page_title: The Anti-Politics Machine
section_title: The Bovine Mystique
hierarchical_section_title: The Anti-Politics Machine / Development as "anti-politics machine" / The Bovine Mystique
caption_attribution_description: A herd of Nguni cattle.
context_page_description: The Anti-Politics Machine is a 1994 book by James Ferguson. This book is a critique of the concept of "development" in general, viewed through the lens of failed attempts, specifically the Thaba-Tseka Development Project in Lesotho from 1975–1984. He writes about the countless "development agencies" that have their hand in the so-called "Third World" but points out the consistent failure of these agencies to bring about any sort of economic stability. This is what Ferguson calls the "development discourse fantasy", which arises from backward logic.
context_section_description: The development project at the heart of Ferguson's analysis sought to introduce "improved livestock management." Development professionals noted that pastures were overgrazed, and the cattle raised were not sold in markets. Indeed, even during a prolonged drought, the farmers of Lesotho refused to sell. The project managers rationalized this in terms of what Ferguson calls the "Bovine Mystique": that local farmers were bound by traditional values that prevented them from entering the market. Their solution was to introduce markets, "superior" breeds of cattle, and privatize pasture.
  Ferguson provides an alternate explanation of the Bovine Mystique, by placing Lesotho in its place in the regional economy of South Africa. Lesotho's rich farmlands had been taken by South Africa, leaving it a land-locked, resource-poor country, whose citizens could make money only by working in South African mines. The work was dangerous and sporadic, and limited to men. These men had no bank accounts in which to invest for retirement - usually brought on by injury. They thus invested in cattle bought in South Africa and left with family in Lesotho. These cattle thus became placeholders for absent men, keeping them involved in local social networks. They refused to sell the cattle because they were retirement savings; if they were sold earlier, the money would quickly disappear to meet a variety of always urgent needs of their own or their neighbours. They refused to sell in the drought because they realized that the dumping of all cattle on the markets would depress prices and they would earn next to nothing; better to chance they would survive. The principal error of the development workers was to view cattle rearing as farming, rather than a retirement investment.
caption: South African cattle breed
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