The mosquito’s umwelt, or one monster’s standpoint ontology
2013; Elsevier BV; Volume: 48; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.11.028
ISSN1872-9398
AutoresIan Shaw, John Paul Jones, Melinda K. Butterworth,
Tópico(s)Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
ResumoMosquitoes are able to vector malaria and other diseases across the planet, leading to hundreds of thou- sands of deaths each year. Not only is this a challenging management problem, we also find it to be underlined by an important philosophical problem, namely: the impossibility of controlling ''life''. Influ- ential Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexkull wrote that every creature on Earth, from sea urchins to spi- ders, lives within a unique sphere of existence called an ''umwelt'', or ''surrounding world''. The umwelt defines the specificity of relations shared between an organism and its environment. Using this concept we complement existing work on monstrous natures in geography by arguing that ''monstrosity'' arises in the excesses and discontinuities between the mosquito's umwelt and the human efforts that seek to eliminate it. This finding arises from fieldwork undertaken with public health and vector control officials in the US state of Arizona over several years. Their focus on reducing mosquito breeding sites suggests the complex and emergent spatialities of the monstrous.
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