ABSTRACT
This chapter stems from the author's exploration of the institutional processes shaping the place and role of organizational networks linking the regional structures of locust surveillance and control to those of state and international programs of development aid. Research in science studies and related fields has revealed how the practices, techniques, texts, and quotidian activities by which scientific facts are produced and stabilized, as well as the ways in which technical and scientific practices are adopted and modified as they travel across different settings. Populations of desert locusts present an important agricultural pest hazard across vast parts of the African continent, the Arabian Peninsula, and South Asia. The chapter focuses on dynamics reported by French-based entomological experts whose primary professional affiliation is with the Locust Ecology and research team of the French Center of International Agricultural Research for Development. Locust managers are concerned with preventing, responding, and/or adapting to significant increases in gregarious populations, called upsurges.
