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Though informal milk markets dominate the supply of marketed milk in most developing countries, they are largely discouraged by policies based on perceived quality and safety concerns. Kenya provides a prime example of stultifying regulations affecting milk markets. In spite of several derived benefits, regulations governing informal milk markets continue to be unfavourable due to unrealistic safety standards. The rationale for applying regulations modelled along those from industrialised countries where virtually all milk destined for the market is pasteurised and packaged, and the differential political power play between formal and informal sectors, is examined against evidence on consumption patterns, human health risks and benefits associated with informal milk markets.

This article aims to show how elements from the work of Michel Foucault and actor-network theory can be used as complementary strategies for grasping the constitution of the 'subject' and the 'social' through political technologies. In particular, it aims to show that the ontological separation of human from nonhuman and culture from nature is enacted within specific techniques of government, which can therefore be seen as ontological political technologies. This theoretical agenda is worked through empirical case materials in the form of a historical study of the British milk trade, which offers one particular example of how 'the social' has been inscribed within political assemblages. Using documentary analysis it examines the period from around 1890 to 1920 in dairy agriculture, showing how the modern 'social' was enacted within the sanitary drive for clean milk in the towns and cities, and especially within the struggle against zoonotic tuberculosis transmissible through dairy milk. In this sense the analysis is both a contribution to the theorisation of political technologies and an attempt to shift the terms of debate on these technologies substantially towards the ontological politics of knowing, classifying, and policing the human/social vis-Ã -vis the nonhuman Other.

This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).