Metrics: What Counts in Global Health (Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography) - Softcover

Adams, Vincanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822360977 ISBN 13: 9780822360971

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2016

Synopsis

This volume's contributors evaluate the accomplishments, limits, and consequences of using quantitative metrics in global health. Whether analyzing maternal mortality rates, the relationships between political goals and metrics data, or the links between health outcomes and a program's fiscal support, the contributors question the ability of metrics to solve global health problems. They capture a moment when global health scholars and practitioners must evaluate the potential effectiveness and pitfalls of different metrics—even as they remain elusive and problematic.
 

Contributors. Vincanne Adams, Susan Erikson, Molly Hales, Pierre Minn, Adeola Oni-Orisan, Carolyn Smith-Morris, Marlee Tichenor, Lily Walkover, Claire L. Wendland

About this title

About the Author

Vincanne Adams is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. 

 

 

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Metrics

What Counts in Global Health

By Vincanne Adams

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2016 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-6097-1

Contents

Introduction VINCANNE ADAMS, 
1. Metrics of the Global Sovereign: Numbers and Stories in Global Health VINCANNE ADAMS, 
PART I. GETTING GOOD NUMBERS, 
2. Estimating Death: A Close Reading of Maternal Mortality Metrics in Malawi CLAIRE L. WENDLAND, 
3. The Obligation to Count: The Politics of Monitoring Maternal Mortality in Nigeria ADEOLA ONI-ORISAN, 
PART II. METRICS POLITICS, 
4. The Power of Data: Global Malaria Governance and the Senegalese Data Retention Strike MARLEE TICHENOR, 
5. Native Sovereignty by the Numbers: The Metrics of Yup'ik Behavioral Health Programs MOLLY HALES, 
PART III. METRICS ECONOMICS, 
6. Metrics and Market Logics of Global Health SUSAN L. ERIKSON, 
7. When Good Works Count LILY WALKOVER, 
PART IV. STORIED METRICS, 
8. When Numbers and Stories Collide: Randomized Controlled Trials and the Search for Ethnographic Fidelity in the Veterans Administration CAROLYN SMITH-MORRIS, 
9. The Tyranny of the Widget: An American Medical Aid Organization's Struggles with Quantification PIERRE MINN, 
Epilogue: What Counts in Good Global Health? VINCANNE ADAMS, 
References, 
Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Metrics of the Global Sovereign

Numbers and Stories in Global Health VINCANNE ADAMS

Universalism

The second half of the nineteenth century was a heady time, especially for those who believed that if you had the right metrics, you could rule the world. Nowhere was this more visible than when (as the Economist notes) "those two great imperial rivals, Britain and France, agreed to carve up not merely the world, but the Universe." In 1847 "the British gained control of time, which is why the Earth's prime meridian ... runs through Greenwich, a suburb of London. [Thirty years later], the French annexed length and mass. They kept them, in the form of two lumps of metal, in sealed jars in [the Bureau of Weights and Measures] in Sevres, a suburb of Paris."

The idea of creating universal standards of measurement was arguably more than a practical solution to the needs of maritime trade and currency exchange that calibrated the colonial enterprises of those times. Universal standards required fundamentally new ways of thinking about objectivity itself (as Daston and Galison 2010 have noted). Objectivity, in its own way, served as the invented conceptual counterpart to the hubris of the age of imperialism. It was joined over roughly the same decades by the birth of statistics, the overachieving mathematical offspring of universally standardized time, mass, and weight.

The creation of these systems of counting in relation to standardized notions of measurement enabled a practical set of tools for colonial rule, working to ensure the smooth transition from mercantilism to direct and indirect systems of colonial governance. Historians of science also note that the metrics were a morally aspirational undertaking: they offered the possibility of shared conversations and shared bases for comparison, for evaluation, for stabilizing the truth around complex assemblages of people, life, and nature, and for creating policies for governing that took ethical questions out of the hands of the priests and colonial rulers and put them into the morally neutral hands of scientifically minded experts. Universal metrics offered, in short, new ways of stabilizing the randomness and chaos produced by the violence of co

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822360977
• ISBN 13: 9780822360971
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264