The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the most important vector of diseases such as yellow fever, dengue, zika and chikungunya. I have been doing an ethnography of public health policies based in geolocation softwares and DNA technologies for its control and surveillance. My point is to understand the materialities, discourses and institutions that are mobilized to perform risks and convert epidemics into instruments of governmentality. In this presentation, I will combine ethnographic situations from my fieldwork in Brazil and Argentina and a historical perspective on the epidemics. My purpose will be to discuss how the life of people, mosquitoes and environments have been produced, crossed and governed by technologies, uncertainties and recalcitrances of these tropical diseases in Latin America.

Jean Segata is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and Craig Cogut Visiting Professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Brown University. He has research experience in anthropology of science, cyberculture, human-animal relations and sanitary emergencies in urban environments.