This article considers a broad perspective of “One Health” that includes local and animal knowledge. Drawing from various colonial efforts to link human, animal, and environmental health, it first shows that the current “One Health” initiative has its roots in colonial engagement and coincides with a need to secure the health of administrators (controlling that of local populations), while pursing use of resources. In our contemporary period of repeated epidemic outbreaks, we then discuss the need for greater inclusion of social science knowledge for a better understanding of complex socio-ecological systems. We show how considering anthropology and allied sub-disciplines (anthropology of nature, medical anthropology, and human-animal studies) highlights local knowledge on biodiversity as well as the way social scientists investigate diversity in relation to other forms of knowledge. Acknowledging recent approaches, specifically multispecies ethnography, the article then aims to include not only local knowledge but also non-human knowledge for a better prevention of epidemic outbreaks. Finally, the conclusion stresses the need to adopt the same symmetrical approach to scientific and profane knowledge as a way to decolonize One Health, as well as to engage in a more-than-human approach including non-human animals as objects-subjects of research.

In the last twenty years, a growing number of captive elephants have tested positive for tuberculosis (TB) in various institutions worldwide, causing public health concerns. This article discusses two localities where this concern has produced significant mobilizations to ask about the postcolonial resonances of this global response. The first case focuses on epidemiological studies of elephant TB in Laos launched by international organizations involved in conservation, and on the role of traditional elephant workers (mahouts) in the daily care for elephants. The second describes the finding by veterinarians of two elephants suspected of TB infection in a French zoo and the mobilization of animal rights activists against the euthanasia of the pachyderms. The article shows that while, in the recent past, in France elephants were considered markers of exoticism and in Laos as coworkers in the timber industry, they are now considered to be endangered subjects in need of care, compassion, and conservation. This analysis contributes to the anthropology of relations between humans and elephants through the study of a rare but fascinating zoonosis.

This book proposes a unique and immersive multispecies ethnography of the cooperative interaction between the Khamti and elephants in Northeast India. It is based on extended research fieldwork, which attempts not only to describe how the Khamti establish working relationships with elephants, but also considers the involvement of animals in this joint-venture. Through a step-by-step approach, the book addresses different aspects of the interspecies working unit from the beginning of Khamti-elephant association through to its evolvement at work. Back and forth from village to forest, through rich and meticulous descriptions, Nicolas Lainé brings the reader up close in following the capture of a juvenile forest elephant, documenting its transformation into a village elephant. In this unique way, Lainé shows how the initial human-animal bonds evolve and persist at work as a two-way, reciprocated process. The adopted multi-disciplinary approach allows thinking the human-elephant working unit in terms of intersubjective engagement. In its analysis, Nicolas Lainé took into consideration of the cognitive capacities and corporeal capabilities of humans and elephants, their reciprocal influences, and the representations that arise from specific contexts in which interspecies communication and collaboration is manifest. Hence, the proposition on interspecies labour sheds new light not only with respect to what we know (or we think we know) about animals, but also modifies our idea of domestication. At the workplace, humans and animals not only partake in a common world, but that they produce this world together and transform it through their collaboration. Beyond this, the book shows how the quality of shared living conditions for both animal and human are intrinsically linked. It opens doors to a new approach of species conservation and the realization of a very current and widespread aspiration: that of extending the mutually beneficial modalities of existence of humans and animals in their shared environment.

This chapter ethnographically explores the relations between humans and elephants in logging operations in terms of interspecies labour, presenting elephants as collaborating participants rather than merely animate instruments. This involves examining labour in terms of cooperation rather than coordination, to avoid the merely instrumental consideration of articulated operations, and conduct rather than behaviour, to avoid simplistic Pavlovian interpretations of conditioned responses to environmental stimuli. The approach, informed by recent research on elephant sociality and cognition, allows for analysis in terms of interactive understanding. Revealing elephants as consciously intentional colleague capable of withdrawing their cooperation, this chapter also shows the partiality of accounts of animal labour as only involving alienation and exploitation. Furthermore, the worksite is revealed as a space of interspecies relations in which identities are co-produced, and which cannot simply be reduced to human domination.

Debates about emerging infectious diseases often oppose natural conceptions of zoonotic reservoirs with cultural practices bringing humans into contact with animals. This article compares the representations of cross-species pathogens at ontological levels below the opposition between nature and culture. It describes the perceptions of distinctions between interiority and physicality, between wild and domestic, and between sick and dead in three different contexts where human societies manage animal diseases: Australia, Laos and Mongolia. Our article also argues that zoonotic pathogens are one of the entities mobilized by local knowledge to attenuate troubles in ordinary relations with animals, and shows that the conservation of cultural heritage is a tool of mitigation for infectious diseases emerging in animal reservoirs.

Prenant appui sur une ethnographie portant sur l’étude de différentes séquences de travail réalisées par les Khamti et par leurs éléphants dans le nord-est indien, cet article vise à interroger les implications d’un « travailler avec » les animaux. En s’appuyant sur des enregistrements vidéo, des entretiens et des anecdotes collectées sur le terrain, deux des principales activités réalisées par et avec les éléphants dans la société Khamti sont présentées et analysées : les travaux forestiers et la capture d’éléphants à dos d’éléphant. Les analyses montrent que pour chacune de ces activités, l’expérience partagée et l’interconnaissance des pachydermes et des humains avec lesquels ils font équipe est déterminante pour la réalisation de tâches. Ces différents éléments permettent de soutenir que cornacs ou propriétaires et éléphants ne se contentent pas de coordonner leurs actions de manière « mécanique » : l’importance de l’autonomie, la prise d’initiatives, qui sont autant d’éléments à la base de leur relation, donnent lieu à une véritable coopération inter-espèces, autrement dit à la formation de collectifs de travail inter-espèces.