Symbiotic engineering: insects, microbes, and the space of vector control

This article analyses vector control methods that use microbes to fight diseases, such as dengue, Zika, or West-Nile, by infecting mosquitoes with an endosymbiotic bacterium, Wolbachia. These methods affect mosquitoes’ capacity to transmit viruses to humans, either by suppressing the whole mosquito population, or by neutralizing the pathogen in the insect itself. Drawing on fieldwork, we show how these approaches instantiate a biopolitical strategy that we describe as ‘symbiotic engineering’: technoscientific attempts to secure forms of collective life by creating a symbiotic relationship through which the biological reaches into the social and vice versa. We situate the use of Wolbachia in the history of biocontrol techniques, delineate its economic rationalities, and explore the transformation it inflicts on communal ties. We show how the aim of addressing ‘global’ disease through microbial means places symbiotic engineering in the milieu of residential areas. Scaling-up vector control requires attending to a messy intermediate space affected by climate conditions, human habits, the built environment, and chemical residues.