Alter-Nomad: Fear of Movement

Mobility is encouraged, as long as it maintains the status quo.

When sedentism began, the growth of the rural towns induced raising taxes and choosing tribe leaders to facilitate the management of those new communities. Sedentary populations use nomads to trade with each other (caravans) or to wage wars (mercenaries). Nomads are often cast aside as asocial and lunatic: they never stop moving, live from very little comfort, and take pride in their customs. Sedentaries fear potential attacks orchestrated by those nomadic populations. Fear creates a craving for safety. Cities institute new security measures: warriors, ramparts, walls, fortified buildings… even armies. States originate from a social contract: an attempt at survival, but more importantly an attempt at securing wealth. Away from chaos, away from nomads.

In the Roman empire, motion frightens. People are contained, fed and distracted to decrease entropy (Panem et circenses). Immigrants moving due to poverty or war are confined, expelled, locked up in prisons, or enslaved. Historical nomads living outside of the city-state, like the Huns, must be monitored to prevent their attacks. It didn’t prevent them from taking over Rome. Territories are as important to nomads as they are for sedentaries.

During Middle-Age, the plague becomes the perfect illustration of a nomad illness targeting sedentaries. The fear of the outsider is real. Banishing the sick proves to be inefficient as it only redistributes the plague. New institutions appear to contain the old and the sick: hospitals. Later, forced labor is created to fight against idleness. Under feudal regimes, the past is considered as barbaric and intellectual movements are frowned upon. Those who move are terrifying — artists, scientists, philosophers, explorers, bandits, beggars — because they go against the public order.

Just like we admit a wandering impulse, human beings fear what escapes their control. There is a fear of differences and a fear of movement. It’s a historical constant we can still witness nowadays. We are naturally suspicious of what we cannot control, so we uniformize, we condition, we normalize… not only do we lock up people but we also confine ourselves in boxes of many shapes: classrooms, barracks, capsule hotels, cubicles, nightclubs, cars, coffins.

States monitor and control mobile populations. To ban them. To jail them. To tax them with passport fees or work taxes. To punish them. Precarious sedentaries, potential nomads forced to leave to seek a job. Or excluded from society: homeless, Roma people, migrants… Bureaucracy ensures control, in the name of public order, hygiene, and security. The use of permits or identity cards to cross imaginary borders is a cultural filter. In the era of neo-nomadism, mass spying - foreign and domestic intelligence - as Edward Snowden proved it, comes completing the police among other repressive state apparatus. State apparatus perpetuate sedentism so that the state can survive. It’s not inherently good or bad as it ensures more people can survive, but it can result in abuses. It’s the principle of totalitarian violence by Maffesoli: the state nurtures a society of “good thoughts that numb people”. It domesticates the masses by offering a “happy prison” (golden handcuff), with bread, entertainments, and protection in exchange for a quiet submission. Pinning down a population ease its domination.

Flows are monitored as well. Sedentism leads to private property, then monetization created the concept of bank, which is the institution of creation and management of monetary capital. Banks oversee the monetary flows while companies emit income statements to enable economic monitoring. Highly mobile entities resulting from neo-nomadism don’t necessarily bring more freedom. We ensure our own surveillance through the use of technology: protected mobile designation of origin, corporate surveillance, and other use of personal data.

Settling is domesticating the cattle for animal husbandry and the earth for agriculture, but also domesticating the people. In this sense, modern nomads are just tamed nomads who leave traces, are traceable, and only go where the infrastructures of mobility are. Shepherds became pet keepers.