Number worship: Race, place and numbers in 'the San Francisco America pretends does not exist'.
Glob Public Health
; 18(1): 2205486, 2023 01.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2298965
ABSTRACT
Numerical knowledge is critical to global public health, but numbers often emerge from contexts that require serious attention to historical and contextual factors shaped by race and place-based marginalisations. Without such attention, even progressive anti-racist public health projects can cause harm in neighbourhoods like Bayview Hunters Point in San Francisco. The central role of numbers in governance has received substantial scholarly attention and ethnographic studies often foreground the subjective stakes and selective erasures that result from privileging numerical ways of knowing. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research conducted in 2003-2004, we track different interpretations around the closure of an HIV/AIDS medication adherence program in San Francisco's only majority Black neighbourhood. Drawing on Du Bois' double consciousness, we show the entanglement of numbers, race and place through the story of how a program's closure was interpreted by clients in terms of racialised neglect and experimental violence. Twenty years later, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the quest for numbers continues to evoke community tensions.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
HIV Infections
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Qualitative research
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
Glob Public Health
Journal subject:
Public Health
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
17441692.2023.2205486
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