Formal education and pastoralism in western India: inclusion, or adverse incorporation?

The education exclusion of pastoralists is increasingly recognised as a critical area for attention in progress towards Education For All. This article sets out two interlinked propositions as to what underlies barriers to education inclusion for pastoralists in India: a conflation of ‘education’ with schooling; and ambiguity over whether pastoralism is a relevant contemporary livelihood. Taking an adverse incorporation and social exclusion perspective on marginality, policy narratives of education inclusion are explored using its construct of ‘terms of inclusion’. Empirical evidence showing how pastoralism and formal education intersect demonstrates multi-faceted exclusions which simultaneously drive demand for schooling and impose highly adverse terms of incorporation for pastoralism in the globalising economy. Policy strategies currently undervalue ‘education’ as situated learning with a crucial role in pastoralist livelihood sustainability, recognition of which is essential to considering how such ‘education’ can interface with institutional arrangements and tackling the delegitimisation of pastoralism by hegemonic, place-based schooling.