Includes bibliographical references and index.

Great Scholar, Great Man, Great Friend (Remembering Ernest Gellner) / Anatoly M. Khazanov -- Introduction / Joseph Ginat and Anatoly M. Khazanov -- 1. Pastoralists in the Contemporary World: The Problem of Survival / Anatoly M. Khazanov -- 2. Who are these Nomads? What do they do? Continuous Change or Changing Continuities? / William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster -- 3. Being Bedouin: Nomads and Tribes in the Arab Social Imagination / Dale F. Eickelman -- 4. Coping with Change in Arabia: The Bedouin Community and the Idea of Development / Ugo Fabietti -- 5. Bedouin Settlement Policy in Israel, 1964-1996 / Amon Medzini -- 6. Continuing Education and Community Development for Bedouin / Helmut Danner and Maha El-Rashidi -- 7. The joz musarrib: An Unusual Form of Marriage among the Arabs / Frank H. Stewart -- 8. The Segmentary Lineage System: A Reappraisal / Sharon Bastug -- 9. The Cactus Was Our Kin: Pastoralism in the Spiny Desert of Southern Madagascar / Jeffrey C. Kaufmann -- 10. The Role of Tribal Groups in State Expansion and Consolidation: The Northern Arabian Peninsula during and after the First World War / Joseph Kostiner -- 11. The Missing Link: "Badu" and "Tribal" Honor as Components in the Iraqi Decision to Invade Kuwait / Amatzia Baram -- 12. Preservation and Change in Bedouin Societies in Israel / Joseph Ginat -- 13. Contemporary Mongol Concepts on Being a Pastoralist: Institutional Continuity, Change and Substitutes / Slawoj Szynkiewicz -- 14. Understanding Reindeer Pastoralism in Modern Siberia: Ecological Continuity versus State Engineering / Igor I. Krupnik.