Socio-Technical Objects at the Crossroads Between 'Universal' Policy Models for Livestock Production Development, Local Practices and Dynamics of Change

Abstract

Relationships between public policy, resource management and the larger economic contexts remain poorly understood in the African drylands. A better understanding of changes in pastoral systems requires shifting the focus from a static and linear analysis to a dynamic one encompassing processes, relationships and contexts. A three-year fieldwork research experience on three different case studies in Senegal has led to the identification of three material objects at the interface between pastoral systems and development interventions: cattle breeds, feeding and milk. Such objects are at the heart of pastoral systems, and are typically crucial to policymakers' attempts to intensify pastoral production. By raising the example of cattle feeding in Northern Senegal, I suggest that a methodological and analytical framework focusing on the socio-political dimensions of technical objects can be useful to analyse the encounter between the linear and universal input/output rationality of livestock development models and those of pastoralists, based on the embeddedness of socio-political, economic and environmental variability. Such an approach, I thus argue, can be used to deconstruct production models, highlighting the context of production and the modes of operation of the social actors. This could open up a space to describe social and technical change beyond abstract and 'universal' development models, and to promote more inclusive and empirically based policy-making.