Creatures great and small. Cattle, microbes and veterinarians as entangled life forms in the history of northern Namibia.
Abstract
What does it mean when your animals smell like rotten meat? When they “putrefy from the inside out”? Using archival and ethnographic materials this seminar takes up the case of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP). The nature of the disease, the ambitions of a new profession, and the perceived remoteness of the Namibian-Angolan borderland led the colonial administration to engage in a series of experiments that at once were biological, social and political. So did the region’s inhabitants.
Bio
Steven Van Wolputte is professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Recent publications include an edited volume on African Futures (2022, with Clemens Greiner and Michael Bollig) and a graphic novel (2025, with Rick Jobs) on adventure and imperialism in interbellum France.
