ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of domestication as a potential framework in rethinking the relationship between game and wildlife, the role of animals in the making of human social identities, and moral hierarchies attributed to the taming of nature. It traces the gradual development of wildlife production in a small rural community in western Zimbabwe, fictively dubbed Mlilo. The chapter provides a closer examination of one particular species, or the cultural politics of lions, in identifying the delicate balance between domestication and the illusion of the wild that must be maintained in ensuring the economic, cultural, and political logics of wildlife production. The confluence among issues of wildlife, game, domestication, and property has particular resonance in southern Africa, where the politics of wildlife and game have been foundational in the creation of postindependence national identities and economies. Successful domestication implies mastery, knowledge, rigor, and a strong willfulness, or arrogance of perspective.
