Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5073605 Geoforum 2015 10 Pages PDF
Abstract

•Analyses mosquito nets as a 'humanitarian goods'.•Ethnographically locates negative externalities of framing nets in global health logic.•Identifies local economy and ecology as disentangled from nets as humanitarian goods.•Questions the dominance of insecticide-treated nets in malaria control.•Advocates a more modest approach to malaria management.

Malaria management involves the continuous calibration of micro-environments, namely of the entangled habitats of mosquitoes, parasites and humans. This article focuses on humans and mosquitoes as unruly actors of environmental management. Drawing on economic sociology, I show how framing mosquito nets as 'humanitarian goods' disentangles particular economic and ecological realities. Juxtaposing politico-economic processes of mosquito net production and distribution with the emergence of insecticide resistance in mosquitoes I show how their disentanglement creates unintended social and disease realities. This suggests rethinking the spatio-temporal politics of environmental management of mosquitoes and malaria, and nuances the patterns of how exactly humanitarian goods 'do good'.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
Authors
,