Actions for Cooking Data : Culture and Politics in an African Research World

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Cooking Data : Culture and Politics in an African Research World

Author
Biruk, Crystal
Published
Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2018.
Physical Description
1 online resource
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Language Note
English
Restrictions on Access
Open Access Unrestricted online access
Summary
COOKING DATA is an ethnographic study of how demographic data is collected, handled, processed, and manipulated by fieldworkers, researchers, policymakers, and NGOs in Malawi and internationally. Crystal Biruk's fieldwork with people at all levels of major survey projects explores how survey-based research projects call truths about the populations they work with into being, transforming data from answers to survey questions into statistics that appear self-evidently true. Beginning with the assumption that clean data is a myth, Biruk uncovers the hidden relationships between the knowledge work that produces data and its value to various audiences. Specifically, her work considers how health-related data have become financially valuable both to NGOs and to the young Malawians who work as data collectors and, later, supervisors--and how the commodification of health information intersects with local social worlds.
Other Subject(s)
ISBN
9780822371823
Collection
OAPEN Library.
Funding Information
Knowledge Unlatched
Terms of Use and Reproduction
Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/arr/4.0/legalcode
Creative Commons
View MARC record | catkey: 31194186