Ethnography and quantification

Insights from epidemiology for Indigenous health equity

Bibliographic Data

ID2260015
AuthorsE Prussing (0000-0002-5678-2297, Department of Anthropology and Department of Community & Behavioral Health University of Iowa, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume125
Issue1
Pages36-48
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.13797
OpenAlexW4308917187
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited79

A growing body of critical ethnography compellingly demonstrates how "evidence-based" 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

Emic and etic · Epistemology · Equity (law · Ethnography · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Positivism · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Law · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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