Summary

Rural communities of Zimbabwe depend for their subsistence on the use of both domesticated and wild biological resources. In agro-pastoral societies – such as the Shangaan – the evolutionary histories of humans and domesticated species are tightly interwoven. Cattle and crops depend on humans for their reproduction while humans depend on these biological entities for their own economic, social and symbolic reproduction. While many studies have been dedicated to the influence of humans on the evolutionary history of wild and domesticated species, few have focused on how local farmers and herders actually consider the underlying mechanisms of the biological and genetic processes of domestication.

The purpose of this anthropological research project is to investigate the concepts that Shangaan agro-pastoralists from the south-east Lowveld (living on the edge of the Gonarezhou National Park) have about the transmission, from one generation to the next, of the visible traits (both morphological and behavioural) and invisible essence of the domesticated species (cattle and sorghum) they manipulate daily. In a nutshell, what are the indigenous theories of what we, as scientists, call ‘genetics’? 

Furthermore, the aim is to compare models of folk-genetics for humans, domesticated species and a few keystone wild species. Is transmission from generation to generation conceived of as similar for all these species? Are some traits considered as inheritable across species?

Ethnographic fieldwork will be carried out in the Chiredzi district among the Chilonga Shangaan Communities (Matibi II Communal Area – Ward 6 & 7). Three different, yet complementary, lines of enquiry will be investigated. First, in a descriptive perspective, I will seek to document how variations between individuals (within domesticated and wild species) are perceived and described vernacularly. This work implies a thorough description of local cattle breeds as well as sorghum landraces; it will be carried out with the assistance of the DR&SS Matopos and Chiredzi Research Institutes. Second, through participant-observation and semi-structured interviews I will analyse local breeding and selection practices. The role human-wildlife conflicts play in shaping farmers and herders breeding practices and determining the traits they seek to maintain in their cattle and crops will be of particular interest. Finally, from these two lines of investigation I will seek to uncover what are the folk-models that locally make sense of morphological and behavioural variations between individuals of a same domesticated or wild species.