“Where There Are People, There are Flies”: Anthropological Notes on People and Insects in the Arava

Studies on the relations between humans and animals—a field of research that challenges the boundaries of what had been previously considered “social”—have mushroomed in recent years. As yet, however, there is no satisfactory answer to the question of whether it is possible to conduct ethnography of both the human and the nonhuman. This article, which focuses on flies and insects, which are usually not present in studies of the human and nonhuman, offers a different perspective on human–animal relations.

The northern Arava, a desert area in which there is widespread agricultural activity, is a leader in the use of biological pest control: the use of insects that were created and bred by humans to eradicate agricultural pests. The article focuses on the Mediterranean fruit fly—an invasive species considered a pest endangering the export of agricultural products—and other insects used for biological pest control.

On the basis of ethnographic research in the northern Arava, conducted over six years, the article shows how the boundaries separating the human and the nonhuman and separating nature and culture are dynamic spaces that are changing and being shaped in the wake of political and economic pressures and changes. Nevertheless, despite the change in the relations between humankind and flies and other insects in the Arava and the reshaping of the boundaries between them, the fundamental separation between human and the nonhuman, between nature and culture, remains. The article challenges the most recent theories regarding the relations between humans and animals and rethinks the nonhuman. In contrast to the prevailing view in the literature on the human and the nonhuman, which claims to extend social agency to the nonhuman, the article focuses on human activity itself that creates the social web with the nonhuman. Nevertheless, the article shows how an understanding of the mutual relations between the human and the nonhuman is essential for understanding a variety of social processes.