Biruk puts her citations to her raw data in her footnotes. She indicates for example: "1. Dr. Jones, interview with author, SEptember 20, 2007, Lilongwe, Malawi. Of course, the only person who has access to her footnotes is herself so I wonder if this is 1) more for her own memory and archiving purposes and 2) to give credibility to her study and book. If someone (demographer working in Malawi?) questions this as "cooked," she can say, no, I spoke to this person on this day in this place, see! So in some way, she has absorbed some of the assumptions of the epistemic community she studied.... which need to demostrate that their version of the truth is grounded in reality.
