Pratiques ethno-vétérinaires sur les éléphants au Laos

Abstract

This article aims to report on a set of ethnoveterinary practices of mahouts and elephant health specialists (mo) in Laos. It is based on an ethnographic survey conducted in the villages of Tai-Lue and Tai-Lao in Sayabouri province in the northwest of the country. The corpus presented highlights similarities in the treatment of others both in terms of ritual medicine and remedies. The survey also shows that in villages the men in charge of these animals do not claim to have any influence on the overall health of the pachyderms. According to them, elephants have a rich knowledge of the forest world, and are able to complete their treatments on their own. This aspect invited me to broaden the survey to focus on the elephant diet, based on the mahouts' knowledge of it. The conclusion emphasizes the need to include local knowledge in elephant conservation, in addition to biomedical knowledge. Drawing on the long cohabitation of humans and elephants in Asia, it also suggests hypotheses on the sharing and co-constuction of medical knowledge between humans and elephants, as well as their epistemological implications for apprehending local knowledge in anthropological inquiry.

Keywords

• ethno-veterinary practices
• knowledge (human and non-human)
• pharmacopeia
• elephant
• Laos