Frontcover
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Names of Common Diseases
List of Maps, Photographs & Tables
1 Introduction: African Local Knowledge & Veterinary Pluralism
Key contributions
Context: livestock diseases in South African history
Our research
Historiography: towards medical and environmental pluralism
Local knowledge and its limits
Understanding the causes and symptoms of livestock diseases
Livestock in African hands
Conclusion
2 Ticks, Tick-borne Diseases & the Limits of Local Knowledge
Introduction
Scientific understandings of ticks and efforts at control
From state compulsion to individual responsibility โ the changing role of the state in relation to dipping
Local knowledge about ticks and tick control
Conclusion
3 โThe Grave of the Cow is in the Stomachโ: Environment & Nutrition in the Explanation & Prevention of Livestock Diseases
Introduction
Old and new diseases
Identifying infection: (a) the problem of naming
Identifying infection: (b) contested clinical symptoms and post-mortem findings
Ideas about contagion, isolation and immunity
Environment and the seasonality of diseases
Conclusion
4 Transhumance, Animal Diseases & Environment
The context of transhumance
Transhumance and disease
The demise of transhumance: processes and arguments
Transhumance and grazing in Mbotyi
Trekking between mountains and plains in QwaQwa
Cattle posts in North West Province
Conclusion
5 Plants & Drugs: Medicating Livestock
Introduction: plants and biomedicines
The transfer of local knowledge: specialists, generations and gender
Transmission of biomedical knowledge and medicine
Choices of medicine: local medicines, biomedicines and other forms of treatment
Conclusion
6 Medicinal Plants: Their Selection & their Properties
Choice of plants
Plant medicines in North West Province
Plant medicines in QwaQwa
Plant medicines in the Eastern Cape
Conclusion
7 Animal Health & Ideas of the Supernatural
Introduction: Witchcraft and the ambient supernatural
Animal deaths and diseases associated with witchcraft
The ambient supernatural: Umkhondo in Mpondoland
Milking and the supernatural in Mbotyi
Conclusion
8 Gender, Space & the Supernatural
Introduction
Mohato in contemporary cattle-owning communities
Ideas about pollution and cattle disease in QwaQwa
Practices and challenges
Muthi to protect the kraal and the cattle
Conclusion
9 Conclusion
The dynamics of local knowledge
The limits of local knowledge
Recommendations for policy and practice
Appendices
Appendix 1: Recommendations
Appendix 2: African Ideas about Diseases and Conditions Associated with the Environment
Appendix 3: African Ideas about Supernatural Causation
Appendix 4: Plants and Diseases
Appendix 5: Non-Plant Remedies
Select Bibliography
Index
Backcover