Based on more than ten years of study among the Harasiis, a Middle Eastern tribe living in the Sultanate of Oman, Mobile Pastoralists is a powerful statement on the importance of grassroots, people-based development and on the inadequacy of conventional responses for such a community by the international aid bureaucracy.

Dawn Chatty's work is the product of years of research among the Harasiis, during which she headed an international development project aiming to provide basic social services to the tribe without disturbing their traditional nomadic pastoral way of life. Mobile Pastoralists provides readers with a detailed description of the conception, drafting, implementation, and completion of Chatty's aid project. The book also includes nuanced case studies of individual Harasiis men and women, showing how development efforts and the complex forces of modernization have affected members on a personal level.

Supplemented by a group of photographs of the tribe and their environment, along with seven detailed regional maps, Mobile Pastoralists is a study with valuable applications for anthropology, cultural geography, development planning, and Middle Eastern affairs.