Sheep and Land: The Economics of Power in a Tribal Society

Sheep and Land makes widely available the important ethnographic researches of Jacob Black-Michaud who, prior to his tragic death in 1985, enjoyed a considerable reputation as a scholar of Iranian tribal society. This work first examines Luristan as a regional whole and the ways in which different segments of the tribal population relate to each other through the practice of several complementary forms of economic production in both the sedentary agricultural and the nomadic pastoral spheres. The second section concentrates further upon the nomadic sphere, in an attempt to resolve certain outstanding ethnographic and analytical problems raised by previous studies of Middle Eastern pastoralism. The work concludes with a brief account of the substantial modifications experienced by Luri society in the mid-1970s as a result of development policies at national level.