This article examines the origins and evolution of the terroir approach as an organizing idea in development planning in West Africa. We consider the evolving meaning of the terroir concept in three distinct periods: as a research approach crafted in a French geographical school; as a site for research-development programmes, and, most recently, as a tool for conservation planning, territorial restructuring, and land privatization. An important shift in the meaning of the terroir concept is apparent in its evolving uses. For the terroir school, the terroir came to represent the socio-natural heritage of a group in which its social organization and pattern of resource use became inscribed in the landscape. The concept took on new meaning in the late-1980s as an appropriate location for on-farm research by agricultural development planners. The terroir became both an alternative research site and a setting for mobilizing rural populations to adopt new land management and farming techniques. The meaning of the concept shifted again in the 1990s with the advent of the gestion des terroirs approach. In the hands of conservation and development planners, the terroir was conceived of as a scale of intervention for a host of government, aid donor, and NGO programmes. In summary, a significant change in the meaning of the concept has taken place from one in which the notion of local heritage was dominant to one that emphasizes territory and boundary clarification.

This article examines the tensions between memory, identity and livelihoods in the making and transformation of cultural patrimony among Fulani cattle keepers of West Africa. Two areas of cattle breeding are examined: the Grassfields of Cameroon and south-western Burkina Faso. Studies on Fulani livestock raising suggest that each group possesses a particular cattle breed that has not changed with time. While the Fulani are thought to be conservative pastoralists, their livestock management practices suggest otherwise. They cross and change cattle breeds in order to adapt to new ecological or socio-political conditions. These strategies of adaptation and adjustment of cattle seem to be in opposition to strategies of heritage conservation. The relationship between Fulani pastoralists and their cattle breeds shows that an animal patrimony is a social product that is susceptible to being reworked. Fulani cattle breeding shows that new crossbreeds can result in the construction of a new heritage over the medium and long term as long as it is transmitted from the present to the next generation and preserved for a period of time.

J. Boutrais-Remapping the Fulani. Owing to migrations from rural areas, the geographical distribution of African populations has been changing. The Fulani's has changed considerably, whence the need to update maps. To this end, a map is roughed out of the "Fulani archipelago" as it now exists. Unlike past maps, this article does not overlook isolated groups in central Africa. It places the dispersion of the Fulani in a historical perspective reaching back to the 19th century. Major changes in this geographical distribution have taken place to the north and then to the south of areas already inhabited by Fulani. These recent trends lead us to hypothesize that the Fulani are distributed along a series of meridians; but this hypothesis needs further investigation.

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J. Boutrais -The Adamawa Fulani and Stock Raising : From Herding Ideology to Economie Diversification. Even when settled, the Fulani have such an intense relation with raising cattle that it tends to transfigure reality. Since this people arrived on the Adamawa Plateau, the position of pastoralism in their society has changed, periods of herding being followed, in an almost cyclic rhythm, by trends toward depastoralization. The importance of raising livestock varies as a function of lineage stratification. Furthermore, the geo-graphical distribution of the Fulani around the political center is linked to pastoralism. A cross-sectional analysis of the Ngaoundere lamidat brings to light this opposition between center and periphery ; but the percentage of Fulani herders also reflects each cross-section's ecological context. Though still defining themselves as a pastoral people, the Adamawa Fulani now engage in many other activities. In rural areas, agriculture is pursued, often along with herding. Trading, especially if related to cattle, is also attracting more and more people. The Fulani also value religious knowledge to vary-ing degrees.