Cooking data: culture and politics in an African research world

In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink how quantitative health data is produced. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows how data is never clean; rather, it is always “cooked” during its production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce it. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk demonstrates how 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.