Teaching the Politics of Numbers with EthnoData: Ethnographic Experimentations through Statistics in Ecuador

Maka Suarez; Jorge Núñez; Mayra Flores

doi:10.17351/ests2023.1595

Maka Suarez
Jorge Núñez https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6266-7052
Mayra Flores

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1595

Abstract

This essay discusses the development and use of EthnoData, a multimodal and multimedia digital platform designed to critically engage different publics with data production and circulation in Ecuador. Created by Kaleidos, a research center at the University of Cuenca, EthnoData combines ethnography and large datasets on violent deaths, femicides, hate crimes, and missing people to analyze and challenge the conventional authority of official statistical evidence. EthnoData is also a pedagogical tool to disrupt linear narratives of violent deaths. It provides a collaborative learning space that enables users to generate their own theorizations and stories, highlighting the politics of classification and the socioeconomic inequalities embedded in the quantification of violence. The paper illustrates the platform's capacities through three examples: an interactive classroom exercise, an ethnographic essay on data reclassification, and its use in a deportation hearing in the US. These examples underscore EthnoData’s role in exposing the power dynamics in knowledge production and the real-life consequences of statistical categorizations. By democratizing access to data, EthnoData engages users in a critical reflection to question and better understand the politics and limitations of data, pushing for deeper and more nuanced comprehensions of statistical realities and their political implications.

References

Data Availability

Data published in these article can be accessed in STS Infrastructures at: https://n2t.net/ark:/81416/p4z88b.

References

Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Medford, MA: Polity.

Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 2000. Sorting Things out: Classification and Its Consequences. Inside Technology Series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Crawford, Kate. 2021. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Currie, Morgan E., Britt S. Paris, and Joan M. Donovan. 2019. “What Difference Do Data Make? Data Management and Social Change.” Online Information Review 43(6): 971–85.

https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-02-2018-0052.

Dalton, Craig M., and Tim Stallmann. 2018. “Counter-Mapping Data Science.” The Canadian Geographer | Le Géographe canadien 62(1): 93–101.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12398.

D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. 2020. Data Feminism. Strong Ideas Series. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Dumit, Joseph. 2017. “Game Design as STS Research.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 3: 603–12.

https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2017.132.

EthnoData. 2020. “Política de Datos en Muertes Violentas.” Accessed November 8, 2024.

https://www.ethnodata.org/es-es/muertes-violentas/politica-de-datos-de-muertes-violentas/.

Feinberg, Melanie. 2017. “Reading Databases: Slow Information Interactions beyond the Retrieval Paradigm.” Journal of Documentation 73(2): 336–56.

https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2016-0030.

Fortun, Kim, Mike Fortun, Erik Bigras, Tahereh Saheb, et al. 2014. “Experimental Ethnography Online: The Asthma Files.” Cultural Studies 28(4): 632–42.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.888923.

Foucault, Michel. [1975] 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Reprint. New York: Vintage Books.

Freire, Paulo. [1968] 2014. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. Third Edition, Reprinted and Revised. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Herrera, Mateo, dir. 2015. El Panóptico Ciego [The Blind Panopticon]. Documentary. Taladro Films.

Kang, Edward B. 2023. “Ground Truth Tracings (GTT): On the Epistemic Limits of Machine Learning.” Big Data & Society 10(1): 1–12.

https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517221146122.

Khandekar, Aalok, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, Lindsay Poirier, Alli Morgan, et al. 2021. “Moving Ethnography: Infrastructuring Doubletakes and Switchbacks in Experimental Collaborative Methods.” Science & Technology Studies 34(3): 78–102.

https://doi.org/10.23987/sts.89782.

Kwan, Mei-Po. 2002. “Feminist Visualization: Re-Envisioning GIS as a Method in Feminist Geographic Research.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92(4): 645–61.

https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8306.00309.

Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Merry, Sally Engle. 2011. “Measuring the World: Indicators, Human Rights, and Global Governance.” Current Anthropology 52(S3): 83–95.

https://doi.org/10.1086/657241.

Núñez, Jorge. 2006. Cacería de Brujos: Drogas Ilegales y Sistema de Cárceles en el Ecuador [Warlocks Hunt: Illegal Drugs and Prison Systems in Ecuador]. Master’s Thesis. Quito: Flacso Ecuador & Abya-Yala. Accessed June 25, 2024.

https://biblio.flacsoandes.edu.ec/libros/103556-opac.

⸻. 2011. Crítica a la Ideología de La Seguridad Ciudadana En Ecuador: 91 Estrategias contra la Violencia [A Critique to the Ideology of Citizen Security]. Serie Cuadernos de Trabajo. Quito: FLACSO Ecuador.

⸻. 2022. “Territories of Extreme Violence in Ecuador’s War on Drugs.” NACLA, March 16, 2022. Accessed June 25, 2024.

https://nacla.org/ecuador-drug-war-prisons.

Núñez, Jorge, and Maka Suarez. 2023. “How to Produce Responsive Ethnography of Data.” In An Ethnographic Inventory: Field Devices for Anthropological Inquiry, edited by Tomás Sánchez Criado and Adolfo Estalella. New York, NY: Routledge.

Núñez, Jorge, Maka Suarez, Mayra Flores, Sofia Carpio, et al. 2021. “Diagnóstico del Sistema Penitenciario del Ecuador 2021.” [Diagnosis of the Penitentiary System of Ecuador 2021]. Cuenca: Kaleidos—Centro de Etnografía Interdisciplinaria (Universidad de Cuenca) en colaboración con la Universidad de las Américas (UDLA). Accessed July 26, 2024.

https://www.ethnodata.org/es-es/diagnostico-de-sistema-de-penitenciario-del-ecuador/.

Pavlovskaya, Marianna. 2018. “Critical GIS as a Tool for Social Transformation: GIS for Social Transformation.” The Canadian Geographer | Le Géographe canadien 62(1): 40–54.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12438.

Poirier, Lindsay. 2021. “Reading Datasets: Strategies for Interpreting the Politics of Data Signification.” Big Data & Society 8(2): 1–19.

https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211029322.

Poirier, Lindsay, Kim Fortun, Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, and Mike Fortun. 2020. “Metadata, Digital Infrastructure, and the Data Ideologies of Cultural Anthropology.” In Anthropological Data in the Digital Age: New Possibilities – New Challenges, edited by Jerome W. Crowder, Mike Fortun, Rachel Besara, and Lindsay Poirier, 209–37. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24925-0_10.

Ratto, Matt. 2011. “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life.” The Information Society: An International Journal 27(4): 252–60.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2011.583819.

Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. 2021. “Making Better Numbers through Bioethnographic Collaboration.” American Anthropologist 123(2): 355–369.

https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13560.

Sadre-Orafai, Stephanie. 2020. “Typologies, Typifications, and Types.” Annual Review of Anthropology 49(1): 193–208.

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011235.

Thatcher, Jim E., Luke Bergmann, and David O’Sullivan. 2018. “Speculative and Constructively Critical GIS.” The Canadian Geographer | Le Géographe canadien 62(1): 4–6.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12441.

Tirrell, Chris, Laura Senier, Sara Ann Wylie, Cole Alder, et al. 2020. “Learning in Crisis: Training Students to Monitor and Address Irresponsible Knowledge Construction by US Federal Agencies under Trump.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6: 81–93.

https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2020.313.

Traweek, Sharon. 2021. “‘I Prefer the Map.’” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 7(2): 56–64.

https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2021.823.