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ABSTRACTEconomic anthropologists often look to goods that resist commodification to understand how culture determines what can be exchanged and on what terms. Livestock in Africa have served as prominent examples of such "recalcitrant commodities." In this article, I argue that goods that do not resist commodification—what I call "clean‐break commodities"—also illuminate the culture of the economy. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork in Lesotho, I contrast the reticence to sell cattle in African societies, long the focus of anthropologists as well as experts in conservation and development, with the prodigious sale of sheep and goats (i.e., ovicaprids). Narrow focus on charismatic cattle cultures obscures both the historically shifting commodification of ovicaprids and the economic dreamworlds in which they become enrolled. Ovicaprid cultures morphed over time as rural Basotho navigated their country's structural transitions in the regional political economy—from recently colonized ethnostate to labor reserve for South African mining industries and to defunct labor reserve. Just as the resistance of cattle to commodification described by James Ferguson as the "bovine mystique" opened a window into social life in the labor reserve, the facile commodification of ovicaprids that I call the "ovicaprine mystique" does the same throughout Lesotho's history. [bovine mystique, livestock, commodification, postindustry, sub‐Saharan Africa]

Economic anthropologists often look to goods that resist commodification to understand how culture determines what can be exchanged and on what terms. Livestock in Africa have served as prominent examples of such "recalcitrant commodities." In this article, I argue that goods that do not resist commodification—what I call "clean‐break commodities"—also illuminate the culture of the economy. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork in Lesotho, I contrast the reticence to sell cattle in African societies, long the focus of anthropologists as well as experts in conservation and development, with the prodigious sale of sheep and goats (i.e., ovicaprids). Narrow focus on charismatic cattle cultures obscures both the historically shifting commodification of ovicaprids and the economic dreamworlds in which they become enrolled. Ovicaprid cultures morphed over time as rural Basotho navigated their country's structural transitions in the regional political economy—from recently colonized ethnostate to labor reserve for South African mining industries and to defunct labor reserve. Just as the resistance of cattle to commodification described by James Ferguson as the "bovine mystique" opened a window into social life in the labor reserve, the facile commodification of ovicaprids that I call the "ovicaprine mystique" does the same throughout Lesotho's history. [bovine mystique, livestock, commodification, postindustry, sub‐Saharan Africa]

For over a century the enclave state of Lesotho has acted as a labor reserve for South Africa's mining industries. With the decline of the migrant labor economy in the 1990s, many people in Lesotho lost their primary source of income: wage remittances from family members working over the border. During that same period, the Lesotho government hung its hopes on becoming another kind of reserve for South Africa: a water reservoir. A Treaty between the two countries initiated the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), a multi-billion dollar effort to dam and divert water from the mountains of Lesotho to the arid industrial areas south of Johannesburg. However, the rise of the LHWP has raised concerns that degradation stemming from land mismanagement in the upstream catchment could imperil the water economy, prompting erosion control programs and land use reforms. This dissertation examines the logics and consequences of such programs, the water production infrastructure of which they form a part, and the broader ecology of life in an economic "periphery." Based upon 15 months of ethnographic field research, I show how efforts to produce water commodities rely on colonial soil conservation techniques that represent modes of governance more than ecological measures per se. Following the colonial legacy of figuring Lesotho as a politically walled-off but economically dependent territory, the goal of governance then and now is to maintain a relationship between nonsustainable multispecies livelihoods, on the one hand, and political quietude, on the other. Elites in Lesotho construct water commodification as a national priority, thereby arguing that erosion control is necessary. Erosion control is presented as a technical matter when in fact it is a political one, as nonsustainability is not a failure of local management but rather an architectural feature of a regional political economy: land degradation stems from Lesotho's historical experience as a "periphery" to the South African "core." Settler colonialism by white Afrikaners; population growth and class struggle within Basotho society; and colonial promotion of wool and mohair production together put intense pressure on the mountain rangelands where LHWP dams are now sited. Today's nonsustainable livelihoods are maintained through the innovative livestock production strategies of rural Basotho, and through a tenuous politics of distribution established by elites, whereby payments for water are channeled toward concentration and corruption but trickle down to rural livelihoods through development and environmental management programs. In making this argument, I present ethnographic and historical accounts of the symbolic production of water as a national natural resource; the development of soil conservation work parties called fato-fato; the establishment of rangeland management associations; peasant and state understandings of land degradation; and the development of a wool, mohair, and mutton export economy that promotes rural livelihoods but also rangeland degradation. My findings contribute to interdisciplinary literature on state-making, environmental conservation, and natural resource politics by describing the symbolic and material infrastructures required for water production, and by showing how history and political economy insinuate ecological processes.

On the western edge of the former brown coal mines in Søby, an area in central Jutland in Denmark that is now protected as a natural and cultural heritage site, a public eyesore hides behind dirt mounds and fences: the waste disposal and recycling facility known as AFLD Fasterholt. Established in the 1970s, when prevailing perceptions were that the entire mining area was a polluted wasteland, the AFLD Fasterholt waste and recycling plant has since changed in response to new EU waste management regulations, as well as the unexpected proliferation of non-human life in the area. Based on field research at this site—an Anthropocene landscape in the heartland of an EU-configured welfare-state—this article is a contribution to the multispecies ethnography and political ecology of wastelands. We argue that "waste" is a co-species, biopolitical happening—a complex symbolic, political, biological, and technological history. We combine ethnographic fieldwork, social history, wildlife observation, and spatial analysis to follow what we call "undomestication," the reconfiguration of human projects by more-than-human forms of life into novel assemblies of species, politics, resources, and technologies. Waste landscapes, this article argues, are the result of unheralded multispecies collaboration that can be traced empirically by attending ethnographically to multispecies forms of "gain-making," the ways in which humans and other species leverage difference to find economic and ecological opportunity.

Peut-il y avoir apprentissage organisationnel sans leadership politique ? Le cas de la réforme du ministère de l'Intérieur sud-africain Cet article traite de la transformation des « cultures institutionnelles » dans les administrations publiques. Cette dynamique est explorée dans le contexte des réformes des administrations publiques post-apartheid, et plus particulièrement de la gestion des migrations par le ministère de l'Intérieur sud-africain. L'article évalue les effets d'une réforme de nature politique destinée à inculquer un nouvel éthos de « service public » sur les perceptions et les pratiques des fonctionnaires. L'article conclut que les facteurs structurels n'expliquent que marginalement les difficultés rencontrées. C'est bien plutôt l'incapacité du leadership politique à pallier le manque d'un sens de mission commune et l'ensemble des effets non anticipés et contre-productifs de la réforme elle-même qui expliquent l'incapacité à amender les perceptions et les comportements des bureaucrates.