Okeke’s analysis is largely at the level of meso where she looks at the various organizations and nature of collaboration between “global South and global North.” She does also touch on the science of it at the data and eco level but misses on the micro levels.
Tousignant’s book is very strong in many of the layers of its analysis, with a particular strength in its nano level of analysis. She follows a call by the Fortuns’ (2008) to look at the subject formation of scientists in a particular context and moment. She is also strong in her analysis of the scientists’ data practices and scientific infrastructure. She includes non-human actors like the insects enrolled as indicators in Sahelian ecotoxicology as “infrastructures.” (chapter 4). She includes discussion about the racialization of expertise in chapter 2, something that I am also interested in which is often not sufficiently included in discussions of humanitarianism and science on the continent.
Pollock recognizes the problematics of the bifurcation between global South/North but notes that “Africa” is an actor’s category and marks inequalities that cannot be ignored. She distinguishes between global science and local knowledge in her analysis: “Whereas ethnographic exploration of efforts to pharmaceutically exploit botanical products and traditional knowledge foregrounds the conflict between local knowledge and global science (Hayden, 2003; Langwick, 2011), iThemba offers an opportunity to explore a Global South site that seeks not to translate local knowledge into global science, but to participate in global science itself.” (855).
She seems to be favoring the eco and nano levels of analysis, largely focusing on how the scientists imagine the future. She notes the historical and ecological conditions that have shaped the current moment.
Tilley explores the points at which “representations” turned into “interventions,” as theory and research were applied in practice. Defined in this way, she sees interventions (including development projects) as part part of an ongoing process of knowledge formation and reproduction (16).
She includes indigenous knowledge here and argues that most things labeled “traditional knowledge” are in fact a variant of vernacular science; in other words, they have already been translated, selectively modified, and even tested (332).
The analyst is focused on a macro level analysis of the legal and political infrastructures esablished by the colonial project in Africa that also set in motion the scientific infrastructures. She is focused on understanding the translation of “primitive knowledges” and how those were framed in scientific logics. She mentions some of the tech but does not look at practice or data specifically.
Biruk doesn’t seem to explicitly talk much about race, sexuality, or gender in her analyses and usually uses “as an anthropologist amongst the demographers.” This could possibly be because Black and white do not mean the same thing in the Malawian context (of course) and she is worried having to translate those contexts and concepts to her reader? It is possible that is not part of the discursive landscape there so no need to mention it… BUT in discussions about the benefits that “foreign researchers” have - which she spends a whole chapter on (something also discussed heavily in Kenya), subjectivities like being white and black or read as white and black definitely come up. As such, including global race politics (I guess that would be at the NANO level?) seems to be a discursive risk I can identify in Biruk’s work.