Caring for Strangers Alterity, Alliances, and Reptile Conservation in the “Gecko Garden Refuges” in Manapany-les-Bains, La Réunion

Abstract. Commonly seen as either dangerous or unsocial, reptiles represent a kind of alterity that is ofen deemed categorically different from warm-blooded mammals. In the village of Manapany-les-Bains, however, on the island of La Réunion in the Western Indian Ocean, care for the endangered gecko species Phelsuma inexpectata has taken an unexpected turn: initiated by a local NGO, village residents have declared their private gardens a gecko-friendly zone.
Engaging concepts of multispecies care and alterity, this article explores what caring for a reptile means. Based on ethnographic feld research in Manapany-les-Bains, I will discuss how the gecko’s otherness remains an ambivalent trope, being both reduced and capitalized on, and that new alliances are exclusionary and fragmented.