teach the senior seminar Topics in Development Anthropology, which in the past has included the Anthropology of NGOs, Health issues in Africa, and Traditional Medicine.
Selected Publications
Books
Elliot Fratkin 1991. Surviving Drought and Development: Ariaal Pastoralists of Northern Kenya. Boulder: Westview Press.
Elliot Fratkin, Eric A. Roth, and Kathleen .A. Galvin 1994 (eds.) African Pastoralist Systems: An Integrated Approach. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Daniel G. Bates and Elliot Fratkin 2003. Cultural Anthropology, Third edition, Allyn and Bacon Publishers.
Elliot Fratkin 2004 Ariaal Pastoralists of Northern Kenya: Studying Pastoralism, Drought, and Development in Africa’s Arid Lands, Second edition. Needham Heights MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Elliot Fratkin and Eric A. Roth 2005. As Pastoralists Settle: Social, Health, and Economic Consequences of Pastoral Sedentarization in Marsabit District, Kenya. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Selected Articles and Chapters
Elliot Fratkin 1991. The Loibon as Sorcerer: A Samburu Loibon among the Ariaal Rendille, 1973-1987. Africa 61(3):318-333.
Elliot Fratkin 1996. Traditional Medicine and Concepts of Healing among Samburu Pastoralists of Kenya. Journal of Ethnobiology 16 (1): 63-97.
Elliot Fratkin 1997. Pastoralism: Governance and Development Issues. Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 235-261
Elliot Fratkin 2001. East African Pastoralism in Transition: Maasai, Boran, and Rendille Cases . African Studies Review 44 (3): 1-25.
Elliot Fratkin 2004. The Laibon Diviner and Healer among Samburu Pastoralists of Kenya. In Divination and Healing: Potent Vision, edited by Michael Winkelman and Philip Peek. Pp. 207-226. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Elliot Fratkin, Eric A. Roth, and Martha A. Nathan MD 2004. Pastoral sedentarization and its effects on children’s diet, health, and growth among Rendille of Northern Kenya. Human Ecology 32 (5): 531-559.
Elliot Fratkin 2008. Pastures Lost: Livelihood Change and Resource Stress with Pastoral Sedentarization in Northern Kenya, in Economies and Transformations of Landscape edited by Lisa Cliggett and Chris Pool. Society For Economic Anthropology Monograph Volume 20. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Mr. Fratkin teaches
the following courses (click on course to see recent syllabus):
Ant 230 Africa: Population, Health, and Environment Issues
ANT 241 The Anthropology of Development
ANT 236 Economy. Ecology, and Society
Fratkin CV
Books:
Some Photos from the field:
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Kenya - Interviewing Laibon diviners with Richard Waller |
Cameroon - with Bakola Pygmies |
Eritrea - with students at the University of Asmara |
MCH
Study N. Kenya with Marty Nathan, M.D.
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Mongolia with Smith alumna and NGO director Alicia Campi Djenne Mosque in Mali with Smith Alumnae 2007
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