Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography
Culture and Politics in an African Research World
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography
Culture and Politics in an African Research World
About This Book
In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data are never clean; rather, they are always "cooked" during their production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce them. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of informationâsuch as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkersâacquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction. An Anthropologist among the Demographers: Assembling Data in Survey Research Worlds
- One. The Office in the Field: Building Survey Infrastructures
- Two. Living Project to Project: Brokering Local Knowledge in the Field
- Three. Clean Data, Messy Gifts: Soap-for-Information Transactions in the Field
- Four. Materializing Clean Data in the Field
- Five. When Numbers Travel: The Politics of Making Evidence-Based Policy
- Conclusion. Anthropology in and of (Critical) Global Health
- Appendix. Sample Household Roster Questions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index