TECHNO: (How) does the analyst account for the data practices and responsibilities of the people and organizations studied?

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Angela Okune's picture
Angela Okune
August 23, 2018
In response to:
Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

AO: Tilley notes that it was not until the nineteenth century, and particularly the period after 1850, that scientific institutions and ideologies began to attain worldwide preeminence. While this worldwide preeminence is related to Europe’s pursuit of global colonialism, she notes it is also a result of factors including the greater organization of scientific congresses; shared nomenclature and methods; professionalization of the biosciences and field sciences; greater circulation of international scientific journals, and the standardization of laws regulating and defining science.

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Angela Okune's picture
Angela Okune
August 6, 2018
In response to:
Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Data comes up throughout the book and most (of those that Tilley writes about) discuss data as quantitative numbers (climate data, health data, land data)
  • Tilley notes that many of the British scientists she was studying were calling for broader efforts to work together. For example, in 1930, Aurthur Tansley called for the work to move beyond narrow “specialist Departments” and coordinate data, not only through technical measures such as the compilation of bibliographies and new research monographs but also through cross-disciplinary approaches and “the study of problems which can only be investigated on the spot.” Doing this kind of cross-disciplinary work would help answer the complex questions like medical ecology in relation to disease, etc. “so central were these problems to development efforts that significant returns would come from studying them “on a broadly ecological basis.” (87) Points were made that it is important to avoid duplication: “he believed that existing departmental and disciplinary divisions got in the way of dealing with larger questions related to “African ecology.” (102)
  • As part of ecological surveys in the 1930s, Tilley discusses how researchers typically met with village elders and “asked a series of routine questions, [including] methods of land selection, pro- cesses of clearing land, planting, duration of cultivation, rest periods.” She writes that they supplemented their field data with information from administrators and agricultural officers, including Unwin Moffat, C. J. Lewin, and William Allan, who were enduring allies of the project, as well as specialists from the Amani Agricultural Research Station in Tanganyika. The amazing heterogeneity of the agricultural techniques they encountered is recorded in Trapnell’s diaries and notebooks, which fill more than 1,200 printed pages.” (148).
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Angela Okune's picture
Angela Okune
August 6, 2018
In response to:
Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • This quote from Tilley’s book highlights that the “Africa has no data/bad data” rhetoric has been around since at least the Berlin conferenc: “The head of the Russian delegation, Count Knapist, told the conference that “precise data on the climate of Africa are absolutely wanting, whereas the [International] Meteorological Committee have already gathered them in every other part of the world.” It would be a tremendous service to science if the conference might “facilitate the establishment of a meteorological station in the upper regions of the Congo.”” (54).

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