Making Better Numbers through Bioethnographic Collaboration

2021/04/11 by Elizabeth F. S. Roberts, Elizabeth Roberts · 10 citations
Environmental Science · Nursing · Social Sciences · #Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging #Child Nutrition and Water Access #Environmental Justice and Health Disparities

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/aman.13560

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I describe my ongoing bioethnographic collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of exposure scientists in environmental engineering and health. First, I explain how and why integrating ethnography and number‐based disciplines is such a complex, time‐consuming, and worthwhile process, when ethnography produces a kind of excessive “big data” that is not easily enumerated. Then I describe three of our current bioethnographic projects that seek to make better numbers about how (1) neighborhoods, (2) water distribution, and (3) employment and chemical exposures shape bodily processes in a highly unequal world. To conclude, I reflect on how we might harness ethnographic excess for making better numbers and thus better knowledge, and also how bioethnographic collaboration inevitably transforms ethnography even as we insist on its excess. [ collaboration, methodology, ethnography, big data, biomedical science ]

Cited by

• Independence with others: Lessons for anthropology from postdocs in team science
• Biocultural Synthesis of Adolescence: A roadmap to advance the field
• Changes in Sugar Sweetened Beverage Intake Are Associated with Changes in Body Composition in Mexican Adolescents: Findings from the ELEMENT Cohort. [europepmc]
• Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy: Results from a national survey. [europepmc]
• Epigenetic citizenship and political claims-making: the ethics of molecularizing structural racism. [europepmc]
• Injection preparation filtration and health concerns among indigenous people who inject methamphetamine. [europepmc]
• Independence with others: Lessons for anthropology from postdocs in team science. [europepmc]
• Timing of Complementary Feeding and Infant Growth Trajectories in Prospective Cohort Studies: A Systematized Review and Analysis of Socioecological Variation. [europepmc]
• 'Nonetheless biosocial': experiences and embodied knowledge of birth cohort participants in the UK and Brazil. [europepmc]
• Rapid Agrichemical Inventory via Video Documentation and Large Language Model Identification. [europepmc]

Related

• Doing More-Than-Human Research: Developing Qualitative Research Methods for a Multispecies World
• Learning From Colleagues: An Introduction to Team Science
• From Big Data To Important Information
• Dis_ability, Ethnographic Methods, and Collaborations over Distance: Intersectional Complications
• Making the most of bioimaging data through interdisciplinary interactions