“Enough! Now we don’t like it, we cannot stay any longer. Now we would like to run away. We miss Gujarat” said Pabiben Rabari, a pastoralist from western India, when I asked her how they were doing in January 2020. Government subsidies for resowing, following late and violent rains, had delayed harvests in Gujarat. Pabiben’s family travel to agricultural hotspots in Gujarat in the winter and summer months to graze their flock on crop residues. Facing the coupled effect of climate and long-term socio-economic change in favour of commercial agriculture, Pabiben’s family had to alter the pace of their movements affecting the productivity of their animals and their movements for the year to come.
By focusing on the concept and practice of ‘pace’ and ‘pacing,’ I bring to attention the temporal dimensions of mobility politics in pastoral contexts. I show how pastoralists are ‘paced by’ agrarian change along capitalistic and neoliberal lines, and how, in turn, they manage the ‘pace’ of their movements to engage with social-political and ecological variability and uncertainty. ‘Pace’ centres mobility and its dynamism, rebalancing our understanding to include both spatial and temporal considerations, and thereby offers new and neglected avenues for action and learning crucial to navigating changes that threaten pastoral life.
