What is it about?
Most history books treat animals as resources or objects. Oppositely, this chapter centres the subjective experiences of cattle in southern Africa. By combining an empathy-based animal history methodology with my 30-day immersive observations of a free-living herd of cattle, it sets the scene for how colonialism fundamentally altered the emotional and physical lives of cattle themselves.
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Photo by Rishabh Dharmani on Unsplash
Why is it important?
For animals in southern Africa, colonialism never ended. But to understand how colonialism impacts animals requires positioning animals as felt, subjective, experiencing beings, and then using diverse sources to credibly narrate cattle's history. This chapter offers new vistas and a unique methodology for writing about cattle and animals as experiencing historical subjects.
Perspectives
I hope my approach to writing animal history enables others to perceive animals more empathetically, to observe animals with awe and wonder, and to feel emboldened to write animal history that recognises animals as subjective, sentient beings with their own histories, as beings who also feel and experience life and who, like us, want to be safe and well.
Michael Glover
University of the Free State
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Experiences That Matter, November 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004742925_002.
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