Capitalizing Contradictoriness: Ranchers between State and Open Range – and vis-à-vis Pastoralists

Abstract

The article explores and discusses findings from historical, geographical and anthropological research arguing that not simply a capitalist outlook but a footing in the state was crucial to the emergence and development of ranching. It develops the proposition that during a frontier phase, ranching evolved as a social, economic and ecological system of livestock keeping that was predicated on and exploited a duality of structures with the confining state on one side and the open range on the other, both separated and connected by a frontier. This is what makes ranching historically different from pastoralism despite superficial similarities. As pastoralism is increasingly connected to markets, capitalism and society at large, developing properties typically known from ranching, the article makes a case for taking a closer look at historical ranching in order to study transforming pastoral societies of the presence.