On Not Knowing Zoonotic Diseases: Pastoralists' Ethnoveterinary Knowledge in the Far North Region of Cameroon

Abstract

In this article, we consider the implications of Murray Last’s (1981) Knowing About Not Knowing for the study of ethnoveterinary knowledge of mobile pastoralists in the Far North Region of Cameroon. Specifically, we ask two interrelated questions: (1) what is the nature of this knowledge, and (2) what is the best way to study it? We conducted a study of pastoralists’ knowledge of human and animal infectious diseases to evaluate the claim that mobile pastoralists in the Chad Basin do not have a concept for zoonotic diseases. We used a combination of free lists and semi-structured interviews to study pastoralists’ knowledge. The results suggest that pastoralists do not have a concept for zoonotic diseases. Moreover, we found considerable variation in pastoralists’ ethnoveterinary knowledge and examples of not knowing, which contrasts with previous studies that do not describe much variation in ethnoveterinary knowledge. In our discussion, we consider to what extent descriptions of ethnoveterinary knowledge are the product of researchers’ conceptual framework and methodology.

Medical pluralism and livestock health: ethnomedical and biomedical veterinary knowledge among East African agropastoralists

“…Among the Nu people of China, gender-based variability in ethnoveterinary knowledge are consistent with division of labor differences [41]. Informants in other studies have claimed that children who attend school have less traditional veterinary knowledge [63], which is consistent with some findings from ethnobotany as well as a recent study of Maasai students [65]. …”

“…Nevertheless, livestock-keeping populations hold extensive knowledge of livestock disease prevention, diagnosis, and both traditional and novel biomedical treatments [7, 35, 38, 40, 57–61]. Studies quantifying expertise and cultural consensus have documented high levels with respect to EVM [38, 62] but lower levels for VB [63]. Among Kikuyu farmers of Kenya, high consensus was found for what plants were used to treat anaplasmosis, East Coast Fever and ectoparasites [38].…”

“…Among Kikuyu farmers of Kenya, high consensus was found for what plants were used to treat anaplasmosis, East Coast Fever and ectoparasites [38]. In contrast, Fulbe pastoralists displayed a lack of knowledge on “Western” disease concepts, specifically, whether livestock diseases can be zoonotic [63]. Most ethnoveterinary research has gathered data from “experts” (e.g., traditional healers) meaning there is little variation in which the correlates of expertise can be examined [8, 64].…”

Quality of veterinary pharmaceuticals and their use by pastoralists in the Far North Region of Cameroon

“…Transhumant pastoralists were selected from a database which contained names of camp leaders of the Far North Region of Cameroon available at the Centre d' Appui à la Recherche et au Pastoralisme (CARPA), Maroua (Moritz et al 2013). This database consisted of 157 names of camp leaders in alphabetical order.…”

“…In this region, where the rate of extreme poverty is the highest in the country (41%), livestock production is one of the main activities and represents the second highest source of cash income to the rural populations after cotton (Ziébé et al 2005;GESP 2009). To treat livestock diseases, pastoralists use a variety of veterinary medications that, generally, they administer themselves (Moritz et al 2013;Tomdieu 2013;Vougat 2013). These veterinary medications are usually sold by untrained vendors in livestock markets.…”