Cooking Data
Culture and Politics in an African Research World
Duke University Press · Print & ebook · April 4, 2018
In Cooking Data Cal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data.
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- Who it’s for
- Cal Biruk traces how research relationships shape health data, national AIDS policy, local economies, and power.
- Themes
- Production of health data, Global health research in Malawi, Statistics, policy, and power
- Genres
- How Cultures Work, HIV & AIDS, Public Health
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Start with this bookAbout this book
In Cooking Data Cal 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.
Continue reading
Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information—such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers—acquire 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.
Making AIDS Statistics
Cal Biruk traces how research relationships shape health data, national AIDS policy, local economies, and power.
Come here for
- Fieldwork on HIV and AIDS demographics in Malawi
- How survey questions and questionnaire numbers become statistics
Expect
- An account of fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers
- A rethinking of the clean-versus-dirty view of quantitative data
Where it sits
| Public Health | 41% |
|---|---|
| HIV & AIDS | 30% |
| How Cultures Work | 28% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- East African History
- Public Health
- How Cultures Work
- Authors
- Cal (Crystal) Biruk
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- Published
- April 4, 2018
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Production of health data · Global health research in Malawi · Statistics, policy, and power
- Reading lane
- East African History