Analyze

CITIZEN SCIENCE

Epistemic negotiation

Stakeholders (indigenous groups, activist, scientist, scholars, etc)

I've been organizing and working with the Research Data KE Working Group. We have been collecting relevant links, articles and data in this essay. Some members of our group are now going deeper into thematic areas such as looking at gender and its intersection with COVID-19 in Kenya. We have a monthly call on the second Thursday of every month. We also have a WhatsApp chat group to exchange links and articles. We are open to new members, sign up here. You can find an archive of all of our calls and notes here.

The training of and role for the (humanist?) intellectual in the world seems to be a relevant take-away point of discussion from postcolonial theory. I have been noticing a proliferation of thought pieces and various genres of writing by engaged scholars in this COVID-19 moment. While indeed there is lots to think and write about, the Late Industrial times we are in are also marked by a heavy saturation of information. Rather than feeling enlightening and motivated by the increased proliferation of opinions on COVID-19, I find it has the opposite effect. What other (new) forms of knowledge, processes for knowledge making, and ways of engaging in the world (not to mention education for critical consciousness) are needed in this moment? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I find the value and strength of new research collectives like this one to be rich spaces from which to start thinking about this question.

Ahmed describes the importance of a "humanist education" that trains the “ethical reflex” to open one up to forms of consciousness fundamentally different from one’s own. He notes that such openness eventually requires one to “rebel” against one’s training itself (developing critical consciousness?).

Ahmed also writes about the relationship where the intellectual refuses to speak for the subaltern--where the intellectual enters into a relationship with something foreign to him about which he will absolutely refuse ever to produce authoritative knowledge. "The point of the relationship is, in fact, "to question the grounds of knowledge itself."

I live in the bay area in Northern California and am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine. My research has focused on shifting data ideologies in Nairobi, Kenya where I lived and worked from 2010 - 2015 and 2019. Learn more here. I can be reached at angela[dot]okune[at]gmail[dot]com.

I am especially interested in the following questions:

• How is COVID-19 knowledge and expertise moving across national borders?

this graph is a perfect representation of the affects any thing can have on communities.  this graph can be correlated with things like natural disasters and their would be an increase in numbers.

children were tested for lead poisoning and their was a correlation between those who had lead poisoning and those who were homeless or a victim to poverty.

charts like this only show how any are in poverty.  whats not shown is how these people and families got to this point and what the common theme is between them

this diagram represents poverty rates from 15 years ago.  this is the history of newarks poverty rates towards families children and more.  

this diagram shows how different age groups suffer from povert.  as the years in age grow larger, the higher the numbers in poverty.