Exploring the Complexities of Care in Insect-Work in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the diverse types of work done in insect assemblages in Aotearoa New Zealand: work done by, for, and in relation with insects. In particular, it departs from other scholarly pursuits who have focused on insects within the edible insect industry. Instead, I take up recent calls from research focused on more-than-human, new materialist and related subfields, urging for greater interrogation of the under-acknowledged socio- and ethico-politics ‘hidden’ within mainstream, mass-production insect industries and alternative insect work. This exploratory study is grounded by a place-based, relational approach – it employs qualitative research methodologies such as semi-structured interviews and observations alongside analyses of secondary materials to reveal contemporary caring engagements and practices in insects work in Aotearoa New Zealand. As the first study of its kind in this context, this study draws upon Science and Technology Studies (STS) and care theory, to investigate the caring complexities in promises that industrialised insect-work may present to solve global problems such as food and feed insecurity, or more localised biosecurity threats, but also the possibilities in pro-biotic insect futures. Fundamentally, I argue that the way insects are enrolled in work for humans go beyond ‘utility’ of insects. This going beyond reflects different types of care that is practiced–care about, for, and with insects; highlighting also the constraints of care that delimit ‘human’-‘more-than-human’ negotiations. Significantly, what this thesis contributes to the bourgeoning literature on more-than-human insect geographies is a focus on insect agency and their capacity to care about, for, and with humans. An attentiveness to the affective capacities of insects to transform human-insect response-abilities remain underexplored in scholarship. Such considerations are significant provocations given that insects are often understood as passive recipients of human care. In exploring the complexities and possibilities of thinking about what care might mean when insects as recognised as agential actors, workers, carers, it starts to reveal the ways in which insect bodies are embroiled within capitalist logics of industrial agriculture. This can unsettle existing insect ontologies and lead us to challenge our capacities to care for and with insect others.