AO: Using STS (Austin 1975) and feminist (Butler 2006) literature on performativity, Tichenor talks about “data performativity” or the way that words do more than just describe the world but in fact enact realities and categories are performed. She cites Callon (2006) and Erikson (2012) to describe the work that global health and scientific numbers do or the place they have in maintaining health systems in places that receive global health funding.
AO: Tichenor writes: “Data performativity, then, indicates the ways that data collection and synthesis maintain the model that funding agencies construct, reifying both the definitions of health problems and the power relations embedded within global health glows of capital, technology, and knowledge.” (437)
AO: Tichenor engages with the literature on malaria including history of the disease; labor of health workers; critiques of the business of global health; and STS work on performativity.
AO: Tichenor notes how the data production strike was discussed by media as undermining the country’s attempt to achieve the MDGs.
