ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Feeling Mosquitoes: The Politics of Dengue and Human-Mosquito Relationality in the Garden City

• In Event: (Re)thinking Histories of Disease in the “Tropics” (III)

English Abstract

The modern nation-state of Singapore is seen as an exemplar of successful vector repression strategies. Marked by highly interventionist governance of citizen and vector bodies, the reconfiguration of state-citizen relations and multispecies relationality in dengue control has been central to Singapore’s nation building and hygienic modernity. The latest iteration of this endeavour is Project Wolbachia, a biotechnology that effectively “sterilizes” male mosquitoes using bacteria and reproduces them in “biofactories” to reduce dengue transmission. This Singaporean development reflects the historical and political role of science and technology in boarder uses of modified mosquitoes against disease in the Global South.

This paper thus situates Project Wolbachia within a longer history of technocratic governance in Singapore, which has been aiming to engineer “Garden City” aesthetics that is “Clean and Green” and “Mosquito Free”. Nevertheless, ethnographic investigations reveal that citizens continue to engage with mosquitoes through humor and storytelling, embodying ways of living with, not without, the mosquito in ways uncaptured by disciplinarian mechanisms or sociotechnical imaginaries. Interactions with state-led health education experiments like “The Mosquito Box” showcase how laughter, speculation, and physical interaction with mosquitoes prevails among public health officials and community members alike. Citizen reactions to Project Wolbachia reveal social, political, and material entanglements that are affective, politically animated, and socially embedded. The paper thus highlights the importance of ethnographic and multispecies perspectives in redefining zoonotic imaginaries and vector control in the tropics.

Author

• Xinyi Huang