[STS-Africa] American Anthropological Association Panel on Data Performativity

[Richard Rottenburg]

Dear all, the panel below could be interesting to some of you — all the very best, Richard




> On 23 Mar 2016, at 12:31, Marlee Tichenor <marleejot at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear Prof. Rottenburg and Dr. Park,
> 
> My name is Marlee Tichenor, and I am organizing a panel on data performativity for the American Anthropological Association Meeting in November. I was wondering if you would be willing to send out a call for papers to your networks? 
> 
> 
> AAA 2016 Call for Papers/Participation: Data performativity, performing health: enumerative practices and building health worlds
> 
> Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 16-20 November,
> 2016, Minneapolis, MN, USA
> 
> Science and technology studies has built on the concept of “performativity” from linguist J.L. Austin’s (1975) assertion that words do more than merely describe the world but actually enact realities and critical theorist Judith Butler’s (1990) argument that gender categories are performed. Callon (2006) argues that the concept of “performativity” is the best analytic to describe the relationship between scientific theories and the world they attempt to represent, because scientific theories are “actively engaged in the constitution of the reality” they describe. Medical anthropologist Susan Erikson (2012) adapts the concept of performativity from these frameworks to the realm of “global health business.” In Sierra Leone and Germany, the business of global health “is fortified when people enact statistical health scripts through acts and processes of data collection, analysis, storage, and disbursement” (Erikson 2012:373). That these numbers are “too disparate from people’s bodies, human complexities, or communities to be meaningful representations” does not change the work that the numbers do or the place they have in maintaining the health system in places that receive global health funding. Data performativity, then, indicates the ways that data collection and synthesis maintain the model that funding agencies and regulatory bodies construct, reifying both the definitions of health problems and the power relations embedded within global health glows of capital, technology, and knowledge.
> 
> This panel will bring together papers that investigate the health worlds that statistics and data produce that are real in the sense that they create or restrict possibilities for action. In what ways are certain forms of evidence legitimized over others or left out of the feedback loop between data and model? How do data perform realities that are informed by the financial models that demand them, like Ebola bonds or performance-based funding?
> 
> If you are interested in participating, please email a paper title and abstract to Marlee Tichenor (marleejot at berkeley.edu <mailto:marleejot at berkeley.edu>) by March 30th.
> 
> 
> Thank you,
> Marlee
> 
> -- 
> Marlee Tichenor
> marleejot at berkeley.edu <mailto:marleejot at berkeley.edu>
> PhD Candidate, Medical Anthropology
> University of California, Berkeley and
> University of California, San Francisco

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