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Short abstract:

This paper considers the use of maps in Antimicrobial Resistance research. Drawing upon multidisciplinary fieldwork from Benin and Bangladesh, I reflect upon previous mapping exercises, and ask how an STS sensibility can be utilised to produce socially representative, ethically responsible AMR maps.

Long abstract:

Mapping is a key method for communicating antimicrobial resistance prevalence and abundance globally. Maps are deployed either as diagrams of the spatial distribution and/or concentration of resistance genes (e.g. Hendriksen et al. 2019), or as systems maps that plot factors influencing resistance evolution and interactions between them (e.g. Matthiessen et al. 2022). Plotted from the results of microbiological and molecular analysis, such maps are invaluable sources for drawing attention to the pervasiveness of the AMR problem. However, achieving such statistical scalability requires what anthropologist Anna Tsing (2014) calls the removal of “nuisance” social relations that threaten the standardisation upon which scale relies. In the process of enacting a mapping exercise space and place are decontextualised of the social and material relations that produce them, and defined instead as risk “hotspots”, requiring intervention to prevent global AMR mobility. Nevertheless, as Tsing’s scalability critique cautions, such social and material relations remain in situ, and their technoscientific erasure or denial risks leaving vulnerable geographies and economies open to accusations of causality and responsibility for situations over which they have little control.

This paper considers the history and use of mapping in AMR research. Drawing upon multidisciplinary fieldwork from Benin and Bangladesh, I reflect upon the possibility that collaborative mapping exercises with research participants will more effectively plot biosocial relations of AMR production and the determinants of microbial mobility - and ask how an STS sensibility can be utilised to produce more socially representative and ethically responsible AMR maps.