Ethnography and quantification: Insights from epidemiology for Indigenous health equity

Abstract

A growing body of critical ethnography compellingly demonstrates how "evidencebased" trends are further privileging narrowly construed quantitative statistics, indicators, and metrics in ways that build on widespread cultural assumptions about the alleged objectivity of numerical data. In working to challenge these uncritical and positivist illusions, these studies provide more contextualized understandings and often also advocate for more pluralistic approaches that make use of multiple ways of knowing. Drawing examples from a transnational ethnographic project with epidemiologists who work to promote Indigenous health equity, I call attention here to how postpositivist approaches are already active in quantitative professions, galvanized in part by growing intersections between evidence-based trends and rights/justice advocacy.Closer attention to such pro-equity quantitative work highlights the need to expand the ethnographic questions that anthropologists ask about the relationships between quantification, positivism, and privilege. Such expansion stands to benefit anthropological understandings of knowledge politics in the "evidence-based" era and contributes to ongoing conversations about how to de-center and decolonize ethnographic inquiry. K E Y W O R D Sepidemiology, health equity, knowledge/power, Indigenous activism ResumenUn cuerpo creciente de etnografía crítica demuestra de manera convincente cómo las tendencias "basadas en evidencia" están privilegiando aún más las estadísticas, los indicadores y las medidas cuantitativas construidas limitadamente, en formas que se basan en asunciones culturales generalizadas acerca de la objetividad supuesta de los datos numéricos. Trabajando para retar estas ilusiones acríticas y positivistas, estos estudios proveen entendimientos más contextualizados y a menudo también abogan por aproximaciones más pluralistas que hacen uso de múltiples formas de conocer. Extrayendo ejemplos de un proyecto etnográfico trasnacional con epidemiólogos que trabajan para promover la equidad de salud indígena, llamo la atención aquí sobre cómo las aproximaciones pospositivistas están ya activas en profesiones cuantitativas, galvanizadas, en parte por las intersecciones crecientes entre las tendencias basadas en evidencia y la defensa de los derechos y la justicia. Atención más cercana a tal trabajo cuantitativo proequidad enfatiza la necesidad de expandir las 36

Ecologies of quantification in waste management: Landfilling, e-waste recycling, and car breaking

“…This perfectly fits our approach to situate quantification of waste in a broader relational space that includes the senses and experience. Not only does experience deepen and shape understanding of quantification, as Prussing (2022) demonstrated in her study of indigenous health, but it may also serve as a key factor for mastering formal procedures, as Lampland (2010) showed in her study of socialist accounting. The interest in different modes of knowing led us to a seemingly unlikely source of inspiration in Daniel Everett’s (2005: 623) study of the Pirahã, in which he described approximate knowledge of quantity (small vs. large amount/size) without a need for numbers or counting.…”

“…Numbers have been used by states to make informed decisions and to govern (Hacking, 1991). A large body of literature in the humanities, social sciences, and STS has recognized the diverse aspects of quantification and numbers that should be studied: the wider processes and relations with specific historical roots and political consequences (Hacking, 1990; Muller, 2019; Porter, 1995; Star, 1995); forms of participation and interaction with numbers-in-practice (Day et al, 2014; Guyer et al, 2010); informal manipulation with numbers (Biruk, 2018; Lampland, 2010); and the role of experience (Prussing, 2022).…”

“…I found that the hill was higher than it should have been and the money was insufficient.’ The initial approximate knowledge enabled not only an extension of the ecology of quantification by including experiential knowledge (cf. Prussing, 2022) but also helped uncover fraudulent activities.…”

“…Such approximative quantification depends on experience. A recent critique of privileging the quantitative emphasizes the role of experiential knowledge in repositioning quantification’s relationships (Prussing, 2022). Erica Prussing’s call for the use of ‘a more multidimensional, dynamic, and expansive lens on who and what is involved in quantification’ (2022: 10) resonates with our attempt to extend the ecological imaginary beyond numbers and numbering practices.…”

“…A recent critique of privileging the quantitative emphasizes the role of experiential knowledge in repositioning quantification’s relationships (Prussing, 2022). Erica Prussing’s call for the use of ‘a more multidimensional, dynamic, and expansive lens on who and what is involved in quantification’ (2022: 10) resonates with our attempt to extend the ecological imaginary beyond numbers and numbering practices. In other words, we situate numbers in a wider field of relations and processes, where different modalities of quantification coexist and are shaped by the experience of human actors.…”