Maloti-Drakensberg environments are highly localised, susceptible to changes in regional weather patterns and, through marked variations of topography, prone to imposing differing conditions even within relatively small areas. The resulting ‘archipelago’ of ecosystems, with often correspondingly specialised endemics, poses an observational challenge to research and governance institutions inclined to process these conditions in aggregate, for whom localised variances may be difficult to parse. Local indigenous, or ‘contextual’, communities, by contrast, live these conditions, having developed idiomatic frameworks for processing and communicating environmental complexity. For research, knowledge-making partnerships with such communities thus have great potential, offering observational and data-processing capacities that stem from an ontological emplacement in situ. One significant complication is that some regional idiomatic systems used to classify the world have an inherently social basis, recognising the human element as just one layer of a greater socioecological whole, contrasting common Western-materialist approaches. This study presents classifications made of ‘river snakes’ among a range of Maloti-Drakensberg communities, as examples of where idiomatic systems may differ from research perspectives. The instability and contingency of these classifications speaks to a contextual/behavioural taxonomic system; one that makes things what they are by virtue of where and who they are to the observer. Given the role of ‘river snakes’ and the specialists who classify them in the (re)production of local knowledge systems, these factors require attention from researchers seeking constructive engagement.

Maloti-Drakensberg 环境高度局部化，容易受到区域天气模式变化的影响，并且由于地形的显着变化，即使在相对较小的区域内也容易施加不同的条件。由此产生的生态系统“群岛”，通常具有相应的专门地方病，对倾向于综合处理这些条件的研究和治理机构构成了观察挑战，对他们来说，局部差异可能难以解析。相比之下，当地土著或“上下文”社区生活在这些条件下，已经开发出处理和传达环境复杂性的惯用框架。因此，在研究方面，与这些社区建立知识创造伙伴关系具有巨大的潜力，就地。一个重大的复杂问题是，一些用于对世界进行分类的区域惯用系统具有固有的社会基础，将人类因素视为更大的社会生态整体的一层，与西方常见的唯物主义方法形成对比。本研究展示了一系列 Maloti-Drakensberg 社区中“河蛇”的分类，作为惯用系统可能与研究观点不同的例子。这些分类的不稳定性和偶然性说明了上下文/行为分类系统；一种根据地点和人员使事物成为它们的样子他们是观察者。鉴于“河蛇”的作用以及在地方知识系统的（再）生产中对它们进行分类的专家，这些因素需要寻求建设性参与的研究人员注意。