ABSTRACT
After months of infrastructural woes, favela removals, and corruption scandals, it was the mosquito that almost spelled disaster for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. This chapter asks how political ecology helps elucidate the interrelatedness of mega-events and disease transmission in the so-called global South. I follow the Zika-carrying mosquito to understand how it is always-already embedded within political, economic, and social networks of power shaped, in part, by mega-event developments. It looks at two different scenes of vector impact: makeshift sites of relocation in which mosquitoes gather at pools of stagnant water and public health campaigns to quell anxieties during heightened global attention. To conclude, it discusses how political ecology and Sport for Development and Peace complement one another: together, they draw attention to how power-laden mega-event decisions affect the socio-material flows of seemingly distinct lifeworlds.
