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“Playing the Numbers Game”: Evidence‐based Advocacy and the Technocratic Narrowing of the Safe Motherhood Initiative
Author(s) -
Storeng Katerini T.,
Béhague Dominique P.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1111/maq.12072
Subject(s) - technocracy , ethos , sociology , feminism , collective action , ambivalence , ethnography , political science , public relations , gender studies , psychology , social psychology , law , politics , anthropology
Based on an ethnography of the international Safe Motherhood Initiative (SMI), this article charts the rise of evidence‐based advocacy (EBA), a term global‐level maternal health advocates have used to indicate the use of scientific evidence to bolster the SMI's authority in the global health arena. EBA represents a shift in the SMI's priorities and tactics over the past two decades, from a call to promote poor women's health on the grounds of feminism and social justice (entailing broad‐scale action) to the enumeration of much more narrowly defined practices to avert maternal deaths whose outcomes and cost effectiveness can be measured and evaluated. Though linked to the growth of an audit‐ and business‐oriented ethos, we draw from anthropological theory of global forms to argue that EBA—or “playing the numbers game”—profoundly affects nearly every facet of evidence production, bringing about ambivalent reactions and a contested technocratic narrowing of the SMI's policy agenda.