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Accepted Paper:
Rethinking commodification in human-nonhuman relations: the case of Borana herders in Southern Ethiopia
Yayi Zheng
(Aarhus University)
While commodification often creates alienation, Borana herders continue their intimate relations with cattle. Does the market economy provide herders with a means to exercise a novel form of dominance? How could it contribute to the understanding of classic human-cattle equation?
Paper long abstract:
While it is commonly observed that the process of commodification creates alienation, my fieldwork with Borana herders in Southern Ethiopia suggests that their intimate relations with cattle continue. During the period of the socialist Derg, Ethiopian government organised and purchased cattle from Borana herders, to both fund its own economy through trading with the Middle East, and to support the war against the Somali. Borana herders did not transform their intimate relations with cattle into a form of commodified alienation. Instead, many of them utilised it as a strategy to enlarge their herd. They sold their cattle in the market, earned the cash, with which they purchased calves. Cattle was not turned into ordinary goods. However, the mode of herd management was transformed. In order to enlarge the herd, they could now not only rely on the reproductivity of the herd, but also the market. With ethnographic evidence, I ask if the market economy provides herders with a means to exercise a form of dominance that did not exist previously? How could this layer of understanding contribute to the classic human-cattle equation in the studies of pastoralism in Africa? And ultimately, how could we understand the role of the state in terms of negotiating herders’ relations with their cattle?