summary
This project investigates the dynamics of multiple modes of knowing through a case study of conservation and disease control in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) in southern Africa. It specifically looks at foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a disease associated with wildlife which can be transmitted to livestock. It zooms in on the tensions between the conservationist quest for habitat connectivity and the disease control aspiration to contain animal diseases. The project is built around three main empirical studies, each looking at a specific contact zone where biodiversity and biosecurity logics encounter one another, produce difference, and configure collective human and non-human futures. The first study looks at the historical construction of wildlife (specifically buffalo) as disease reservoir and the ways in which this knowledge has legitimized disease control interventions. The second study then zooms in on one of these interventions – a fence that aims to separate buffalo and cattle – and the contestations around it. The third and final study focuses on cattle husbandry and the current effort to reintroduce herding to tackle the problem of ineffective and environmentally destructive veterinary fences. Taken together, the research draws attention to the different modes of knowing and their dynamics, asking whose knowledge matters where and when, and with what socio-material effects? The research draws from ten months of fieldwork in Botswana, engaging with policy-makers, scientists, NGOs, veterinarians, farmers and cattle. A substantial time period is spent in Habu – a community nearby a veterinary fence and a pilot site for the reintroduction of herding – to produce an ethnographic account of the experiences of actors at the frontline of wildlife conservation and FMD control.
partners
The project is part of the ERC-funded Rewilding the Anthropocene project, led by Prof Dr. Michael Bollig, based at University of Cologne: www.rewilding.de
Project duration: 01-02-2022 - 31-01-2025.
who's working on this project
Contact: Wisse van Engelen
