Teaching the Politics of Numbers with EthnoData: Ethnographic Experimentations through Statistics in Ecuador

This essay discusses the development and use of EthnoData, a multimodal and multimedia digital platform designed to critically engage different publics with data production and circulation in Ecuador. Created by Kaleidos, a research center at the University of Cuenca, EthnoData combines ethnography and large datasets on violent deaths, femicides, hate crimes, and missing people to analyze and challenge the conventional authority of official statistical evidence. EthnoData is also a pedagogical tool to disrupt linear narratives of violent deaths. It provides a collaborative learning space that enables users to generate their own theorizations and stories, highlighting the politics of classification and the socioeconomic inequalities embedded in the quantification of violence. The paper illustrates the platform's capacities through three examples: an interactive classroom exercise, an ethnographic essay on data reclassification, and its use in a deportation hearing in the US. These examples underscore EthnoData’s role in exposing the power dynamics in knowledge production and the real-life consequences of statistical categorizations. By democratizing access to data, EthnoData engages users in a critical reflection to question and better understand the politics and limitations of data, pushing for deeper and more nuanced comprehensions of statistical realities and their political implications.