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

存在一系列的制度体系来管理和缓解环境问题，但新问题的快速变化，生态上令人惊讶的，空间上复杂的品质，与早期形成的制度严重不匹配。因此，目前尚不清楚的是，现有的官僚机构和治理结构在何种程度上和以何种方式组织起来解决新出现的问题。最近在美国爆发的西尼罗河病毒和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，就是这样一个问题的一个严重例子。该项目旨在探索不同政府机构相对于亚利桑那州南部蚊子的生物和气候地理的具体治理地理。具体来说，该研究假设多个不重叠的地理位置在发挥作用。第一种是属于国家和非政府组织的，它是按等级组织的，遵循地缘政治和司法边界，受到对问题的不同科学概念的影响，每个组织都有自己的因果关系，监视和缓解的地理。 第二个是蚊子本身的，是补丁和流动的，遵循生物物理条件和人类干扰的轮廓。 它进一步假设，有一个空间和标量之间的不匹配的地理昆虫和机构成立，以处理疾病的风险。通过机构人种学、昆虫栖息地建模和对蚊子分布的直接监测，该研究将测试组织与其组织管理的危害的匹配和不匹配。该研究将得出结论，解决机构与蚊媒疾病危害相关的具体能力和趋势。它将进一步提供教育信息，并与州和地方机构的成员一起举办讲习班，以促进机构间对成果的讨论，特别是在这项工作确定当前信息、实践和政策中的差距和重叠的情况下。这些研讨会的结果应使跨机构和学科界限的协调，翻译和解释的经验，提出不仅是“硬”数据有关的昆虫的地理关注，但进一步允许有意义的讨论差异的培训，经验和机构的习惯。虽然不能指望机构毫无问题地符合昆虫的地理分布，但研究可以确定问题领域，并探索具体方法，使机构在应对蚊子时更加强大，适应性和灵活性。因此，通过在项目的最后阶段与机构成员协调，旨在确定与绘图、分析、知识传播、机构学习和采用、管辖区内和管辖区间连通性等有关的“最佳机构做法”，这可能有助于改善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.