2008年7月8日，加拿大麦吉尔大学社会科技和发展研究中心主任、人类学教授加拉提（John Galaty）先生一行三人，应邀到中国社科院民族所访问并作学术演讲。陪同加拉提教授来访的有：麦吉尔大学神经外科学系教授芭芭拉（Barbara Jones Galaty）和马丽（Mary McConnell）女士。
加拉提教授在中国社科院民族所作了题为《当前非洲东部游牧的现代性：所有权、流动性和新领地》的学术演讲。他首先介绍了非洲东部的游牧/畜牧体系的多样性。在非洲东部，协作的形式和领土的组织随着社团的核心机构和群体而变化，诸如努尔人和索马里人这样以分叉世系组织为特征的群体、以代际系统为特征的奥罗莫人、以年龄体系为特征的马萨人和其他尼罗河社区。讲座还探讨几个人类学领域的主要视角，如何理解非洲干旱地区社会变迁的当代动态，尤其是牧民和现代性文化的关系。加拉提教授指出，非洲东部牧民在草场利用、保护、市场和向全球开放的趋向方面的适应理性是相当现代的。但是牧民由于失去草场最易受威胁，这反过来刺激了冲突的增加。他认为，现代性的概念在非洲语境中过于频繁使用，很少作为生产力增长、经济发展的一种科学观念，更多受到非洲干旱土地上的牧民的怀疑。因此，牧民不应仅看作为生计方式特征的社会，而且是一个为保留土地基地而战的乡村阶层。
来自社科院民族所、社会学研究所、研究生院的学者和研究生20人参加了座谈会。学者们除了与加拉提教授比较非洲和中国在游牧、环境问题外，还对加拿大的原住民、环境保护、医疗体系、魁北克问题等进行了交流。中国加拿大研究会副秘书长杜发春主持了座谈会，并宴请了加拿大来宾。
加拉提教授一行还访问了设在中国社科院民族所的国际人类学民族学联合会第十六届世界大会筹备委员会学术工作委员会办公室，与大会筹委会副秘书长张继焦教授、学术秘书张小敏、中国社会科学院社会学研究所农村与产业社会学研究室主任王晓毅教授、张倩博士等就世界大会推迟后的形势以及如何进一步筹备好世界大会进行探讨。
加拉提教授曾任麦吉尔大学人文学院副院长、院长。他的主要研究领域是非洲东部的游牧民族，包括肯尼亚、坦桑尼亚、乌干达和埃塞俄比亚。现为麦吉尔大学社会科技和发展研究中心主任、加拿大非洲研究会会长。
McGill University Professors visited IEA/CASS
On July 8th of 2008, three Professors from McGill University Canada visited the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academic of Social Sciences (IEA/ CASS). Prof. John G. Galaty, Department of Anthropology, Prof. Barbara Jones Galaty, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Ms. Mary McConnell.
In a seminar organized by IEA/ CASS, Prof. John G. Galaty addressed a lecture on The Modernity of Pastoralism in East Africa Today: Property, Mobility and the New Territoriality. He said that the Pastoralism is an adaptation to arid lands, and in Africa pastoral patterns of mobility, settlement, and land use is shaped by the degree of aridity. Pastoral mobility varies along a continuum from very frequent movement to only seasonal mobility to almost sedentary husbandry. In East Africa, forms of cooperation and territorial organization vary with a society’s core institutions, with groups such as the Nuer and the Somali characterized by segmentary lineage organization, Oromo by a generation-grading system, and the Maasai and other Nilotic societies by an age-set system.
After examining diversity in pastoral systems in East Africa, he pointed out several broader perspectives in anthropology that bear on our understanding of contemporary dynamics of social change in Africa’s arid lands, especially the relationship of pastoralists and the culture of modernity. The first question addresses recent attempts to see processes of globalization, including increased trans-national mobility, migration, refugee flows and cultural exchanges, as challenging understanding of societies as bounded and territorialized. The second question focuses on the related but quite different assumption, which advocates sedentarization, that continuing mobility threatens the modernization of pastoralists. The third question focuses on the discursive “construction” of the pastoral image in “anti-modern” terms (as having a supposed anti-market mentality, an irrational perspective on herd management, and a pre-modern approach to land ownership), which from the perspective of the State and the development industry serves to undermine pastoral land rights. Countering these positions, the paper proposes that pastoralists are quite modern in following adaptive rationality in land use, conservation, markets and openness to global trends, but are most threatened by land loss, which in turn stimulates increasing conflict. On the conclusion, Prof. John G. Galaty mentioned that the notion of modernity is too often used in the African context less as a scientific construct defined by increasing productivity and economic progress and more to discredit arid-land pastoralists. In this regard, pastoralists should be seen not just as a society characterized by a form of livelihood but also as a rural class fighting to retain its land base.
There were 20 scholars and graduated students from CASS attended this roundtable seminar. Besides the discussion of Pastoralism, they also exchanged views with Canadian scholars on the environmental issues, First Nations studies and medical system in Canada.
Prof. DU Fachun, Vice Secretary-General of the Association of Canadian Studies in China, chaired the seminar and hosted a welcome dinner to McGill University Professors.
Prof. John G. Galaty’s research focuses on East Africa, with primary emphasis on Kenya and Tanzania, secondarily Uganda and Ethiopia. He served as Secretary of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples at its inception, and later as President of the Canadian Association of African Studies. He also served as Associate Dean and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and now is the Director of the Centre for Society, Technology and Development, McGill University.
(Written by DU Fachun, IEA/CASS)