Short Abstract

This panel focuses on the development of African livestock production industries and global-oriented marketization that is increasingly shaping pastoral practices, rural and urban livelihoods, and natural environments, including wildlife and their habitats.

Long Abstract

Livestock production has long been central to many African societies and the study of Africa. This panel focuses on the development of livestock production industries and global-oriented marketization that is increasingly shaping pastoral practices, rural and urban livelihoods, and natural environments, including wildlife and their habitats.

State and development interventions have promoted productivity and marketization, often transforming livestock, and people's culturally embedded relations to them, into commodified entities abstracted from their lifeworlds. Agricultural policies, production infrastructures, veterinary disease control measures, and movement licenses – among other factors – have been put in place to facilitate the entry of African livestock products into global markets. These mechanisms have come to play a significant role in shaping the social and environmental worlds of livestock, their keepers, their landscapes, and wildlife. More recently, prolonged droughts and climate change have revitalized discussions on livestock breeds, grazing practices, mobility, land use and the environmental sustainability of livestock production.

We invite papers across different disciplines and from different geographic contexts to explore ungulate prisms through histories of production and contemporary global commercialization of livestock in Africa. Papers are encouraged to explore a diverse range of topics that may include, but are not limited to:

Changing human-livestock relations;

Colonial and postcolonial history of livestock production;

Privatization of the Commons;

Rangeland health and changes to grazing patterns;

Livestock breeds and breeding techniques;

Veterinary disease controls;

Impacts on cultural and/or natural landscapes;

Tensions between traditional and industrial practices of livestock production;

Climate change adaptation;

Human-wildlife conflict and wildlife loss.

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