Seeing Like a Research Project: Producing "High-Quality Data" in AIDS Research in Malawi
Seeing Like a Research Project: Producing "High-Quality Data" in AIDS Research in Malawi
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DOI：
10.1080/01459740.2011.631960
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发表时间：
2012-01-01
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Biruk, Crystal
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Biruk, Crystal
数字是我们了解非洲艾滋病的主要方式，但它们的力量和效用往往掩盖了它们产生的条件。我表明，量化是一个非常社会文化的过程，通过关注日常现实，使艾滋病相关的数字在马拉维。“像研究项目一样看待”意味着系统地将社会现实转化为数据点，并管理数字中固有的不确定性。利用20个月的参与者观察调查研究项目（2005年，2007-2008年），我演示了标准如何管理数据收集，以保护和再现人口统计学家的共同期望的“高质量的数据。“数据应“干净”、准确、精确，数据收集高效、及时，并且数据收集自足够大、纯净且具有代表性的样本。我采用民族志分析表明，这些期望不仅指导调查研究实地工作，但也产生的类别，身份和实践，加强和挑战这些标准化的价值观。
Numbers are the primary way that we know about AIDS in Africa, yet their power and utility often obscure the conditions of their production. I show that quantification is very much a sociocultural process by focusing on everyday realities of making AIDS-related numbers in Malawi. "Seeing like a research project'' implies systematically transforming social reality into data points and managing uncertainties inherent in numbers. Drawing on 20 months of participant observation with survey research projects (2005, 2007-2008), I demonstrate how standards govern data collection to protect and reproduce demographers' shared expectations of "high-quality data.'' Data are expected to be "clean,'' accurate and precise, data collection efficient and timely, and data collected from sufficiently large, pure, and representative samples. I employ ethnographic analysis to show that each of these expectations not only guides survey research fieldwork but also produces categories, identities, and practices that reinforce and challenge these standardizing values.