Geographies of Insects and Institutions: Mosquito Governance in the U.S. Southwest

存在着一系列管理和缓解环境问题的制度体系，然而，新问题的快速变化、生态令人惊讶和空间复杂的特点造成了与早期形成的制度的严重错配。因此，尚不清楚的是，为了解决紧急问题，已经存在的官僚机构和治理结构在多大程度上得到了组织，并以何种方式加以组织。最近在美国爆发的西尼罗河病毒以及其他疾病的相关风险，包括登革热和一系列相关的脑炎疾病，就是这一问题的一个尖锐例子。该项目旨在探索与亚利桑那州南部蚊子的生物和气候地理相关的不同政府机构可用的具体治理地理。具体地说，这项研究假设有多个不重叠的地理区域在起作用。第一类属于国家和非政府组织，按照地缘政治和司法边界进行层级组织，由对问题的不同科学概念提供信息，每个组织都有自己的因果关系、监督和缓解地理位置。第二个是蚊子本身的，是贴片和流动的，遵循生物物理条件和人类干扰的轮廓。进一步假设，昆虫的地理位置与为处理疾病风险而设立的机构的地理位置之间存在空间和标量上的不匹配。利用机构人种学、昆虫栖息地模型和蚊子分布的直接监测，这项研究将测试组织和它们被组织管理的危害的匹配和不匹配。研究结果将解决机构在蚊媒疾病危害方面的具体能力和趋势。它将进一步提供教育信息，并与州和地方机构的成员举行讲习班，以促进机构间对成果的讨论，特别是在工作查明当前信息、做法和政策中的差距和重叠的程度上。这些研讨会的结果应朝着协调、翻译和解释跨机构和学科界限的经验迈出一步，不仅提供有关受关注昆虫地理的“硬”数据，而且进一步允许就不同的培训、经验和机构习惯进行有意义的讨论。虽然不能指望它能让机构完全符合蚊子的地理位置，但这项研究可以找出问题领域，并探索具体的方法，使机构对蚊子的反应更稳健、更适应、更灵活。因此，通过在项目的最后阶段与机构成员进行协调，旨在确定与测绘、分析、知识传播、机构学习和采用、辖区内和辖区间连通性等有关的“最佳体制做法”，以改进昆虫管理和公众对严重和持续的健康危害的反应。

A range of institutional systems exist to manage and mitigate environmental problems, yet the quickly changing, ecologically surprising, and spatially complex qualities of new problems create a serious mismatch for institutions formed in earlier times. What remains unclear, therefore, is the degree to which and the way in which already existing bureaucracies and structures of governance are organized to address emergent problems. The recent outbreak of West Nile Virus in the United States and the associated risk of other diseases, including dengue fever and a range of related encephalitis diseases, is an acute example of just such a problem. This project seeks to explore the specific geographies of governance available to differing government agencies relative to the biological and climatological geography of mosquitoes in southern Arizona. Specifically the research postulates that multiple non-overlapping geographies are in play. The first, belonging to state and non-governmental organizations is hierarchically organized and follows geopolitical and juridical boundaries, informed by diverse scientific conceptions of the problem, each organization with its own geography of causation, surveillance, and mitigation. The second, that of the mosquitoes themselves, is patched and flowlike, following the contours of biophysical conditions and human disturbances. It is further postulated that there is a spatial and scalar mismatch between the geographies of the insect and that of institutions set up to deal with disease risks. Using institutional ethnography, insect habitat modeling, and direct surveillance of mosquito distribution, the research will test the match and mismatch of organizations and the hazards they are organized to govern.The research will result in findings that address the specific capacities and tendencies of agencies relative to mosquito-borne disease hazards. It will further produce education al information and workshops convened with members of both state and local agencies, to facilitate inter-agency discussion of results, especially to the degree that the work identifies gaps and overlaps in current information, practice, and policy. The results of these workshops should make a step towards coordinating, translating, and interpreting experiences across agency and disciplinary boundaries, presenting not only "hard" data concerning the geography of insects of concern, but further allowing meaningful discussion of differential training, experience, and institutional habits. While it cannot be expected to make institutions conform unproblematically to the geographies of the insect, the research can identify problem areas and explore specific ways to make institutions more robust, adaptive, and flexible in response to the mosquito. By coordinating with agency members in the final phase of the project, it is intended, therefore, to identify 'best institutional practices' associated with mapping, analysis, knowledge dissemination, institutional learning and adoption, intra- and inter-jurisdictional connectivity, etc., that might be fostered to improve insect management and public responses to serious and ongoing health hazards.