Making Global Facts: Scaling, Standardization, and Erasure in International Development Metrics

• In Event: The Politics of Science and Technology in International Development 2

Abstract

This paper examines the standardizing functions of international development research. Critical development studies scholars (e.g. Adams, Escobar, Ferguson, Merry) have long argued that in order to produce the knowledge of global-scale problems, development metrics must disambiguate their findings from particular political and social contexts and in so doing delineate their zones of intervention. This paper expands these insights into contemporary “participatory” research initiatives that fetishize the inclusion of beneficiaries’ “voice.” It follows the production of one metric in particular that became a major rallying point for the growing movement in international development dedicated to investing in adolescent girls as the solution to global poverty: “In Kampala, 80% of girls do not feel safe.” The 80% statistic represents the findings of a research study designed and financed by one major multinational development NGO’s international headquarters in Canada and carried out by the agency’s subsidiary office in Uganda. Tracing the study as data were reported to three different NGO offices – the Kampala city office, the Ugandan national office, and the international headquarters in Toronto – reveals that in the process of scaling and standardizing young women’s reported answers to represent a “global” need for gender-sensitive urban safety initiatives, the report’s authors inadvertently erased young women’s actual demands for economic and health services. Consequently, this paper argues that the standardization required for development metrics to circulate transnationally ultimately erases the very “voices” participatory research intends to capture.

Author

• Erin V Moore, Northwestern University