Introducing improvised pragmatism of care: animal health, epistemic frictions, and veterinary governance

This article introduces the concept of improvised pragmatism of care to analyze how Indigenous communities, living in and around protected areas navigate animal health amidst ecological disruption and limited institutional capacities. Drawing on focus group discussions conducted in 2024 in seven communities of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area in Mozambique, we show how livestock care emerges not as static tradition nor simple adoption of biomedical protocols, but as dynamic practices that combine embodied diagnosis, herbal repertoires, and selective engagement with veterinary interventions. These plural strategies constitute resilient responses to epistemic injustice and ontological displacement in a conservation landscape. Improvised pragmatism of care captures this mode of governance from below: an active reconstitution of knowledge and practice under conditions of uncertainty. Our analysis cautions against treating animal health as an abstract, detachable component independent of human–animal relations or as separable from historical trajectories and contemporary territorial and environmental management policies. By foregrounding community improvisation as both epistemic and political practice, this study contributes to veterinary anthropology and health social sciences, highlighting how Indigenous actors can sustain multispecies health in contested landscapes marked by displacement and inequality.