Walking or Waiting? Topologies of the Breeding Ground in Malaria Control
Few places bear as much historical and scientific significance as the breeding ground, the accumulation of stagnant water where disease-carrying insects lay their eggs. Since the turn of the twentieth century, when mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus were identified as the vector of malaria transmissi...
| Veröffentlicht in: | Science as culture. - 1998. - 22(2013), 1 vom: 01. März, Seite 86-107 |
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| Format: | Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
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2013
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Science as culture |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article Dar es Salaam Topology doability malaria mosquitoes public health |
| Zusammenfassung: | Few places bear as much historical and scientific significance as the breeding ground, the accumulation of stagnant water where disease-carrying insects lay their eggs. Since the turn of the twentieth century, when mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus were identified as the vector of malaria transmission, these aquatic habitats have been a key object of epidemiological research and public health intervention against the disease. Yet the breeding ground can be incorporated into a number of different topologies, each implying a different spatialization of malaria and a distinct imagination of what kind of mosquito control is 'doable'. A contemporary example of malaria control in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, illuminates an essential tension between what we characterize as territorial and bionomic approaches to the breeding ground-that is, between control strategies premised on treating all mosquito habitats within a given region, and those that prioritize certain sites on the basis of their position within ecological networks. Each topology localizes the breeding ground by reference to a distinct set of relations, and thus advances an idiosyncratic understanding of what sort of research is worthwhile conducting and what kinds of intervention are sustainable. The multiple ways in which the breeding ground can become an object of research and action clarifies the role of topology as an infra-logic of public health, and makes explicit the politics implicit in efforts to bring different orders of the local to scale |
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| Beschreibung: | Date Revised 20.11.2019 published: Print Citation Status Publisher |
| ISSN: | 0950-5431 |