Habits of the hunters: the biopolitics of combatting predation amongst small stock farmers in southern Namibia

Abstract

The jackal is renowned for its cleverness in predating on livestock. Jackal hunting became an institutionalised practice at a time when most of Namibia’s agricultural lands were fenced under the colonial administration. By keeping the socio-ecological history of colonialism in mind, this paper introduces hunting in southern Namibia as a game of territoriality in which the jackal and the hunter always try to outmaneuver each other. Jackal hunting is also analysed as a site for social and racial differentiation, cultural capital and an embodied practice that illustrates the many contradictions embedded in the postcolonial scheme for community development through biodiversity conservation. Together these considerations attempt to introduce rural postcolonial Namibia as a biopolitical landscape in which the logics of power are shown to be manifest in the technologies involved with animal governance and killing, the semiotic currencies of animality and labour, and the agency of the notorious jackal.

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