Biruk highlights that "a main point of controversy between anthroplogists and demographers is how they might answer the question: "what is the relationship between data and social reality it claims to represent or count?" (20). She notes the history of the field of demography as emerging as a way to govern (statistics as a tool through which the state sees and knows its citizens). So the data that demographers generate needs to be seen as objective, "clean", and reflecting reality. She compares this to how anthropologists view data which is as a classificatory exercise that creates reality or "makes up" people. However, there is a contradiction inherent there because anthropologists are also in the "data making" game and also have particular investments in ideas of a particular kind of "good" data.
