The Civilization of Perpetual Movement (2016)
From Chinese, Romans and Byzantine Emperors, to British Foreign Officers of the Great Game, to today’s hippies, backpackers and aid workers—a long line of ‘civilized’, sedentary, peoples have misunderstood nomads and nomadism. Caricatured as backward herders, thieving mercenaries, or members of a vast and undifferentiated horde forever wandering the planet, nomads are usually perceived as anything but modern, and often assumed to be on the verge of obsolescence.
The Civilization of Perpetual Movement is the first examination of nomadism as a vital global political practice. Nick McDonell — bestselling novelist and war correspondent — draws upon his years researching nomadism around the world to illuminate what is, and has always been, a most modern practice. In the lucid, evocative prose which earnt him comparisons with Graham Greene and John Le Carré, McDonell uncovers the ways nomads and states influence each other, historically and today — with surprising consequences, from the plains and mountains of Central Asia to the grasslands of the Great Rift Valley. Part literary meditation, part reflection on international relations, part original history, The Civilization of Perpetual Movement is firmly in the tradition of iconoclastic thinkers from Bruce Chatwin to James Scott to T. E. Lawrence.
‘This is the book about nomads that Bruce Chatwin spent a good part of his life trying, unsuccessfully, to write. … [W]e are only now starting to come to terms with who nomads are and what they do.” — Times Literary Supplement
“This book is exceptional not only for the new perspectives it gives on nomads, but for the out-of-the-box thinking which Nick McDonell applies throughout the text … reading this book is an exercise in critical thinking.” — The Jordan Times
“McDonell tackles one of the great blind spots of political science... Nomads are not a relic of an earlier era of societal development, but a thoroughly modern challenge to contemporary governance.” — Alex de Waal, Research Professor and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation, Tufts University
“McDonell shares his frustrations with the political difficulties faced by nomadic peoples in the twenty-first century and the failure of international relations theory to comprehend nomads’ lived realities.” — Richard Tapper, Emeritus Professor at SOAS, University of London
“McDonell has studied the question of how important nomadism has been to world history for the past 500 years. Very, is the answer.” — Dawn Chatty, Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration and formerly Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford